Mea Culpa. Parts of high school are a blur as I was really out living not staying home listening to music or studying unfortunately–except for Eleventh Grade American History as it was easy for me and my Senior Class Thesis. Murray the K was an important part of my life in elementary school through whenever. I listened to WOR but don’t remember it as distinctly as WNEW FM.
These last few posts have been filling in words and I apologize for the lack of quality. Being in New York means being out most of the time. Little Luce will henceforth be called Luceanna Mae as she graduated high school today. Happy graduation girl who owns my heart. May your youth be filled with wonder and adventure
I look at the books here and think “wow this person has great taste.” Then I remember they’re my books. I was looking at a book by Rollo May and thought back to the time a teacher asked if anybody knew of him. I thought that was an odd question as this was grad school but i was the only one to raise my hand. He asked what I knew of him and how. I talked a bit about him–I used to desire becoming an existential something preferably poet but didn’t dare say it. I said my father had introduced me to him as he had followed him from NYU to The New School. My teacher asked if my father was a psychologist. “No an accountant.” We got into a bit of an argument as no accountant could have been a student of…I don’t know if that’s the day I began to realize my grad education was bogus or not.
My test is eclectic and my books reflect that. The realtors asked me to leave my CD’s which make me seem as if ten people inhabit my body. I took many of the actual CD’s and left the jewel cases. If I’m not making much sense lately forgive me. This is a difficult move and summer is my favorite time in New York. I will be back for Labor Day week and I guess part of the week before. It’s the single best time to be in the city.
This is an article about the station that defended George Carlin’s “Seven Words.”
It’s a more important article than it seems to be on the surface as it shows how much we have regressed as a society and as people in the past 35 years.
It talks about Larry Josephson who was the program manager then. When I was in the early years of high school he was the DJ who had the morning shift. His program was supposed to start at 7 AM but he often didn’t get to the station until 7:30 or slightly before. As my clock radio was set to the station I would sleep late and have to wake one of my parents to drive me to school.
“Larry’s late,” was an acceptable lateness in my house though I doubt in my school. My father slept until 9;30. He believed in kids paying dues, working from the bottom up etc., but he thought everybody should be able to sleep late.
I’m sure Larry played music but i don’t remember most of it. i remember him talking about rancid bagel juice or butter.
Then WNEW FM, the first album oriented station began and I stopped listening to BAI. There was no contest. I was a rock chick not a folkie. The morning DJ and I forget who it was, wasn’t late so I almost never missed the bus again. My idol Murray The K was the evening DJ. Allison Steele who had a voice I emulate was the nightbird, but Roscoe (the first big Black msm DJ was too, I’m a bit confused but not going to look this up.)
The most difficult part of becoming an adult was realizing that unlike my parents I needed two hours at least in the morning, not fifteen minutes to get ready. Most of the time i spaced out to the mirror in my bathroom and held my coffee cup.
I would listen to BAI once a year–the Thanksgiving Song “Alice’s Restaurant,” but FUV took over or continued that tradtion. I always feel bad that I’m an FUV person not a BAI one but I like rock.
My father was a closet BAI listener. He claimed to hate music but would tell long long long anecdotes about Carly Simon, for example. It was in character for a man who went to Stockbridge to get a ticket from Officer Oppie who was a real person and a character in “Alice’s Restaurant.”
Stumble it!
Happy birthday Bone. 35 and finally almost maybe possibly somewhat an adult
I want to thank writerKat for giving me an award for excellence. I live to write and write to live which isn’t a great thing when I’m supposed to be emptying book shelves.
I read Jonathan’s blog once a week–every post. It’s like reading a great serial. He and his wife Wendy just adopted three children. Jonathan shared the process. Now he’s sharing the day to day life, and I can’t help but tear up..
I should edit this to explain my mother asked me to describe what I ate as she ate about five foods–all good for you. She was little and petite.
The plumber asked her for a plunger. She knew he was licensed as the building wouldn’t use unlicensed plumbers but still….Then he and the building handyman told her that she might have to buy a new toilet. Just when she thought she was through with most of this. Just after the tub that practically touched the toilet had been reglazed.
