Teaching Sophia email and remembering Alfredo Leonardi

Tucson painting by Felix Pasilis

Friday May 20 2005 Tucson AZ

I had a great time helping Sophia yesterday. We had fun. She picked me up exactly on time and the ride there was enjoyable and fast. Her sweet dog was there to greet us. I sat down in chair in computer room, and Sophia brought in from the car the plastic bag containing the items she had just bought herself at Value Village that morning.

First she tried on the jacket, it was champagne silk and fitted her perfectly. Either it was brand new or had just been dry cleaned, it was exquisite. It was 3 dollars but today is half price day. “$1.50!” she exclaimed with huge glee.

The blue cotton blouse was also lovely. It was the shade of blue of the sky and a very nice cotton. Like what you'd wear on a yacht. This had been two dollars but at half price was one dollar. Sophia was ecstatic about the blouse and the price.

The two white tops were lovely too. One was simple but elegant white cotton pullover sweater. The other was elegant white sweatshirt for walking Seema on winter mornings when it is cold. “50 cents each” Sophia announced with joy. “I will take you to Value Village” she said. “I don't have very much money to live on” Sophia said, “I like Value Village.”

We had talked about money in the car on way over. She said she appreciated me helping her because she doesn't have the $35 or $40 to pay someone to do what I do. When we sat down at the computer Sophia said she has a perfect life but she doesn't have enough money, all she wants is more money.

“Me too” I said, “I want more money. I am playing the lottery.”

Sophia got very excited. “It is 17 million now, I will buy 5 tickets.”

I said “I buy 4 tickets each week.”

She said “if either of us wins let's split it, half for you half for me.”

And I said “Great! Sophia, we double our chances.”

This time Sophia was in charge of the whole lesson which went so well, she knew exactly what she wanted. First we went to email and she said “I will write an email, I will write to Bal.”

This is the guy she is in love with. She remembered perfectly how to do it. She got out her pad and paper and wrote “I was happy to hear your voice this morning, it brought me big joy, I would love to see you now.” Something along these lines, more mushy. It was a love letter. “Love, Sophia.”

After Bal she did not know who to write to. First she said “I will write to Mark,” that is her son, then she changed her mind. Then she said “I know who I will write to” and she looked all over the kitchen for the address and could not find it.

We tried spell-check on her letter to Bal so she could learn spell-check. I was totally shocked at AOL spell-check. This letter only had 18 words in it. But they picked up every time she had left two spaces between a word and also there were a lot of punctuation errors. The only spelling they picked up was the spelling of his name and her name, which of course she spelled right.

So then Sophia decided I should teach her internet. She had used the word internet interchangeably before for everything, which had thrown me off. She used the word internet when she meant computer. “Teach me internet” she had originally said, when she meant teach me the computer. Then “teach me internet” she said when she meant email. But I think this time she actually meant internet.

I couldn't figure out on the AOL browser how to get into internet, so I just had her type google on top of the page we were in, and google showed up. So then I knew my way around. I said “ok Sophia let's pretend we wanted to find out about the Racquet Club.” The Racquet Club is the club Sophia and I both belong to and where we met.

“You type in 'Tucson Racquet Club' and we will see it.” Neither of us knew how to spell racquet. Sophia wrote it down on her pad, and I said “I think there is a 'c' in there, let's try it.”

In the course of doing this Sophia learned how to go forward to next page and back to previous page. We found Racquet Club and she read off all about our club.

Then I said “let's look up the guy I was friends with before I met Bill, he was Italian from Rome who was a film director, if we can find his email on google I can write an email to him asking if he will read your screenplay.”

Sophia was totally into this and so was I. So I wrote down his name on her pad for her to type in, Alfredo Leonardi, and we googled it. There seemed to be a lot of movies directed by Alfredo Leonardi and starring Marco Leonardi, who I figured was the little boy, his son, when his wife came at the end of his visit to NYC and they went back to Rome together. Finally one of the entries was for a film collective in SoHo in Manhattan which lists Alfred Leonardo movies to buy and the film collective had an email.

So I said “OK finally an email address, I will write to them and ask them to forward it to Alfredo Leonardo.” “Great” Sophia said. So she got up and I sat down in her computer chair. And I composed my email outloud as I was writing it. At the top I wrote “will you kindly forward this email to Alfredo Leonardi since we were old friends.”

Then I wrote, “Dear Alfredo, do you remember me” and I wrote my maiden name. And I said how I had stayed in the same apartment in the East Village in Manhattan where he had visited me for very long time till I moved to Tucson Arizona. That I met my husband a year after he returned to Rome. That I remembered the nice times we had, going to the beach together, and when I jumped out of the canoe.

I said how my friend Sophia wrote a screenplay and is he willing to read it. Would he send it to another director if it is not for him. And I gave my own email address cause I said I am on Sophia's computer. And would he write back and say hi to me because it would be fun for us to say hi again. And I sent my love to his wife and son.

Both Sophia and I were delighted with my email. I changed the font to make it prettier and then I did spell-check which picked up one mistake. I had said “I am no longer wild but I am not conventional.” And I had put two “i's” in wild. So spell-check corrected that. I showed Sophia how spell-check takes out the misspelled word and replaces it with the rightly spelled word, she was impressed.

We were both satisfied with my letter. “I hope the gallery sends it to him” Sophia said. “I hope so too” I said. And Sophia was lost in awe at what internet could do. She saw with her own two eyes here was someone I knew in the '60s and because of internet I was able to write an email to him. I even think we might have found his own real email if Sophia had had the patience to press all the different entries for him. But this was a start, even if the email doesn't get to him, Sophia got an idea of what internet can do, which was the point of the lesson.

And of course it was tremendous fun for me to be writing to my old friend Alfredo Leonardi. We had been best friends, I have total warmth for him, and I never would have emailed him except for Sophia wanting someone in the film industry to read her screenplay.

I am curious if Alfredo will write back. I have never kept track of the boys who walked in and out of my life before I met Bill. At the time of course I was involved with the boys I had crushes on, and the boys who were just my best friends I didn't think so much about. But now I don't remember so well the boys I had crushes on and I remember perfectly the ones who were just my best friends, because those are the ones I shared my life with.

Alfredo and I hit it off right from the start because we were so relaxed with each other. He wasn't at all what I expected when Anna from Rome, who I had met the week before in the laundromat and who invited me to a party at her apartment that evening, said she had given my phone number to her friend Alfredo, who was film director from Rome.

This was the time of Marcello Mastroianni, Michelangelo Antonioni, etc. I thought I was being fixed up on a blind date with Marcello Mastroianni. I guess he must have met me at school where I taught and then we walked over to a luncheonette nearby for our date. And he was not one bit like an Italian movie star. He was very diminutive to start off, and he strikes me now as looking English somehow with his rolled-up black umbrella as he waited for me. I guess he wore dapper clothes too.

But since he didn't look like a movie star and I was not attracted to him I relaxed instantly. And for some odd reason that I can't explain we totally hit it off in the luncheonette on Grand Street. It was an orthodox Jewish neighborhood, the neighborhood was like my Jewish neighborhood back in Queens except they were all orthodox. I guess it was a good setting for me to relax in.

And all I can say is from that moment till he left for Rome, or to be more exact when his wife and little boy arrived at the end of his NYC sojourn, Alfredo and I were inseparable.

What I did was take Alfredo with me to everything I did in my life, except go to work. He couldn't come to women's liberation meetings with me because those were all women, but I took him to everything else, and I guess we had our meals together in the restaurant on Avenue A too.

