“City College Days and Nights”

Ronnie DeNota, NYC artist, Boats at City Island

Saturday, 8:26 am, 12/15/07

“City College Days and Nights”

Well it is cold as a witch's teat but our beauty is back. The sun returned and brought all the color with it. Our sky is so blue, our leaves are so green, the sunlight is so yellow. I am thrilled and overjoyed to have our beauty back.

“Cold as a witch's teat” is an expression I only heard one time, by a girl at City College, when the expression really fit. I mean it was one of those sub-freezing days, probably in single digits, and we were all high up at City College, high up above the river, where it is even much more colder. It may have been my second year at City College, which was my third year at college, because I had transferred from Antioch. And I had somehow wound up in this crowd, and the girl who said it was the center of the crowd.

I belonged to a lot of crowds at City College, either simultaneously or one after the other. And I never fit into any of the crowds. In cafeteria I sat with the kids who had been at Jamaica High School with me, and that was the closest I came to being with familiar people. They hadn’t been my own friends there, but they were either the sister or friend of my own friends, they were familiar. But everyone else I was friends with lived in Manhattan, near City College. And this crowd I was in, were living in Manhattan, near City College. We went to each other’s houses for parties, to dance, and since I didn’t know any of the new dances then, I would sit there and watch them all dance.

My first year at City College I became friends with Lisa Goldsmith, who lived on Broadway, maybe in the high 80s. She was a warm wonderful girl and I enjoyed my friendship with her. But she got a job at the Figaro in Greenwich Village, that is a coffee house, working in the evenings. Plus she suddenly switched over to wanting to do very well in school, she had been lackadaisical student before that. And between her job, where she made a lot of money, and studying all the time, she never had time for our friendship. I had to let her go. And it seems to me in my last year I became friends with a girl named Nadia, who had auburn hair, and had a job too. I forgot what it was called where you put in computer cards, before everything was on disk. She had time to be friends with me, and it was a lovely friendship.

And some time in the middle I became best friends with Diana Shay. I met her because a boy I had been to camp with, who wound up at City College, was in love with her. She didn’t stay with him, but in the course of it, I met her. And we became best friends, and that was a glorious friendship for me. I went to her house all the time after school, she lived on West End Avenue with her parents. And we had lunch in restaurants together. Eggplant parmesan in the Italian restaurant, and chicken paprika in the Hungarian restaurant. We both loved to eat, and we ate out all the time together. She was tremendous fun. And that friendship ended when she went off to Paris for her junior year. I would read her letters in science class. She loved Paris and was having a great time. Before Diana I had a brief friendship with Lydia, who I think came from Colombia, I knew she spoke Spanish. I liked her a lot, but somehow the friendship didn’t take off.

During the time I didn’t have a best friend to be friends with I hung out with a crowd. We would go back to someone’s house after school, and they would all dance and I would watch. Diana did finally teach me all the new dances, the frug and the shimmy, and something else, but by that time the era of dancing at everyone’s house had ended.

I don’t know who was in that crowd that I spent so much time with. Except I remember the girl who said “it is cold as witch's teat” seemed to be the center of it. Everyone in it was very Manhattan and seemed sophisticated to me. By sophisticated I mean spoke a whole lingo I didn’t know. I never knew where they were at, they never knew where I was at, but they were who I hung with. I don’t even know how I met them and got to join the crowd.

I must have been with them at a party at someone’s house at night when Tony and Louise and Eddie showed up. Someone there must have known them. Louise and Eddie must have gone to City College themselves at one time and knew everyone in that crowd, and Tony worked in the music department and was their friend too. I went home that night with Tony. And for a few months he was my boyfriend. He was the only boyfriend I had during that whole era, the era of sharing an apt near City College, and going to CCNY and being in that crowd. And it’s possible, looking back on it now, that the whole purpose of me winding up in that crowd was so I could meet Tony. We had nothing in common. He was an avante garde dancer with Judson Dancers down in Greenwich Village. And he lived in a tenement apartment way in the back behind Macy’s, and had a whole life in the Village. And was macrobiotic, and learning Akido, and sold some pot. He belonged to a world I got to know much much later when I lived in the East Village myself, where everyone is macrobiotic and taking Akido and selling some pot and went to avante garde events at the Judson Church regularly. But it was a world very very far away from me when I was 19 years old and just an earnest college student. Tony’s language was also peppered with the hip slang everyone used later, but he was the first person I ever heard to use any of those expressions and I would try to figure out what they meant. I had a huge crush on Tony and took it very hard when he ditched me for my roommate. In fact that precipitated me moving back home to Flushing.