Other women would be apt. Other women would know what to do. High powered execs by day, home handy person by night. She was the only one thinking “daddy, why the hell aren’t you on this earth?”
Not that her father would have known what to do nor would the men she had been with. In her world it was the women who could do the handy work. Just not her.
She thought back to the time she was moving to East 63rd Street and her father had made a graph of the apartment with accompanying little cardboard pieces of furniture. It had embarrassed her. He wasn’t moving. She was, but he talked about “our apartment.”
He turned out not to be intefering, and was respectful of her privacy. She missed him and thought further back to the time he had taken her out of school to see the circus. Later she found out he hated the circus but thought every lttile girl should go.
He took her to Yankee Stadium to see a game as every little girl should….He liked basketball and betting on football games.
Daddy took her sister and her so many places in the name of education, culture, and “they should have the experience.”
The one place he couldn’t get away with a one time or once a year experience was the beach. She loved it too much. She remembered the time she was turning some birthday and had just broken up with somebody. She trudged out to Jones Beach–subway, train, wait for the bus–two and a half hours in all. She walked from the West Bathhouse to the water. The West Bathhouse beach is one of the widest in the world. It was over a hundred degrees at the beach and the walk from the water to the Bathhouse seemed to take forever.
The ride home would have taken at least four hours. So many people trudging to the bus stop. Too few buses to the Freeport train station. She did what any normal girl from the Island would do, she found a phone booth:
“Daddy can you pick me up?”
The ride would have taken less than half hour at night in the dead of winter. in summer it could take up to an hour. It took her parents over two hours. Her father couldn’t pretend he wasn’t angry:
Beach bum. I raised a beach bum. Only a beach bum would go to Jones Beach on the hottest day of the year and it’s a Saturday–all the weekend traffic.
I’m sorry daddy. It was stupid of me. But tomorrow’s my birthday and I wanted to celebrate by myself at the beach.
You’ll stay at the house tonight?
Of course. Have to celebrate my birthday with my favorite parents.
Did you wait in the heat?
No did you know that there’s an airconditioned ice cream parlor in the Bathhouse? I waited there and had a small sundae.
Her mother chimed in
Oh good you were comfortable. Can you describe the sundae?
They went to a diner on Jericho Turnpike. First her mother made her model her lavender halter sleeveless dress with matching Candy mules:
Nice. Sexy but Pia darling if you lose anymore weight, you’ll lose your figure.
That’s kind of the point mommy….
Her father interrupted:
There’s a string hanging from the dress.
They went into the diner. Her parents immediately played “YMCA” and danced to it. Nobody else had parents like this. She spotted people they knew–a major ex boyfriend’s aunt and uncle. They were smiling. So was everybody but her.
She doesn’t remember where they went for her birthday dinner. Someplace with even more varieties of fish probably. She doesn’t remember anything else about the weekend but how her parents saved her from going home by public transportation and then humiliated her.
She would give anything to tell them how much fun they were. She probably did. They lived long enough for her to forge a true adult relationship. Still she would like to thank them for everything.
Her parents had been older though she never thought of them as old. If her father had lived he would be 94 on 2/16. She would have loved for him to have been a part of the Internet revolution. But that became her destiny. Maybe that’s what life’s about. She’s not in the mood to philosophize .
She only wants to see them once more. To find out all the other things they hated but did anyway. Today she just really wants to cry to her daddy.
Oh she’s a real adult, but there are sometimes, you just need your parents, nobody else.
As people who have been reading Courting for awhile know I adored my parents. My father was less handy than I am if such a thing is possible but he was a successful man so people didn’t tell him he needed to buy a new toilet when the plumber didn’t even bring a plunger or special toilet snake–and he did come for a consult Wednesday. It turned out of course I didn’t need a new toilet. The handyman probably told him I’m good for big tips. Not in this case.
Stumble it!