When I went to the beach on long Island on weekends with Helen and my girlfriends I took Alfredo. His bathing suit totally embarrassed me. He wore a teeny weenie white bikini men’s bathing suit. I didn't say a word but Alfredo looked around Jones Beach and said “I see I am the only one wearing a bathing suit like this.” “Yes!” I said pointedly.

When Marilyn called up me and Helen to invite us to the week-end conference for socialist Jews at a bungalow colony in the Catskills, I invited Alfredo. I have no idea what Marilyn's group was all about. We went to the meetings and there were big fights. But I had only wanted to spend a weekend in the country. That is when Helen and me and Alfredo paddled in the canoe and smoked pot and I got stoned, took off my clothes, and swam naked to shore.

I alluded to this in the email I wrote him from Sophia's computer yesterday, since he had told me next morning it had made a big impression on him. I thought what made a big impression on him was my adventurous act of jumping out of canoe and swimming to shore. But when he detailed the big impression, it wasn't about what I had done, it was about me naked. Because we were just best friends and not boyfriend and girlfriend, I had not let him finish telling me how much he had enjoyed that.

But when I was writing a “remember-me” email all those years later, I figured that would reawaken his memory if he forgot me.

The last time I saw Alfredo was at Lynn's party. His wife and little son were there, and his wife was blond and pretty and wore wrap-around skirt and was very interested in women's liberation. She was a very nice girl. Alfredo and I really were two ships which pass in the night. It was easy come, easy go. He waltzed into my life so easily, he waltzed out of it so easily. It never occurred to me to try to hold on to the friendship.

In fact I never gave him a thought after he left till I was writing a story about my days with Helen in women's liberation, and I remembered how Alfredo, me, and Helen had gone to that conference at the bungalow colony, and that brought back my time with Alfredo to my mind.

And I remembered him again when Sophia said she is looking for someone in the film industry. And I thought I know an Italian film director....

Nancy Cantor

GALLERY FLOWERS Layla Edwards

Thursday, Thanksgiving, November 23, 2006

I dreamt about Nancy Cantor all night. She was my first friend after college. I graduated college in August. I had to spend that extra summer studying for the finals I had not taken during finals week in June and doing term papers. It was a wild summer, the “Summer of Love”. And I had sublet an apartment for the summer on the corner of St Marks Place. My friend from college, Francine, roomed with me. I was stoned the whole summer and do not know how I managed to take those finals and write those papers. But by end of summer I did, and I got my degree. And then immediately found a job at The Riverdale Children’s Agency.

I had gone down for that job because the year before Wendy had worked there. Sometimes I would meet her in Central Park during her lunch hour, right by the Agency, it was at 79th and Madison Avenue. Because Wendy worked there I thought it would be a nice place to work. So I interviewed and they hired me. The woman in charge, Mrs. Streeter, liked me in the interview and hired me. Olive Streeter, the name comes back to me now.

The weekend before I was going to start work, a friend I had been a camp counselor with 3 summers before, invited me to go swimming in Rye, New York, where his parents had their home and where he was staying for the summer. He picked me up in his car at St Marks Place and First Avenue, and I must have worn my bikini under my sundress, because I remember taking off my dress in the car to show him my new bikini (it was my first bikini) and he said “will it stay up?”

Ken-- his name was Ken-- Ken Adler. I always felt very close to him because one of the times when he had invited me to his parents’ house in Rye so I could swim in the bay there, we had been swimming and he said “Anne I have a cramp in my leg, I can’t make it back to shore.” And I said “put your hands on my shoulders, I’ll swim under you and swim you back to shore,” which I did. At dinner that night he told his parents, “Anne saved me, she rescued me in the water.” And they said “O really” and the conversation moved on. For all the huge drama which goes on in learning how to be a junior life saver when I was 11 years old, all the huge dramatic rescues I did when we took turns playing the victim, the one actual rescue I did was the quietest simplest thing which ever happened. I swam him to shore, he said “thank you,” he told his parents at dinner, and it was clear nobody believed us, and that was that.

On my previous visits I had stayed in his big sister’s room and it was a beautiful room. Their whole house was a mansion, which made visiting there so much fun for me. I loved swimming in the bay, I liked Ken Adler a lot, and I found it a lot of fun to stay in a mansion, and in the bedroom of this princess sister, it was a bedroom for a princess.

This was the last time I visited there. And on my last day the Princess herself arrived. I finally got to meet her, Margie Adler. And when Ken drove me back to the city, Margie was in the car with us. And when I mentioned I start work the next day at Riverdale Children’s Agency, Margie turned to her brother and said “Isn’t that where Nancy Cantor works?” Apparently a friend of Margie’s named Nancy Cantor worked there and I got so excited.

I was thrilled with the fairy tale princess Margie. I barely knew her, just that car ride back to the city, but I had stayed in her princess bedroom 3 times. In my mind she was Princess Charming. So naturally I saw Nancy Cantor as an extension of her, it was the next best thing to being friends with Margie.

When I arrived the first morning I asked the girl at reception where you check in, “is Nancy Cantor here?” And she said “Nancy is on vacation, she will be back in a week.” And I waited the whole week, and then sat by reception when the week was over, to wait for Nancy. Each woman who arrived, I thought “is that Nancy?” Finally one woman arrived and the woman at reception said “that is Nancy Cantor.” So I followed her up the steps, and said, “I am a friend of Margie Adler's, she told me you work here.” Nancy said “I just got back from Nantucket, I rode my bicycle everywhere, I am lost without my bicycle.” That was our first conversation.

Nancy says now she tried to give me the brush-off because I had said I was friend of Margie Adler’s and she couldn’t stand Margie Adler. But I had waited a whole week to meet Nancy, I wanted to be friends with her, I did not notice her attempts at brush-off. Yes she seemed a little aloof, but I didn’t know her then, whatever aloof things she did I assumed was part of how she was. It never crossed my mind I was being brushed off. I said “let’s have lunch together.”

Nancy took me to the Madison Avenue Pub which I loved. I had never eaten in a place like that before, I felt so sophisticated. The cheeseburger was scrumptious. And Nancy told me she lived a block away. She had a small apartment in a brownstone around the corner from Madison Avenue. Over lunch we totally hit it off. And Nancy and I remain best friends to this day.

Sometimes I had lunch with all the other girls who worked there, which was a lot of fun. I liked the place we all had lunch in, I would order a chocolate egg cream or vanilla egg cream with my lunch, and I loved all the girls, they were great. One of them even turned out to be the big sister of a girl who had been in the clique way back at camp. She was a very pretty girl and very popular girl. Even tho a beautiful Polynesian princess looking girl was the head of the clique, the boys actually chose Phyllis. They were all in love with Phyllis. And Ellen turned out to be Phyllis’ big sister. Altho Phyllis was tall and Ellen was short. Ellen was also very pretty.

Ellen and I must have gone somewhere together at night, and we must have been stoned. Because I remember being in a car with her on 14th Street and I said to her “are you stoned?” And she said “why, am I driving badly?” and I thought, ‘How do I know how someone is driving,’ it never occurred to me to pay attention. I felt close to Ellen because if her sister had been in socialist camp with me it meant her parents were like my parents. Also I felt close to Ellen because she told me her boyfriend used to be Melvyn Margolies. Melvyn Margolies was such a complete and total wild man, that even tho Ellen seemed so lovely so pretty, so elegant, so classy, how could she not be a fun natural girl with a boyfriend like that. It was impossible for me to picture them together. I could not see how any girl would go for Melvyn, he was way too wild.

There was another girl who worked there that I liked a lot. She was a blond. She also lived in the area. And during her lunch hour she would go home to walk and feed and pet her huge German shepherd and I went with her. She was devoted to her dog. She was such a nice girl.