Back home with my family in Flushing, life got more normal. I commuted to City College on the subways. After college I went to the Columbia library to study. And somewhere along the line I became the girlfriend of George. I had met him first at City College when Linda Webber was dating him. I met him again at protest rally at Madison Square Garden, Linda had broken up with him and he was there with his friend. Since he lived in Jamaica and I lived in Flushing, we all took the subway home together. I wonder if this was during the summer, when I was a camp counselor and had come in for my day off. I remember he came up to visit at the camp on one of my days off. And then when I returned to the city we were boyfriend and girlfriend for a lot of that year.

He was going to the high school downtown for evening classes to get his high school diploma. I think he worked in the fur district during the day. George made a big secret about everything, so I don’t remember when he worked in the fur district or when he changed jobs to be counterman at Greek restaurant. He would work during the day, go to Washington Irving High School in the evening, and then pick me up at the Columbia library and we would take the subway back home to Queens together. He would get out at my stop and wait with me for my bus to come.

He was living with his parents in Jamaica and I was living with my family in Flushing. It was a very calm time in my life and I needed it, there had been so much chaos during my Manhattan sojourn. I wasn’t in love with George but I liked him, we got along very well. He was warm and friendly and outgoing and affectionate, and a little crazy, he could get so emotional. Which is a type I like. I know I always fell for “sensitive but misunderstood,” but if they turn out to be like Tony, who always seemed so cold and foreign and different from me, it never works. I am just tongue tied. If they turn out to be warm and friendly and emotional, it works. I’m willing to put up with emotions. George was a little bit too much the other extreme from Tony. I was too intellectual to stay with George. But what a happy time I had the whole time we were boyfriend and girlfriend! He gave me just what I needed then, a warm happy life.

But I dropped him without a moment’s thought when Kenny got back from Italy and called me up at my parent’s house and said “let’s share an apartment in the East Village together.”

There must be some way to take away guilt. Why should it be such a crime that Tony, who didn’t particularly like me, went for my roommate Muffin in a huge big way. In fact they wound up living together in Soho the same time I was living with Kenny. Maybe I was the interlude in Tony’s life which brought him to Muffin, he wouldn’t have met Muffin without me. And Muffin was the right girl for him, not me. And to be honest, how could Tony have been the right guy for me, I was always tongue-tied with him. He brought into my life some wonderful new experiences (he taught me to waltz and I loved that) and I am grateful for those experiences.


Maybe the secret to letting go of Tony, not holding it against him that he jilted me, would be to believe in my heart of hearts, that despite my intense desire for him, it was a relationship which wasn’t working, it was just bringing me frustration. And maybe the wise part of my soul ended it this way, to set me free for new experiences. I would have to admit I wanted it to end, which is something I have never been willing to admit. But of course looking back on it, seeing the whole picture from a distance, seeing it in retrospect, it goes without saying of course the relationship had to end, and to end at that time. It wasn’t going anywhere, it was consuming my life. And by ending it, new life adventure and opportunities and experiences opened up for me. So strictly speaking Tony did me the favor by breaking up with me and going for my roommate instead, since I never would have done it on my own and it had to be done.

Jilting George for Kenny. George didn’t accept it. But of course I had a right to have new experiences and adventures in life. And George is a wonderful guy, with a lot to offer any girl. I am sure he found a new girl that he made very happy. And it’s possible this girl found George a more fulfilling boyfriend than I did. Linda Webber, the girlfriend who had preceded me, had been very serious about George. He told me she was always looking in the newspaper to find an apt to rent for them to live together. Whereas I was perfectly content with the relationship just the way it was. He’d pick me up at the Columbia library, carry my books. We’d get off the subway at Forest Hills. Cross that huge boulevard to Greek diner. I would get coffee and blueberry muffin. And then George would wait with me for the bus.