We’re having the kind of rain that hurts. Hurts my head. Hurts my mood. Hurts my productivity. Wish I could send some to all of you in drought states. It’s the kind of day that I hate anybody who acts happy or perky.
It’s the kind of day where I want to give up on all ambition and just move. I don’t want to take Advil, not because I enjoy suffering, but because I have reached a place called “worry about the side affects.” I’m tired of worrying. I’m tired of not enjoying every day to the fullest. I’m just tired of many things.
In adoption, as with any type of child abuse, there are survivors at one end of the scale who are quite happy with or adjusted to their lives, while at the other end of the scale there is an over-representation of adoptees in America’s mental institutions and prisons.
My book is about me and my parents. Not overtly. It’s about me, boys, sex, drug, rock & roll, my parents and adoption. Honestly I didn’t think often about adoption in those years. He-who-has-played-every-role in my life was fascinated by my being so matter of fact about being adopted.
It was a fact of my life. The last thing I wanted to think about in the late 60’s-early 70’s when I was in my late teens was my parents. Why would I want to think about adoption? It happened and was a good thing.
I knew my parents were special people. I knew that most girls didn’t have the freedoms that I had, and the semi-wise parents to lean on when needed.
My parents let me explore life. I did things that drove them crazy, and they let me know it. But finding an ounce of pot in your teenage daughter’s room….and then later accidentally finding her near her boyfriend’s apartment in the East Village when she was supposed to be in school….those things might have set me off later.
The later was very accidental. If my Mom wasn’t going to Cooper Union Museum and if idiot, me, hadn’t spotted her and screamed: “mommy, mommy…” Thing was I was eighteen and really needed my mommy that day.
It was hard to be a parent of a rebellious teenager in the late 60’s. The rules had been thrown out with no new ones. I was a sweet girl but not a good one.
The next year Dr. Spock asked if he could have lunch with my boyfriend and I, during a lull in a rally. Could he? I was beyond flattered.
I told him that my Mom had worn out two copies of Baby and Child Care and that I would love to tell her about meeting him, but partially because of his teachings, I wasn’t where I was supposed to be.
He laughed. He heard that one often.
In many ways Dr. Spock was a bigger influence on my childhood than being adopted ever was.
Dr. Spock began the parenting revolution and my parents were 50’s early adopters.
My book and now my re-uniting with people I went to junior and senior high with has caused me to reaxamine everything.
I don’t enjoy being introspective. I was overly-analytical for too many years and became sick of that.
I am about the age my parents were when this all happened. I do see it through there eyes. Plus I know too many people who didn’t live to see 25. I know many damaged people.
I am a survivor. I owe it to my parents. So I won’t attempt to answer people who think all adoptees suffered child abuse.
Doctors, except Dr Spock and a few other great ones were too quick to blame having been adopted for too many problems. My real problems might have come to light.
I still would have rebelled. I loved most of my experiences. Thing was I had two built in safety meters. One was something strong in me that was probably imparted by my parents, a basic sense of self-respect. The second was my parents themselves.
I never got into real, real trouble in any sense. If I had, i could have gone to them. But I lived with that strong shield they helped me develop.
I don’t understand why we’re so quick to place blame on our parents without examining ourselves first.
There could be many reasons for the over representation in mental hospitals and prisons that become obvious if you think about a population of people who have been typed since infancy or childhood. There are many other reasons that I won’t attempt to discuss. They’re biased variables.
Stumble it!
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The explosion happened on the East Side near Grand Central. I live on the Upper West Side
I have been getting many spam birthday cards. Least I think they are as they all say “a friend….” No name. Weird, very weird
The first letter was written by my Dad. I was a sulky, despondent teenager without a good word to say about anybody or anything. On the other hand, I cared passionately about causes and was cute
Though not as cute as I was in my father’s famous to some letter upon adopting me. As you can see he was a bit more enthused in the second letter.
Though later I would proudly call my parents my friends.
I never called him “Pa” in my life. Loved to call my mother “Ma.” It made her crazy. And at least 40 women would turn when I called her that in a store.