I had a great time when we all went out to lunch together, but as soon as I became best friends with Nancy she and I went to Madison Pub together for cheeseburgers and talked. She liked me very much and invited me to her house around the corner, and soon we had sleepovers. I invited her to my apartment in the East Village and I took her to everything I went to. I took her to an early women’s liberation meeting but that didn’t work for Nancy. But I took her to The Pageant Players loft to watch them perform, and also to go to their workshops on Wednesday evenings. And she loved The Pageant Players.

We’d go back to my apartment after work. I’d take her to B&H, she loved the food. Then I would put on an outfit and get stoned, Nancy didn’t smoke pot. And we’d take the bus to the Pageant Players loft on East Broadway. I remember once getting stoned with Nancy and seeing her with new eyes. “You pretend to be a Jewish social worker” I told her “but really you are Sophia Loren, an Italian actress.” Which was astute of me, Nancy was a beautiful actress, and she is the most dramatic girl I ever met, she is thrilling.

Nancy loved the Pageant Players, and once she brought along her friend from Boston College or from Berkeley, Nancy had gone to both colleges. Her friend critiqued The Pageant Players, “the girls are not good but the boys are great.” I was surprised at the critique because in my mind the Pageant Players were above criticism, they were a glorious amazing experience. Nancy’s friend was like Nancy, and not a little hippie chick like me. She was even more stolid than Nancy. Nancy’s stolidness was just a façade, underneath the girl was wild, just as wild as me, but her friend was not.

The first time I took Nancy to Pageant Players she had not known about the 7 flights you have to climb up to get to the loft, and they are long flights. But the next time she remembered. We stood at the bottom of the steps and she said “I’m not climbing up all those steps.” She refused to budge. I did not know what to do. However I was very stoned. I said “Nancy, they moved down to the loft one flight below, it is not such a long climb.” So she said “OK.” And when we reached the loft she said, “it’s amazing, that one flight makes a big difference.” And I said “they did not move, I made it up.”

Getting Nancy to leave for the Pageant Players wasn’t that easy either. She had her supper at B&H and for dessert she ordered noodle pudding. When it was time to go to East Broadway, Nancy would say “I cannot move! O that noodle pudding!” I was high as a kite and said “that’s OK Nancy, I’ll just ring for the elevator.” Which got her up in a flash, since I lived in a tiny walk-up and there was no elevator.

After we had been friends for a year Nancy said “I have discovered liberation, I stopped wearing my girdle.” And I giggled to myself, because of course by this time I had stopped wearing a bra, I couldn’t imagine Nancy had been wearing a girdle all this time. Who wears a girdle!

I loved sleeping over at Nancy’s house. She would get out negligees for us to sleep in. It was my first negligee, it was so much fun to wear a negligee. And she would make Rice Crispies with milk and sliced bananas for breakfast which I loved. And one time her old boyfriend from college visited and she cooked us roast lamb. I always had delicious food with Nancy. She took me to the Jewish Institute which was a few blocks from where we worked, and we would have delicious lunches there too. And it was Nancy who introduced me to Ideal Coffee Shop, which was a German restaurant on York Avenue, not far from where she lived. I never had German food before, it was so delicious.

The great thing about Nancy is she was always game, and we had great times together. When women’s liberation was invited to a fancy banquet in the art museum in Philadelphia, I went with Jeannie and Ti-Grace Atkinson, and I took Nancy. We met at Grand Central Station and we were late for the train. I charged down the steps and when I turned around to look for Nancy, I was appalled to see her slowly sailing down on the escalator. When she finally reached bottom she said “O Annie you flew! You should have seen your face when you saw me on the escalator.” Nancy had zero interest in women’s liberation but she loved adventure. Jeannie and Ti-Grace talked women’s liberation politics the whole train ride, but Nancy’s comment was about Ti-Grace. “She wears tiger-striped print dress, very low cut, over left breast she wears button ‘Feminism’ and her name is Ti-Grace which sounds like tigress. It is extremely provocative and seductive.”

Eventually Nancy and I switched places. Bill and I got together and we settled down in an East Village apartment, and had a fairly straight life. I was working part-time as Wall Street secretary, he was working as Wall Street messenger and going to school. And Nancy took off for California. Where she joined the “Yea God” group and was on the Yea God love bus. She met Jim Fine on the Yea God love bus. They became boyfriend and girlfriend, and when they got to NYC, they came over to our apartment. And Bill got to meet Nancy and I got to meet Jim Fine.

After that Nancy was rolling stone. She joined another type of Yea God group, which would sit on the pavement on corner of 86th Street and Central Park West with a guru in the middle. And she followed the guru to Ithaca and lived with that group. When she got back to New York City she had a boyfriend from that group, Alan Zeigler, who was also an extremely nice guy. Her boyfriends were all such nice people, I remain friends with Jim Fine and Alan Zeigler to this day.

Then she moved to Puerto Rico and lived with a fisherman there named Edison for a few years. Came back to NYC, went up to Ithaca again to be with that group. That must have been when she returned with Alan. They both dropped out of that group at the same time, and they got an apartment in Brooklyn together. Then Alan moved out and Nancy joined straight life again. She became an artist, she went back to work as a social worker, she adopted her lovely daughter.

I guess Nancy and I just had our ‘60s experiences at different times. Altho she went much further out than I did. All I ever really did was smoke pot, and go to the Pageant Players workshops. I never played volleyball with the Moonies in Berkeley like Nancy did.

The Girl Lifeguard at Randolph Pool

drawing by Helen Kritzler

"Simple Happiness"

Tuesday July 25 2006

It is a sweet early morning. I saw the golden sun peeping over the mountains to the East when I went out to open the windows on the truck (and put a towel over the steering wheel) and the air is soft and pleasant.


Caren’s huge green diesel truck is gone from her driveway, so I guess she has moved to Mexico.

If I knew Caren better I would know what precipitated this move, but I have no idea. All I know is 3 months ago she arrived at our door with huge shopping bag filled with bottles of vitamins and shampoo and conditioner and said “I am moving to Mexico, would you like this stuff?” She told us she would be moving in mid-July, which is exactly what she did. She said San Carlos is on the beach, but it is hot and humid in summer, altho nice the rest of the year. All things considered it is a stunningly adventurous thing she has done.

Caren’s great adventure is in marked contrast to my life now which seems like pure monotony. I am ashamed about the sameness of my days, and think there must be something wrong with me to live this way. And when I wake up in the morning and first open my eyes to new day, I don’t know whether it’s the hot stickiness on my skin or the monotony of my days, which makes me think ‘O no! Another day.’

It scares me this lack of enthusiasm. I think something must be wrong. But really how can I judge my life? I can observe that I am not waking up enthusiastically, but beyond that I don’t know anything. I can say it is the fault of the weather, or the fault of how I spend my time. I do not know. It could come from something else for all I know. But I jump to a lot of harsh judgments and frighten myself. And that changes my mind from lack of enthusiasm about new day to cauldron of all kinds of upset thoughts. Then I think maybe it doesn’t mean anything at all, and it is just mist in my mind which needs to be burned off as day starts up.


Bill went to the workout gym at Randolph Pool and said “after my work-out I want to take a quick dip, so stay in the pool and I will be there in one hour.”

I gamboled in the water for an hour. I don’t know if what I do is called swimming. It is more like dipping into deep water and resurfacing, over and over, from one side of pool to other. I swim deep touch bottom and come up, then go down again come up, half the time my legs are in the air. I like standing on my hands in the water. I did that for almost an hour. When I started to get a little bored I thought about Frank McCourt (I am reading "Angela's Ashes" now). It was interesting to have someone to think about. And I started to pick up my head up a lot and look around for Bill, it was now an hour.