And George was content with it too. When I broke up with him he said “you mean I won’t be able to carry your books any longer…”

French Fries

Tucson, AZ by Felix Pasilis
Wednesday December 12 2007 8:24 am

"French Fries"

Yikes now it is a big fog out there. It is misty and not much visibility beyond my yard. We have now had loud hail, snow on the mountains, pounding rain, and thunder. The fog makes it complete. Is there any weather we have not had in the past 24 hours. We had more dramatic weather in past two days than in the whole previous year. On the desert weather is changeless. Except for yesterday and today, where it is dramatically different every hour. It rained while I was in swim pool yesterday, then cleared up and sun came out on way home. Then I looked out and the terrace was soaking wet, the rain had started up again.

And I guess it’s been raining ever since. The landscape out my window is sodden.

Yesterday we swam at Fort Lowell pool, that is our favorite pool, high up by the mountains with deep water. But it was closed for a month to save on heating bills. We had been at Jerry’s pool instead. Yesterday was the grand reopening. Jerry, who is in charge of all the pools, had turned the furnace on during the week-end, so on Tuesday (yesterday) when it reopened for swimming, the water would be warm.

Jerry keeps his pool at 82 degrees all winter and ordered all the lifeguards to do the same. But Samantha, who is head lifeguard at our pool, loves warm water, and usually keeps it at 84 or 85 in winter, which makes all the difference in the world. I told Jerry “Sam keeps it at 84 and it is a million times nicer, why don’t you do that.” But instead of taking my hint, he said “Sam is not allowed to do that, I will lay down the law to her.”

When I arrived yesterday in the freezing rain I said “how warm is it?” She said 82. “Oooo” I said “usually you keep it at 84 when it is this kind of weather.” She said “I will Anne, but don’t tell anyone.” I said “great!” I was so happy she decided to disobey Jimmy and make her pool more enjoyable to swim in.

My mother emailed me her pool is kept at 92 and my brother enjoys his long warm swim in it, before they have dinner together in restaurant at her complex, and he goes upstairs with her to help her with computer. I was flabbergasted my mom’s pool is 92 when I am fighting tooth and nail to get our pool raised to 84, and have had zero success so far. I cannot even imagine the luxury of swimming in 92 degree water. Our pool is only barely warm enough to stay in it, and you do have to swim vigorously. I am not a vigorous swimmer. I like to do a floaty yoga-like swim, dream my way thru the water. But even I, who rarely moves a muscle when I swim, am starting to kick hard, just so I can stand the cold water.

The showers are outside at Fort Lowell and it was raining, so I put my clothes under the little shelf in the shower room and hoped it would not get wet from the showers. Of course our towels are all soaking wet from the rain, so drying off after a shower is impossible. I put on my long denim skirt and a long sleeved cotton shirt over soaking wet me, and joined Bill in the truck. He had the windows shut and heat on, it was heaven to be so warm. And then I wanted breakfast out.

I have larder full of delicious food because we had gotten out of the habit of restaurants, so I market for everything we could possibly want to eat or drink. But who wants to go into that cold damp kitchen and cook bacon and eggs. So Bill went to the second-hand store to look for books he wanted to read, and I went to Alice’s. And changed my mind and ordered chicken salad sandwich with french fries. And he bought a sack of books for 10 cents each. And then I went to the bakery next door and got chocolate brownies and sticky buns and cherry danish. And we got in the truck to go home and suddenly the sun appeared, and I thought “great! finally the bad weather is on its way out and the good weather has returned.”

And suddenly I noticed all my happiness and well being was back. I stretched out my arms in happiness. My tummy was happy from chicken salad sandwich and yummy french fries with salt and ketchup. I had a bag full of delicious bakery items on my lap. I had had a great swim. Bill was delighted with his bag of books. And the sun was out and warm.