I tried to write a letter to my Dad to tell him about the world now. So much has happened. He thought he would become hooked on computers. Instead….He knew the economy was moving from a service to a communication one. That excited him, but he felt too old to learn it.
Then, everything else…Felt too gimmicky for my blog. No I won’t write a personal one here. There are many parts of my life my parents never knew about, and truthfully, after they died I sometimes wondered if dead people could see certain things. The thought was repugnant.
The third thing is the song that was number one on 7/19/60. Think it’s way appropriate for my birthday. I was in Oaxaca Mexico the summer this letter was written. My father never sent it to me. Or I don’t remember. He kept copies of everything. No he never gave it to me. I would have remembered “perhaps college.” College was a given, never an option.
Oh I love it.
∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞
July 16
Happy Birthday dear Pia
Wishing you a happy 16th year—not only on July 19th but for the whole year—and always.
Tradition has it that the 16th birthday is a sort of milestone in a young girl’s road of live. I suppose it is so. We are both very happy for you–and for us because you are a lovely girl.
The past 16 years have been very good for our family. We had good health, enjoyed many things and had good times together. Of course there were disagreements between us–but looking back, they were minor and unimportant–part of all of us growing up.
Mom and I love you very much and are very proud to be your parents. You have brought us much happiness–and are looking forward to the next 16 years. W have tried to direct and give you the experiences which we thought would better prepare you for this kind of world
We know that you are kind, gentle and have a good heart–and we love you for it
Fortified with this kind of character we are expecting a beautiful future for you.
You were a pretty baby, a good baby and a happy baby. You gave us so much pleasure watching you grow to a beautiful lady…..graduating from high school, then perhaps college, than along the way–marriage then children. Of course there will be pebbles, rocks and holes along the road—but we hope that you are prepared for them—and Sweetie pie, lots and lots of love and kisses.
Mom and Pop Continue Reading »
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If you’ want to read the post above, email me for the password. It’s about freezing while writing a book and things like that. Just feels so personal. Maybe it’s not.
I was looking for the scene where James Cagney dances onto walls in Yankee Doodle Dandy, my all time favorite movie, in second grade, when I faked a flu so I could stay home and watch it all day and night.
Yankee Doodle Dandy is the story of George M Cohan who wrote very patriotic songs that I loved when I was a child. Also I think both he and James Cagney were born on July 4, and I thought that the utmost in patriotism. I wanted my birthday moved forward a few weeks.
Million Dollar Movie on New York’s old, I think, Channel 11, the station that brought you the wonderful Yuletide Log for those of us without fireplaces, or, uh, who had a father that was scared to light a fire. We didn’t celebrate Christmas but it was our annual night of the fireplace.
My sister and I both moved into apartments with wonderful wood burning fireplaces. Our father tried to ban us from using them, but he didn’t live with us, much as he wanted to.
Every time he would call, he expected the fireplace to have killed me. He would quiz me on my fireplace procedures. Like he knew? I think we had two fires in our fireplace and my sister, mother and I made them. My sister and I went to a camp where we made camp out sites at least two nights a week for years and camped to Grand Canyon and back with our camp. Got over any love of staying in nature itself.
My family excels at useless fears. We’re the Savage Anxiety/Guilt/if you can think of something to fear, we will fear it for you/Society, INC.
I was having nice family memories. Really you begin to cherish these memories as you work very very hard to rid yourself of the neuroses.
Then I came across an article where, surprise, Bush, yeah that’s his name commuted Libby’s sentence so that he can celebrate the red, white and blue in style.
I’m beginning to feel for Paris Hilton.* God help me.
I try to stay away from politics here. This got to me. It’s a bit more important than Clinton pardoning Denise Rich’s ex-husband.
How the Democratic candidates react to this might determine who I vote for in the next election.
I want to write beautiful words like these
I want to feel like the seven year old who was so in love with her country and a movie embodying the best about it that she could think of nothing else.
I don’t want to care about this crazy out of control government. I don’t want to give a damn.