Then I heard the lifeguard on the stand, the beautiful girl blond lifeguard, say in a loud voice to the guy lifeguard in the water, “Go into my wallet open up the zipper and take out all the money.” That was such an odd thing to call out in such a loud voice. I couldn’t imagine what she meant, it seemed unusual to trust someone so much to tell them to go into their wallet and take out all their money.

And then the next thing she called out in a loud voice, “I have nothing anymore, I have no boyfriend, my boyfriend cheated on me, I have no money.” Then she called out “Go into my wallet and take out my card and step on it.” And then I heard something about wanting her money back. I had no idea what went on? Her boyfriend cheated on her and someone took her money ??? Everyone was in the water clustered around her. It was clear she was someone loved. The blond young man lifeguard loved her.


He was the one she was directing her comments to. There was a little girl who loved her too, and another lifeguard with black hair and dark skin. I came close too, I wanted to hear more. But when I arrived the topic had changed.

The little girl asked her “what does P.S. mean,” and the lifeguard said “post script.” And someone said “ASAP means as soon as possible” and the little girl said “I know that.” And the beautiful blond high up in lifeguard chair said “pps means post post script which doesn’t make any sense.” And the little girl said “what does RSVP mean?” And the blond man lifeguard in water called out “respondez s’il vous plait” in an exquisite musical French accent. I was floored. Suddenly beautiful French was spoken around me.


And then the girl lifeguard’s shift was up, and she dived in the water with the blond man lifeguard and they played in the water together and I wondered if he was in love with her, it kept looking like he wanted to put his arms around her.


And then Bill arrived and I said “it is one hour and 25 minutes,” and he said “I didn’t know you were strict about time.” And he floated on his back, and at the other side he said “girl in gym told me Reed Park” (Randolph pool is in Reed Park) “has another pool, it is new pool, it just opened, it has tent over it.” And the man in next lane said “it is the Edith Ball Pool and it has a tent over it for people who don’t want to be out in the sun.” I didn’t know if I wanted to swim in a pool with tent over it, but at least it was outside. Bill said “when I come back on my bicycle to finish my work-out, I will ride over and check it out.” “Good!” I said “and get their schedule, it will be fun to find a new pool.”


I had woken up at very bad odds and ends yesterday morning, much worse than the mere lack of enthusiasm for day today that I woke up with this morning, and a whole hour and 25 minutes swimming underwater and then moving close to hear the beautiful blond lifeguard call out “I don’t have a boyfriend anymore, he cheated on me” and “go into my wallet open up the zipper and take out all my money,” and hanging out in pool for another 15 minutes while Bill drifted back and forth on his back. Somehow the whole combination had immensely soothing effect on me. Instead of my life feeling like a puzzle where all the pieces were scattered, all the pieces came back together. I guess this is called simple happiness....

My Wedding and Marianne's Wedding

OCEAN by Layla Edwards

written Tucson AZ Tuesday, April 19, 2005

My whole yard is mesquite trees now. Not really, but their branches extend. So it makes greenery everywhere. They are swaying in the breeze now. Today is a lovely day. It is not as hot as it was. It dropped back down to the 80s and there is lovely breeze swaying the branches of mesquite trees and their boughs.

I lived with Bill long time before I got married. Getting married turned out to not be so easy. We went down to City Hall to get our wedding license. It was good for one month. We had to get married within the month. But I couldn't find anyone to marry us. I went to the synagogue across the street and the rabbi didn't want to do it.

So I walked up to the Catholic Church on Second Avenue and said to the priest “my fiancé is Catholic will you marry us” and he said “no, because you are not a member of the community and some people just want a church wedding so they can have a church in their photographs.”

I did not understand when he said I am not a member of the community because I was a member of the community of the lower east side for long time, but now I realize he meant a member of his church.

I began to get desperate because the month was almost up. I bumped into Leona in the street and told her. She is the mother of the boyfriend I had in high school. She said there is a reverend on WBAI and he has a church in midtown, she bets he would marry us. So I called and spoke to someone.

But he said he would not marry us unless we had counseling for a whole year to see if we were ready to make the big step. I said “we have lived together for 16 years we are ready to make the big step.” So he referred me to someone else who he said might be willing to do it.

This time I knew what I was up against. So when I got on the phone with him, I began right off saying how “Bill and I had lived together for 16 years and we want to marry, we have the marriage license but Bill wants religious wedding, not City Hall, but he doesn't care which religion it is, just that it is under God.”

He said “ordinarily I insist on a year of counseling to see if you are ready to make the big step but in this case I don't think you need it” and he said he would marry us on Monday. And he gave us an address on West 57th Street, “it is near Carnegie Hall” he said.

I assumed it was one of the pretty old churches over there and I was ecstatic. The night before the wedding I set the iron on the washboard sink of my kitchen and I ironed Bill's shirt and my skirt. And Joey dropped by and I chitchatted with Joey as I ironed. I was actually terrified about getting married but I don't know why now. It sounded like entering another world, and I didn't know what the other world would be. I guess that is why I didn't mention to Joey I was going to get married the next day. I liked everything feeling familiar and the same, Joey sitting in my kitchen saying the same stuff he always did, as if nothing had changed at all.

The reverend had said to bring two witnesses, so Helen and Geraldo agreed to be our witnesses and to drive us to the church for the wedding. The next morning they arrived and Helen was carrying a big box, “it is your wedding present.” It turned out to be a beautiful Navajo blanket that Wendy had given her. Bill and I both loved it, and in fact it is one of the few things we took to Tucson. It is up on the wall of our living room now.

Bill and I were both in terror of getting married, altho we both tried to hide it from Helen and Geraldo and from each other, and acted like everything was normal. It was Martin Luther King Day so Bill was off work. Helen had just had 3 weddings to Geraldo over the last few months, so she was old hand at getting married.

She had met Geraldo in Nicaragua the year before, they had married there at a civil wedding, then again at religious wedding because that is what Geraldo's mom wanted, then Helen's mom threw big fancy catered Jewish wedding for Helen and Geraldo in Roslyn Long Island, a fancy suburb of NYC.

Geraldo had only been in USA for one month so I gave directions on how to arrive at Carnegie Hall. The address was a block or two west of that, on the north side of the street.

“OK we are at Carnegie Hall now Geraldo, we just have to keep our eyes peeled for a church now on the other side of the street.”

We arrived at the address but it was not a church. It was just an office building and when we walked in and took elevator to our floor, it turned out it was a center for disturbed adolescents. We went to the desk and I asked for the name of the reverend, and she directed us to his office.

It turned out he was a counselor for the disturbed adolescents there. I was crestfallen. That is not how I pictured my wedding being. But Bill had sat in the chair in the waiting room, reading the brochure about the center, and told me “this is a place where they try to help teenagers.” He was overjoyed about it. The fact that Bill liked it so much reassured me.

I knew we were in a shrink's office and I tried not to say to myself “my wedding is taking place in a shrink's office.” He arrived and enthusiastically greeted Helen and Geraldo, and the three of them had enthusiastic vivid chat. I thought Bill and I are ‘sposed to be the stars at our own wedding, but in fact we were both so nervous neither one of us could open up our mouth.

Then he said “join hands” and I was trembling all over and it helped me to put my hand in Bill's hand, it steadied me.

I was not crazy about the wedding ceremony he wrote. It was not one bit like the movies. There was poem by Tagore, and something from an Apache wedding ceremony. I would have loved it that it was Apache, maybe like everyone I always identified with the Native Americans, but it was all about big spaces in the relationship and big spaces are good.

And Bill and I had just gone thru 3 such stormy years we were not close at all. I didn't want big spaces, I wanted to be close again. Altho I will say, after the 3 tumultuous years of storminess in our relationship it was tremendously meaningful to be standing up there marrying him. For us to be standing there hand-in-hand, being married, in front of witnesses. I experienced the depth and reality of my love for Bill. It had withstood all the storms.