I experienced pure contentment, which had been extremely lacking in 4 days of shivering away from the cold. I had had a range of happy experiences, feeling so alive after my swim or getting an email which made me so happy or a lovely movie on tv. I had had nice experiences which dotted the cold shivering time. I had even had moments of bliss and moments of great happiness. But the one thing I did not have was contentment, the warm contentment of feeling all is right with the world and I am so happy in it. For that you need to be warm and dry and have a plate served to you with very tasty sandwich and luscious hot french fries with salt and ketchup.

"A Cloudy Day"

"The journey Home" photo by Toni

Monday, December 10, 2007, 8:45 am

"Joie de vivre"

It’s a cloudy day. It’s still so interesting to me that cloudy days were normal where I came from, a day like today would happen once or twice a week. Cloudy days were familiar to me, they were so frequent, but on desert they are almost an anomaly.

I looked out the window to describe this day and the words “a cloudy day” came back into my mind, like from a former life. Back where I came from this day has a name. But if I only knew this climate, it would not have a name, it would just have a description.

It rained all night and this morning the sky is gray. How odd to see a gray sky out there. The gray is soft and light like the gray of a baby kitten. The gray is not pretty, it is the color of pristine snow when it is ruined back in New York City, when the snow has lost its beauty whiteness sparkle. The sky looks as if it were meant to be white but someone add gray tint to it. It is dun, white tinted gray. It is actually one of the off whites someone might choose to have a room painted, but looking at it now, I wonder why?

Well what do you know. The sun must have peeped thru a cloud somewhere because suddenly for an instant the dimmer went off, and it all brightened out there and turned lovely. But now the dimmer is back on. It lasted an instant but it was glorious. I guess this gray is chosen instead of white (for a room or background color) because it is easy on the eyes. But it is not! It is simply unattractive to the eyes, it merely makes light dim.

O there is that brightening again, but not as bright and not as long, just for an instant, brighter than before but still a treat. The memory that the world is really bright, and all the brightness in the world will return.

The vegetation is glorying in all the rain tho. Even tho it is mid December they love this gentle steady rain day after day. The vegetation is flourishing, we will have a beautiful spring. And the birds are energized by it. For them their desert has turned into a wonderful forest, their world is transformed.

It is chilly and damp and not my cup of tea, but it is so fresh that it brings a lift anyway. There is an odd excitement to this day, which belongs to the trees. This is their day. They bathe and bathe in lovely rain water, they drink and drink of lovely rainwater. The earth at their feet is soft and mushy just the way they like it. It is the world of moisture, a big treat for trees on arid desert.

Jan and Harry are planning to return to this world, a world which has water in it. The world of lakes and ponds and streams and waterfalls. A world of trees galore with huge green leaves. A world where the earth is not sand, but that dark brown thing you see in forests. A world which has ferns in it, they are returning to the world of ferns.

They lived in the woods for so long and loved the woods so much, that I can understand they are returning to their first love. I was a woods girl once myself. I remember being deeply profoundly in love with the forest, and the forest lakes, and the animals who live in the forest, the beavers who build their dams.

Now I would never leave the beauty of the Southwest. For me brilliant sunshine and flawless blue skies have come to represent heaven. A world of sparkling mind-boggling beauty. And I am used to being dry and warm all the time, happy as a lark. I would never return to the land of gray cloudy days, the world I came from.

I am no longer a woods girl of forest lakes. Altho a part of my heart will always belong to the water lilies which grow on top of them, and the seaweed which grows at the bottom of them, and the joy of a soft sandy bottom, and a canoe gliding thru and past the water lilies.

But now I am a girl of the Tucson city swim pools. The enchantment of lakes is just a sweet memory, like a lovely border around my mind. If I go too far away in any direction, it will bring me back to the sweet lakes of the Adirondacks. But the center of it now is this new world, where there are no dimmers. Where the sun is always at its brightest wattage. And the beauty is breathtaking. And everything is always in full color, sharpest clear most vibrant color there is.