I don’t want to press a button on my tool bar and see the headline I did.
My mood ring button has changed from amber–A little Nervous, emotions mixed, unsettled, to black–Stressed, tense or feeling harried.
I’m beginning to believe in mood ring tool buttons. If you don’t have one on your Google tool bar, they’re amazing. All you have to do is put your mouse under the button. Can’t even say you’re wasting time. It just went to blue green: Emotionally charged, somewhat relaxed.
I always relax when I write. That’s why I write so much.
I’m looking forward to moving to South Carolina, yes that red state, where I can hibernate during the winter, take long walks and write without hearing about how I’m lost to blogging. Though now that I’m spending most of my time writing a book and am available at least three four nights a week, or two nights and weekends, I’m being exonerated.
I want that seven year old girl back, and not in dementia. She cared. She loved her country purely. She had an imagination that wasn’t afraid to leap to the moon.
I need her awe. Her belief that grown ups could make things right. Not sure about that one. I need the girl who had to be chased from the ocean to the shore after four hours.
Her faith was unimaginable to me. I remember her so well. I kept that faith despite my hatred of Viet Nam, despite the family wars, despite Watergate, despite a bum in the bed next to me, despite so many things.
I only lost her a decade or so ago, when family members had died or grown old, when the Newt cuts were taking affect and the job offers were rescinded because the experimental mental health clinics were closed.
Everything began to go crazy. Clinton was impeached, the Florida election…and all the stuff after.
This is my country! Land of my birth! That is part of one of the worst written songs ever. kill me.
I like the sentiment. I’m just a good ole girl, at heart, masquerading as a jaded New Yorker all these years.
I was going to put in the rest, of the song. but I couldn’t. I just couldn’t. I do love it so much. The country, not the song. Just to get that straight.
The only way to support the troops is to bring them home.
This land belongs to all of us.
My mood is now green: steady, stable, no emotional turmoil. Have to see if they change it every half hour or so.
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*If you ever want to get more hits than you deserve mention Paris Hilton’s name as an aside. Weird but true.
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Please read the post below this. It’s personally very meaningful to me, and I fixed the link that kept screwing up. Read it!
I almost always have a new post on the sidebar. That way I can ramble all I want. 250 Words is a lofty goal for me. I will try putting them in Word for “word count.”
Can you have spring fever when the temperature is 33?
Last week I was looking across the courtyard and saw a girl dressed and acting like a cheerleader.
Then the game began and I realized that I watching a stranger’s TV as clearly as if it were in my apartment.
I have seen many 60 inch plasma TV’s and none seemed as large or clear as this one. And I was in the same room as them.
I couldn’t help but be mesmerized by something with more intense color than I have seen in “the best” movie theaters, or any TV I have ever been in the same room as.
I really wouldn’t be talking about this if the weather was better.
I have spring fever so bad. I want to be out in spring clothes wandering the streets of New York complaining about the crowds, because I do that so well.
I want to feel like taking outdoor pictures is fun, not take off the gloves, take the picture, put the gloves back on.
As we don’t have spring, some of us are eagerly awaiting the return of The Sopranos.
Since I wrote the post on the mother who wanted to take my table at Starbucks I have been thinking about how deprived I was as a child.
When I was five or seven and had chicken pox or mumps, my parents bought me a high, high fashion doll who was a replica of a then famous model. I cut her hair as I thought it would grow back.
My parents refused to buy me a new one as it was pricey and they wanted me to learn that I couldn’t have a new doll if I ruined the old
doll.
It wasn’t my fault. Almost any parent today would run out to replace it even if took part of the rent or mortgage money.
They’re right.
This experience left me with such deep seeded issues that I don’t think it rude to watch a TV across the courtyard.
I hope they have The Sopranos on tonight because their picture is clearer than mine. I will supply the surround sound.
Actually they weren’t home. When they returned they had the TV going with a large floor lamp on. This caused me to look at their furniture. It wasn’t to my taste.
I can do this as my bed is placed so that nobody can look into it. I’m not a fool
Stumble it!