After the wedding we signed the papers. And Helen and Geraldo again chatted it up with our minister, and again Bill and I said nothing. Then Bill and I took Helen and Geraldo out to lunch at small Italian lunch place in our neighborhood.

I changed out of my wedding clothes to be more comfortable. I had forgotten what I wore to my wedding, but when I was cleaning my room this past September I found an envelope on top of the closet which contained the wedding photos Helen had taken. I had worn a white silk blouse with short puffed sleeves, creamy white, a blue cotton ruffled skirt from India, because you're sposed to wear something blue at your wedding.

And for some reason black very sexy stockings that you'd imagine a prostitute wearing, and I assume sexy shoes altho those were not in the photo. I have no idea why I wore those black very sexy stockings. It makes for an unusual wedding pic. There is my black black hair, that white blouse, that robins egg blue long ruffled skirt, and then because I am sitting down and pulled up the skirt to my knees those black stockings.

Helen lent me her wedding ring for the part in the wedding where Bill puts the ring on my finger, so I guess that was the borrowed part. Also there is crimson nailpolish on my finger nails. I look like Snow White.

I put together the outfit the night before. I didn't want to wear my wedding outfit for going out to lunch because it had been such big deal to be married, I was in state of shock, I thought it would help me feel normal again to change into an ordinary dress. Helen brought me a black dress made of cotton, very simple and comfortable, but by a designer so it was pretty and I liked it and I changed into that in the adolescent help center girls bathroom.

It had rained all the way in the car to our wedding, and on the way back to Lower East Side huge and loud hail kept hitting windshield. I loved it because I knew it was Heaven throwing rice at our wedding. I knew it was a blessed wedding.

We went to our favorite Italian lunch place, just simple tables in one small simple room, and Bill went next door to buy a bottle of wine and we all had lunch and I was happy but I was still in shock.

The next day Bill's boss offered him the day off because “you just got married.”

“Take the week off” he said.

Bill said “are you kidding, I am in a state of shock, I want to come back to work to feel normal again.”

So the following year when Marianne called me up to say she and Erik are going to get married I wanted to save her the trouble I went thru.

“Just call the Unitarian Church, they will be willing to marry you without making you wait a year, tell them how long you and Erik have lived together, and don't let them put in the part about huge spaces in your relationship.”

Two weeks later we arrived for the wedding. It was held in the loft of Erik's daughter in the West Village. Instead of my minister there was a woman minister. And all of Marianne and Erik's friends and relatives, from the Dojo were there. From karate school, aikido school, tai chi, and from when Marianne had worked at the print shop. It was before she became a beautician.

Everyone was gathered and the lady minister was there, but there was a hold-up.

“What is the hold-up?” I asked someone.

“Marianne refuses to arrive” I was told.

Erik was already there with the minister with his son standing next to him as best man.

So I went downstairs and there was Marianne. “I refuse to go” she said, “everyone is sitting there staring, it is scaring me.”

I said “nobody is sitting there staring, they are all talking to each other, come on up, no one will even notice you arrive, I have been chatting with Linda F's best friend from the print shop, I am so happy to meet her.”

“Are you sure no one will notice me” she said.

“No one will notice you they are all talking to each other.”

It was big fat lie, but what could I do. Marianne had to show up at her own wedding.

“We'll go up together and I'll go up front with you.”

“Stay with me” she said.

“I will.”

I swear I must be a crackpot. We walked up the stairs, I said to everyone “Marianne is here, no one look” and we walked up to the front together.

Then Marianne put her hand in Erik's and I knew she was fine and I took a seat. Marianne and Erik had worked with the lady minister to say what they wanted her to say so it was a lovely ceremony, and Marianne was happy afterwards.

“You didn't tell me the truth, Anne” Marianne said afterwards.

“I know but what could I do” I said.

I sat with Marianne and her friends from the print shop and we chatted. Then Bill and I walked home across town.

My first summer camp

THE OWL by Layla Edwards

Sunday, September 2, 2006

“My first summer camp”

The night sky above the dark trees is just subtly lighter than the trees, so I guess dawn is about to break sometime soon. I can see the outline of the dark trees.

I got snail mail from my friend Basha back in New York City and when I opened it up, it was an article from the NY Times Book Review about Nora Ephron’s new book of personal essays about her life. It was so much fun to read. I have not read anything in newsprint for so long. It was so much fun that someone had selected out something they thought you would enjoy reading, and to sit at dining table with soda on ice when I got back from swim pool and read it.

Basha and I met when we both had just turned 30. I had just started writing then. I had been writing for almost a year and I remember when we went to the Museum of Modern Art together and had lunch in their sculpture garden, I asked Basha if she wanted to hear one of my stories. I had just written one and I wanted to try it out. I read it to her at our table in the sculpture garden.

It was about the first camp I had gone to when I was 12 years old. And the interesting thing about that camp I discovered when I wrote the story, was it had no rules, no rules at all.

This didn’t seem remarkable to me when I was 12 years old, it seemed utterly natural for me to be in a place with no rules at all. It was my first time away from home, I was there for the month of July. There was even a cattle pond for swimming, the camp took place in a rundown farm in Vermont, and there were no rules about swimming either. Anyone could go to the "lake" and go for a swim by themself whenever they felt like it. There was no lifeguard. There were no activities you had to go to. Activities were available if you wanted to go. A range of them.

The girls in my bunk went to no activities. They stayed in the bunk and played Jacks. But I went to archery, I liked that. I didn’t know why they stayed in the bunk and played Jacks instead of going to activities, but I knew they looked down on me for going to activities.

There was an emotional drama for me at that camp because I had only gone there because I wanted to be with Betsy. My best friend from babyhood, Betsy, went every single summer and raved about it all the time, and told me I had to go, it is so wonderful. And finally the summer I was 12, I asked my parents, and they said you can go for the month of July. And my father sent off the check for 80 dollars, and duffle bag was located, and my mother wrote my name with black indelible ink on strips of fabric and sewed it on all the clothes I was taking to camp. They sent a list, two pairs of shorts, two long pants, bathing suit, two tops, etc.

And then the great day came, and my parents took me to Grand Central Station where everyone was lined up for the train taking them to camp. And we found the line for the train to take me to camp. And there was Betsy. And on the train ride I sat next to her. Altho the seat was turned around so she could sit with her other friends from camp.

So there was 4 of us sitting together. And when we got there I took the top bunk above Betsy. And after that Betsy never spoke to me again for the rest of her life. That train ride up to camp was the last time I sat next to her. The great love of my life since I had been a baby, we had learned how to walk together, ended on that train ride up to camp, where I sat on one side of Betsy and her best friends from camp sat on the other side.

I did not measure up.

I didn’t realize it on the train ride. I was so excited and thrilled and loved every instant of what was happening around me, already I loved camp. And it took a while for it to dawn on me at camp too. Altho as you can imagine Betsy quickly changed her bed. Sairy Anne arrived and I slept above Sairy Ann, Betsy moved as far away from me as she could get. She was totally embarrassed to be associated with me. I don’t know how it dawned on me. I guess I would find myself alone with her, and for first time in my life find myself uncomfortable with her and tongue-tied. She was giving every impression of not liking me and not wanting to be with me. And after a while I stopped trying.