The Tucson swim pools may not be an adventure into nature but they have their own happy spirit. They were designed for Tucson children to splash in and have fun in the whole long desert summer. And that atmosphere is still there, even tho the only ones who swim in it all thru the chilly winter are grown ups. And there is another kind of sweetness to them, water lilies they have not, but lifeguards lovely as water lilies abound. And it’s nice to stand on the deck, while you are summoning courage to dive in, and chitchat with one of the lovely waterlily lifeguards. They are that pure Tucson breed. Common sense, good sense, intelligence, kindness, friendliness, and conviviality. I don’t know where they get their clear minds from, perhaps the desert is conducive to clear mind. And their friendliness has pureness and sweetness to it too, like flowers on the desert. Which you notice so much and appreciate so much because there is no profusion. Beautiful days we have in glorious abundance here, but flowers are special. Tucson does not have the profusion of people New York City has, so the lovely friendliness of each one is fully noticed.

Swimming in the Tucson swimming pools is a social experience not an adventure into nature. But a lovely social experience. And altho no one in their right mind wants to go swimming on day like today, for some reason it still works. You’re out in the air, under the sky, swimming your laps. Your mind does empty itself, you do relax in water just warm enough to keep going. It is satisfying movement in water. And you do come out a new person. It is a form of yoga. Then you cross your fingers the showers are hot. And arrive back in the parking lot a new person. You leave with joie de vivre, which is all we ask of life, isn’t it?

Love, Annie

"My Mother’s Boyfriends"

Morelia, Mexico by Felix Pasilis

Happy Anniversary Mom

written Friday, December 7, 2007

This is the date my parents planned to marry but they postponed it to the next day because President Roosevelt said this date will live in infamy. They didn’t want to marry on the date which will live in infamy. My mom had just turned 23 and my dad had just turned 29.

She had had a lot of boyfriends in Rochester before she came to NYC to go to nursing school. The stories of her boyfriends were one of the stories she told when I came down with something and had to spend the whole day in bed, and we were up in the country, there was no radio or TV to divert me. She would move me into her big double bed which faced the window giving out onto the driveway and the road. And lie down next to me and tell me stories. The story of how she met daddy. The story of the doctors at the hospital she dated before she met daddy, and how the nursing students had a curfew, so the doctor would turn on the siren to bring her back in time for curfew and how much she loved racing thru the Manhattan streets with the siren blasting away.

And she told me about her boyfriends back in Rochester before she came to New York. The boyfriends were all named Max. One took her to the country club and dancing and in his convertible. The other took her to classical music concerts and they talked about books. I think that was the Max who worked at his father’s hardware store. And when I was very little girl and she went back to Rochester to see her dad and visit her relatives, I remember walking with my mom somewhere in Rochester and suddenly a man was in step with her, very happy to talk to her. And this was one of the Maxes. This was before I knew about her boyfriends. All I knew was a very eager young man, who seemed to like my mom a lot, was delighted to see her and talk to her. I am sure she introduced me, “this is my daughter Annie,” but he only had eyes for her. Everyone else we had seen was a relative, and they were very interested in Marion’s daughter and the new addition to the family. But Max was only interested in Marion.

He was perfectly willing to forget about me. And Marion seemed like she was half into forgetting about me and half into remembering me. I’m not saying my mother was embarrassed, but there was something inexplicable about her emotion when she was with him. She didn’t act the same way she did when she was with her relatives. She was a different Marion. She was not the Marion of her family, but Marion, an independent attractive girl who had been this guy’s girlfriend, and she was half in one, half in the other. I don’t know if she was constrained because I was there, or she was constrained because she was now wife and mother. Max was perfectly willing to forget it, but Marion wasn’t.

I was very interested in the very eager dark-haired young man, clearly so enthusiastic about my mother, and who talked to her in that intimate way as if I did not exist and was so overjoyed to see her.