It was a new world to me, this world of the clique, and some were in it, and some were not. And clearly Betsy was one of the top girls in the clique. She wasn’t the leader, but she was totally accepted in it, she was part of it. The bunk had 12 girls, not every girl was in the clique, altho most of them came year after year like Betsy. I’d guess 5 girls were in the clique, everyone else was excluded. But that is what a pecking order is. There is the leader of the clique, the rest of the clique is her accolades. And the rest of us are nothing. I had not made the transformation to teen-ager yet. My mind was still child’s mind. So I found it highly amusing I was nothing and the clique was everything. Not amused so much as interesting. I was in a new world, it was a brand new adventure, and I loved everything about my brand new adventure. That there was a clique and I was nothing, was just another interesting thing about this new adventure.

I was upset about losing Betsy, and I don’t think I accepted it. I accepted it that at camp she would have nothing to do with me, but I would not believe our friendship was over. I think I assumed back in the city it would return. Because I think I began a diary the following year, it only had 3 entries in it, and one of them was about Betsy. I wrote “something is wrong in our friendship.” I was disturbed and trying to understand it. The idea that Betsy had changed her feelings for me was incomprehensible. Because it was my very first experience of anyone changing their feelings towards me. I didn’t know such a thing happened. I just assumed when you love someone you love them forever, that that is the nature of love, that the joy of your heart is always the joy of your heart.

I wasn’t bothered about the clique excluding me, altho I knew it made a difference to Betsy, that this is why she wouldn’t talk to me at camp. I had zero feelings about the clique on my own. The idea of a clique is that they are infinitely desirable and superior to the rest of us. And there were girls in my bunk who saw them that way, and were very upset they were excluded from the clique, but I didn’t get it.

“Why are you so upset?” I said.

“Because they won’t let me in the clique.”

“We'll just form our own clique” I said, trying to be helpful.

There were 4 of them. It was on the stairwell. They were all upset about being excluded from the clique, they were commiserating. There were tears. If they wanted to be in a clique so badly, I thought we should form our own. But of course it upset them when I said that. Because they were so upset they were hanging out with someone who was so out of it, she didn’t even know not being allowed in the clique was fate worse than death. After that even those who were excluded from the clique refused to talk to me. I was bottom of the barrel.

I could have been one with the ones unhappy about not being in the clique if only I had known I was supposed to be unhappy. So the clique stayed in the bunk instead of going to activities and played Jacks. And the ones excluded from the clique hung out on the staircase and cried. And I went to archery, and started to get good at it. I was having a ball at camp.

I even had a ball at social activities. On Friday nights there was dance at the Sugar House. It had been a working farm, that is where the maple syrup used to be made. The Friday night party at the Sugar House meant the girls would all sit on chairs next to each other, and the boys would choose which one they wanted to ask to dance. I thought this was a lot of fun. The boys would walk up and down trying to decide who they wanted to choose. I giggled to the girl next to me “it’s as if we are the candy in the candy store, and they are trying to decide which one they want.”

The girl moved her chair away from me. It bothered the girls not in the clique very much that they were never chosen, only the girls in the clique were chosen. But I just thought it was a new fun game at camp, being the candy in the candy store. I could care less whether I was chosen or not, I just liked being in the game.

Of course there were great games at that camp else I would not have loved it so much. “Capture The White Flag” was an ecstasy, an adventure game in fields and woods, I loved it. And “Nose Bag Dramatics,” which we played in the barn was a lot of fun too. And on “Amateur Talent Night,” I was the only one from my bunk who volunteered. I got up and threw myself all over the stage in my own interpretative modern dance. I made it up. I thought I did great. I had no idea that for “Amateur Talent Night” you were supposed to have talent, and be up there and demonstrate your talent. I thought it was for anyone who wanted to do anything on the stage. The faces on the girls from my bunk when I finished and went back to my place were a sight. You never saw so much disgust in one place. It did not dim my enthusiasm, I overlooked it. “Why don’t you get up and do something, it’s fun” I told them.

When we went huckleberry picking in the field, the counselor let us take off our clothes and pick berries in our underpants. When we went to the stream to wash our clothes we were allowed to wash our clothes naked and swim in the stream. It was a great camp. I had a great time. One night we all waited till we had been in bed, and counselors were coming around on O.D. to check on us, and then we all ran away. And I hid in the baseball field. And it was so exciting when the counselor found me and flashed his flashlight on me. I had lain there breathless in the dark when I saw the flashlight in the distance. I think that was the highest adventure of all.

Altho it was fun putting on a dress and being driven in the truck to Marlboro for a square dance. I loved square dancing.

On Visiting Day in the middle of the summer all the parents drove up from New York, and my parents drove from our summer house in Adirondacks to pick me up and take me back to Old Forge.

“I had a wonderful time at camp; next year I want to go for two months” I said. “As soon as we get back to NYC Daddy,” I said, “you write out the check for two months.”

It was the last summer of my innocence. After that I descended into image. Ego got whole control of my mind. And it took “A Course In Miracles,” when I was in Tucson, to give me back my innocence.

As soon as we got back to NYC my father, per my request, did send off the check for two months. But the owner of the camp, an old man, wrote instead of having camp this summer he and his wife are going on a trip to Mexico and are inviting some of the girls in the oldest bunk to go, and I am one of the ones invited. I remembered the owner of the camp, he seemed like a nice man. His wife didn’t like me. But of course he did not see me thru the eyes of the 12 year old girls in my bunk, all he saw was the joyous happy girl.

I said to my father “I don’t want to go to Mexico, I want to go to camp, find another one then.”

And so another one was found for me. This one was run by two teachers and it was all rules. But I was 13 when I arrived, I was a different person. I knew that all that mattered in life was being popular and having a boyfriend and I turned myself inside out to accomplish it.....

The Chinese Food Debacle, or how I learned to love the Sr 77 Blackbird

DESERT VIEW by Layla Edwards

July 16, 2006 Sunday Tucson AZ

Well the Chinese take-out dinner last night was an unqualified disaster. I had a taste for Chinese food all week, so yesterday at Catalina pool I said to Bill “can we stop at China Rose on the way home and I can get buffet to go.”

He said “OK” altho his taste was for bbq chicken from supermarket.

“It’s up to you” I said.

But he wanted to please me so he said “whatever you want.”

“Do you want to come in?” I said when we arrived at parking lot.

I thought it would be easier for me if he chose what he wanted to eat. Also there are condiments but you have to ladle them into the little plastic cups yourself, I always skip that part cause it is too much for me to do. I thought if Bill went with me he could do it.

He said “no I don’t want to come in.”

“OK” I said, “I’ll do it myself.”

He called out what he wanted, the chicken tempura.

When I arrived I knew I had come at wrong time. The dregs of lunch buffet was still there, they had not put out supper buffet, so everything in the serving trays had turned hard.

I still filled up the takeout container with the chicken tempura even tho I could see it had turned hard, and then looked for other things to add.

I ordered a big rice to-go with it so Bill would not have to go to the trouble of cooking rice.

I helped myself to 3 egg rolls and put them on top of the rice take-out instead of in the buffet box so they would stay crispy.

There wasn’t much of a selection, maybe there is no Saturday night buffet. I did manage to put the condiments in their little plastic cups. I was so proud of myself.

I thought “this will be tasty dinner and a big change from what we had been eating.” I ate my portion when I got home.

6 hours later at 9 PM Bill called out he is ready for his Chinese supper and sat down at the table. I realized it wasn’t as easy as it seemed, because everything had to be microwaved to make it hot again. I was a little overwhelmed at how to do it, because I realized everything would have to be microwaved separately, the rice, the egg rolls, and the dinner.

I emptied the package of rice into a big bowl, looked for a plate to put on top of it, and microwaved it for four minutes. Then I brought it out to the table.

Then I took the 3 egg rolls and put them in the container the rice had come in and microwaved them for two minutes. I brought out the condiments and the egg rolls. I made him a soda with lots of ice, and I put in the heavy package of food to microwave for 5 minutes.

He called out “come sit down Anne, I’m always halfway thru my dinner by the time you sit down.”

I said “I am microwaving the food for 5 minutes.”

He said “that’s too long, it will turn hard.”

So I shut it off and brought it in. I really wanted to finish those last minute chores before I sat down at table, put the porch light on, little things. But he had said how I was always futzing around and not sitting at table when we eat.

Of course I wasn’t hungry, I had already eaten when I first came home with the food. I had only planned to have a little to keep him company, an egg roll, and some other little stuff.

I was making myself a glass with ice and soda when he said “sit down already,” so I turned off the microwave, brought in the food, grabbed my glass with ice and soda and sat down.

He opened up the bowl of steaming rice and said “what’s this in there! don’t they wash the rice! now you see why I always wash the rice!” I don’t know what he saw but he found it unappetizing and it depressed him. He carried on about it.

Then he tried the chicken tempura. “You have to be so careful with microwave” he said, “it is hard.”

I said “it was hard when I got it, but I didn’t know what to do, that was your order and I didn’t have the wits to change when I saw it was hard.”

A depressed silence fell on the table. I was actually enjoying my egg roll with the hot mustard. I had never been able to finesse getting the hot mustard before, it sure was tasty but hot. But he wasn’t talking and depression was coming from somewhere.

“I didn’t want to say anything Anne because I didn’t want to hurt your feelings, but this food is awful, I’m not eating it, give it to Lulu,” and he pushed away his plate.

I guess because he had held back his feelings all during the depressed silence because he didn’t want to hurt my feelings, it now all came out in a storm.

“I am never taking you there again! I am never going to that restaurant again! I wanted fried chicken from Frys! Soup and sandwich is better than this!” We had been having soup and sandwich for past 3 nights.

He went on and on about how the food is so awful and he won’t go there again. “I am never going to that restaurant again!”

I started to get upset. Money had been spent and I am short of money now. I had put in a lot of effort at the restaurant trying to do it right. And then I had put in effort with the microwaving. I had been nervous at first I wouldn’t be able how to figure out how to microwave the 3 separate dishes and be able to serve it all without Bill having to wait at table for it.

He kept going on and on (“I had been looking forward to my Chinese dinner”) and I was upset feeling like a failure. My spirits were going down.

I tuned in my Higher Self who said “don’t say anything” and she just sweet-talked me.

The depressed silence for 15 minutes before the explosion came had been a bummer too. I didn’t want to collapse into feeling like a failure, so I just kept tuned to my Higher Self who was saying “don’t say anything” and sweet-talking me to keep my spirits up.

Finally I figured he had said enough about how awful the food was. He called in Lulu so I could feed the chicken he would not eat to her. I picked out all the chicken and put it on little plate for her, and she ate it.

I said he doesn’t have to tell me anymore how bad the food was, but I guess he was still saying “I will never go to that restaurant again” when I was in the kitchen, because my Higher Self pointed out “he didn’t go to the restaurant, he sat in the parking lot, if he had gone to the restaurant he could have picked out his own food and maybe it would have been better.”

I really perked up when my Higher Self said that. Hearing it from him the picture was so black, I felt like I had tried so hard and everything was wrong, I had done everything wrong, altho Bill didn’t blame me, he blamed the restaurant. But my Higher Self felt there were holes in Bill’s scenario.

And when Bill said yet again, “I will never go to that restaurant again,” I said “you didn’t go to the restaurant, you went to the parking lot.”

It gave me such a lift to say that. It felt so crisp.

I went back to the table and Bill said the meal depressed him, and we sat in that depression for a while till I said “I’m going to bed” and he said “good.”

But instead of going to bed I came in and turned on my machine, and I posted an article about a UFO sighting in Alaska on my news site. And the same attitude which made me say “you didn’t go to the restaurant you went to the parking lot,” the same refusal to let the wave of failure engulf me entirely, the same decision to just detach myself from what was happening, to refuse to be drawn into it, completely took over when I started to post. I just decided to kick up my heels. I decided to dance and party all over my site.

My site has been dreary for long time and I had been just going along with things as they were, succumbing to the prevailing atmosphere, but when I broke free from the gloom at the table I was a new Anne. No way was I going to waltz into the gloom on my site. I kicked up my heels and danced. I was totally spirited. I made jokes about everything. I was much bolder and dauntless. It was so much fun.

Naturally when you post a UFO article there are those who come on the thread just to make jokes about it but the devil had gotten into me.

When Packrat posted his joke, “I don’t know why the UFO has its headlamps on, it is broad daylight,” I posted back “you don’t know anything about ET craft, that is its guidance system.”

To my astonishment he fell for my malarkey. And came back with his own joke about flying saucers and little green men. I had a lot of jokes about that because of how the Greys do look.

Another poster who I don’t know posted a photo of a plane and said “this is from the ‘50s, we don’t know what our Air Force has now.”

And I posted back in all sincerity “is that a fighter jet, I don’t know anything about aircraft.”

And he said “it is the Sr 77 Blackbird, it is a spy plane, and it goes so fast it is top secret how fast it goes.” So then naturally I had a ball posting about the Blackbird spy plane.

When nothing was happening on my UFO thread I went on other threads and cracked jokes about their posts. As much fun as I had cracking jokes with posters I am old friends with, the most fun was with the new poster I had just met on the UFO thread who told me all about the Blackbird spy plane.

He had flown one and was clearly in love with that aircraft. And for some reason all the exuberance of the new 1950s technology was translated into that plane. Seeing it in all its glory in that photo he posted, was like seeing the first of the '50s two-toned cars with fins when I was a little girl.

It had the same beauty, excitement, pride, it was so alive, there was a happy spirit there. We were both astonished that an aircraft he loved so dearly had been love at first sight for me.....

I guess there’s more to life than being a wife

Jane

"Desert View" by Layla Edwards
"Jane"
Friday June 24 2005

Jane Pollack's birthday was yesterday. You remember for a long time the birthday of your best friend when you are little girl. She was year behind me in school 'cause cut off date was April 30th and I was born at start of April, Jane was born 2 and half months later on June 23rd.

I had an earlier best friend, Debbie Bernstein before I started school, when we still lived in Manhattan. But that is further away in my mind. I see the passionate little girls arrive with their moms at the pool and their passionate friends, and their new baby brother just born, and how the whole world revolves around Madeline, Madeline is one of the little girls, and I know that was me back in the days when Debbie was my best friend. It is the world before school, you spend much more time with your mother.

By the time of Jane I was in 3rd grade, Jane was in 2nd grade, and we were best friends. She lived in the apartment above mine. I was in 3F and she was in 4F. It would take a writer with far more talent than I have to do justice to Jane because there is nothing to say about her. She is the salt of the earth and she is bland.

It may have to do with times. Maybe there is a time from ages 8 to 12 when your whole focus is on your skills, your games. Jane and I played with each other but what we played were games. We played Jacks with each other, we played cards with each other, we played board games with each other, and outside we played in groups. We played chinese handball, regular handball, punch ball, stickball, and jump rope, also Potsy and Girls and Boys.

Also Jane and I did things together. We traveled by train to Rochester to visit my grandfather. We traveled by subway to lower east side to take modern dance classes. We traveled by bus to Jamaica to take ballet. We went to the movies together. We rode our bikes together along with two other girls. We took the subway to her dad's office on Fulton Street where he sold jewelry. We went to Woolworth’s together for sodas. And had lunch at the Woolworth’s in Jamaica.

We were together a lot. And the friendship lasted till I was about 15 because I remember Jane looking out my window when my cousin Richie arrived for Thanksgiving when I was 14 and saying “your cousin Richie is good looking.”

He had just bloomed into his good looks as I had bloomed into mine. And I was in high school then. And the June before high school when I was 14 and few months, Jane and I were together in my room when Jane espied my date arriving to take me to the prom. So we did continue to hang out together even when the time of games was over.

But she was central in my life during the time of games. Every Friday night when her dad returned home from the city he bought Jane a new board game, and we played with them. That is how I discovered “Go To The Head Of The Class” a game I loved. Also Jane taught me “Candyland,” a board game she had already had. The only board game I had was “Monopoly” but Jane also had wonderful game, “Chutes and Ladders.” O I also had “Clue” but Jane had all the games. “Chutes and Ladders” was a lot of fun and I think there was a game called “Sorry” too. We played board games until we both discovered Jacks.

Then all we played was Jacks. But somehow there was always a lot of cards. Jane and I learned cards tricks together and played them. We played “Double Solitaire.” Jane taught me “Knucks.” I guess our big game was “Rummy” which we played endlessly. If Myrna and Carol were also there we played Poker. Jane and I were well matched, we competed.

In June they put up the sprinklers in the kiddie playground behind our building, the playground we all played in, and Jane and I got into our bathing suits and went under it. Also when Jane's parents took Jane and Amy, her little sister, to visit their friends or relatives on Long Island who had a sprinkler, I was invited to go under their sprinkler too.

And when my parents took me and Danny, my kid brother, to Jones Beach, Jane was invited to go into the ocean too. I remember Jane being with me at Jones beach because after we had finished swimming and wanted to go back in the water Jane and I both went in in our underpants, that was fun.

And amazingly one summer, while we were up in the Adirondacks, Jane's family came and spent a week on 4th Lake. It was a country club at Rocky Point, but I guess they rented a cabin. I remember being excited when we got in the car to drive Route 28, a winding road thru the mountains to 4th Lake, and I could see Jane. I had my own friends in the mountains. But returning back to NYC and seeing my NYC friends was always big thrill at first. I would get out of the car and rush to Jane's apartment. And Jane's mother, Ray, would water my mother's plants for us when we were gone.

On the other side of the building was Sheila, and Jane and Sheila were also best friends, and Ray was best friends with Sheila's mother Frieda. I really have no idea how Jane and Sheila played together, they seemed so different to me. I would play with Sheila after school 'cause she and I were in the same class and our way of playing was so different than what I did with Jane. We didn't play games. Sheila introduced me to her books. She had the “Honeybunch” books and then the “Bobsey Twins” books and I borrowed all of them from her.

Then we would watch “Hit Parade.” Sheila introduced me to “Hit Parade.” And Sheila had sheet music. These were the songs which were on Hit Parade. It had the words and I guess the notes. Sheila would sing “Dance With Me, Henry” and I would sing along with her.

In Sheila's room we would play “school.’ Sheila never played outside with us. She didn't join us for Chinese handball or punch ball or jump rope. Sheila did not have a bicycle, she did not learn how to roller skate.

That was another big thing Jane and I did. We roller skated at the school playground, or around the buildings, and thru the drive ways. We got my mother to take us to the rink, where we ice skated and roller skated both. So it's a mystery to me what Jane did when she went over to Sheila's room to play. Altho when we were all in the playground and the mothers were sitting on the benches we heard Sheila screech out the window “Jane is eating raw hamburger meat.” I guess Sheila was telling her mother this. Jane always liked to eat and so did I. We spent a lot of time eating together.

Jane had TV before we did so we spent a lot of time also on the living room rug in front of her TV. That was how I discovered “Father Knows Best.” Jane discovered it and I watched it there. It was thrilling at first. I watched it with her every week.

I watched TV with Sheila at Sheila's house too but the programs she liked were grown-up shows. We would watch Sid Caesar and Imogene Coca. At Jane's house we watched Superman.

In the dining car on the way to Rochester Jane and I ordered a jelly omelet. It was the first time I ever tasted that, I liked it. And when we got to Rochester we turned on my grandpa's TV and watched “Kukla, Fran and Ollie,” I had never seen that either.

When someone is your companion in play you mainly remember them at play, not that much catches your notice about them. I noticed when my dad gave us arithmetic problems to solve in the car as game when he was driving us somewhere, Jane was very good at arithmetic, even better than me. And I was surprised when I learned “Knucks” from Jane because it is cruel game, Jane was never cruel. And I remember the smell of her father's garage, when we would go over there to unlock it so Jane could get her bike. My bike was in the bike room downstairs of our building.

All I can think is Jane must have been incredibly easy going if we never once conflicted, or rubbed against each other. Her habits were different from mine. When I got something new to wear I wore it right away but Jane liked to save it in its original plastic and keep it in her drawer and show it to me in her drawer. As soon as I saw her pretty new sweater sets in plastic in her drawer I wanted that too. I was the same as my dog now is about his bone. As soon as I give him one he rushes into yard to bury it, but then he wants one to eat also. I wanted to wear my new clothes and save them all pristine in my drawer too.

I got to see Sheila once when she blossomed into lovely young woman. I was coming home on bus when I was half way thru college, or perhaps it was only my 2nd year, and to my astonishment the glamorous girl with all the make-up on and looking very pretty was Sheila. She told me she was secretary in Manhattan and I was astounded at her salary. Sheila was very smart, smarter than me. We had been in the accelerated class together in junior high but I could not keep up and Sheila had no problem.

I guess I played more in Jane's house than she did in mine because she had the board games, she had the TV. We did play Jacks on the linoleum in my foyer, but we played a great great great deal of Jacks in her bathroom. Her apartment had wall-to-wall carpet everywhere except in kitchen and bathroom, so we squeezed into that tiny bathroom, just enuf room for two little girls to squeeze, next to the clothes hamper under sink, and played endless Jacks there. We learned how to do Backsies there and how to do Fancies, Cherry-in-the-basket and Jack-be-nimble. And of course endless card games on the rug. For “Double Solitaire” it's possible we needed two decks of cards.

She had a cousin Harriet who was a few years older than us, who lived in Building 5, and sometimes we would visit her cousin Harriet and her cousin Harriet would come over. And of course half the time Myrna and Carol joined us for play, there were 4 of us playing Jacks on my mom's foyer linoleum, or 4 of us playing Poker at Carol's dinette table.

Myrna and I did conflict, there were fights, and then Myrna would put a note in the empty milk bottle outside my door saying “let's make up” and we would. That is why I don't understand, in all our furious competition, all our games, all our closeness, all our long afternoons together, how it is possible we never conflicted. Not about Jane, who could conflict with her? She was perfectly easy-going nice girl. But look at me. But maybe just as Jane and I were perfectly matched in every single game we played, I guess it's possible we were perfectly matched as friends too.

She had that warm easy-going nature, in astrology she is probably Taurus, that lovely sweetness of a cow, akin to placid. Jane was unruffled and unruffleable. And she was rooted as a tree. She never objected to me. Because altho I never attempted to budge Jane, I am sure she would have been unbudgeable. So even tho all our games were outdoor games of action or indoor games of mental or physical concentration, it's like those lovely fields you pass in New York State, the contentment of the cows outside, and deep shelter shade trees over them.

For 3 and a half years I spent all my free time with Jane, or most of it, playing with Jane, and it was an instant which stretched into eternity. Because Jane provided the sweet cowy contentment and the sheltering shade of tree.

We lived in apartment building projects surrounded by more apartment building projects somewhere out in Queens. Both our dads worked in Manhattan. But for Jane, who was daughter of Mother Earth herself, extended all the sweet graciousness of our lovely Planet to us. All that is sweet and warm and nurturing came from Jane. It was blessed friendship.