I realize now he is the only one of my mom’s former boyfriends I ever did meet. The Max of the country club allure I never met. The doctors who put on their sirens to give my mom a thrill I never met. Neither did I meet her New York boyfriend, the guy she had been dating when she met my father. Altho because his father owned a store on 5th Avenue which sold pianos and organs, I can see the store window in my mind occasionally.

My father never mentioned his previous girlfriends to me, altho sometimes we would go to the ballet or a concert at Carnegie Hall, or something, and he would point at a woman in the third row and say “that is the woman I wanted to marry.” And I would look at her, and be so surprised. She wasn’t one bit pretty like my mom. She looked like a short dumpy woman not attractive and not particularly friendly. “All the boys wanted her,” my dad would say, “she didn’t choose me.” And I would be so surprised at this femme fatale of my dad’s circles before he met my mom. She looked like some classic Jewish New Yorker, a type I never felt that comfortable with. My mom was a long legged beauty athlete from Rochester, and my dad's former inamorata looked like she didn’t know what a tennis racquet was. My dad would have awe in his voice when he pointed her out to me, as if the guy who could land her was so much better than him. And I guess you could say that was the only one of my father’s former girlfriends that I ever did meet.

Altho I don’t know if Edna Pincus ever was a girlfriend, or he just had a crush on her from afar. He certainly pointed her out from a distance to me.

She didn’t look like a girl my mom’s boyfriend Max from Rochester would give a second look at. And whatever her mystique was it didn’t carry to me either. And part of me knew my dad was lucky he had not succeeded in landing his dreamboat. She looked like someone I would feel uncomfortable with.

It’s odd now that my dad never talked very much about his bachelor life before he met my mom. It’s almost as if it were a former life in a former lifetime. He had been to Mexico on his sabbatical and brought back from it a mandolin and whole lot of tiny black and white photos. And he taught me how to order eggs and toast in Spanish.

I guess he’s just not a story teller. Practically every time we went walking in midtown Manhattan some man would run into him and say “Leon!” totally delightedly and my dad would be totally delighted to see him too and they would talk a little. But my dad never bothered to tell me the story of how and when they had been friends. He would turn happy amazed face to me and say “we were friends 20 years ago.”

When he took me ice skating at Wollman Memorial Rink in Central Park and taught me how to ice skate, this was when we still lived in Manhattan, he would always run into one of his students. “Mr. Wilensky!” they would say all excited. And he would introduce me to a beautiful young man, and he would say “this is my daughter Annie, can you take her around?” And I would hold the boy’s hand while he helped me ice skate around the rink.

When you are a little girl there is nothing as beautiful thrilling and exiting as a beautiful teenager. I was far more exited meeting my father’s students from Seward Park High School then meeting his dowdy former inamorata in the auditorium of Carnegie Hall.

These were dashing young men of romance.

My father left a whole life behind when he moved to the hinterlands of Queens, almost as much as my mom had when she left Rochester for New York. My father was every inch a New Yorker, a Manhattanite, he had never lived anywhere else. Our neighbors all came from Brooklyn or from the Lower East Side but my dad had grown up playing on the rocks in Central Park, had gone to City College and Baruch College, and had an apartment of his own on Riverside Drive, way high up. All of Manhattan had been his world. He played tennis in Central Park, went to Carnegie Hall and on his first date with my mom took her on walk around the reservoir in Central Park.

In fact his first date with my mom was for a concert at Carnegie Hall. My mom’s best friend at nursing school, Ruth, who was also from Rochester, was dating a guy. The guy’s friend was Leon. Apparently there were 4 tickets for the concert at Carnegie Hall that night, and Ruth asked Marion if she wanted to go with her boyfriend’s friend. Marion said sure.

Marion was available that Friday night because her boyfriend, where they had steady date for Friday nights, decided to teach her a lesson. He felt that Marion did not show enough interest in him. So he decided to pique her interest. He would not call her for their Friday night date, that way she would miss him and be excited to see him the following week. So dateless Marion accepted the blind date with Leon, the friend of her friend’s fiancé.

Leon got home from school teaching on the lower east side. It was Friday night after long week of school teaching, and the long trip on the subway to get home. He decided he was comfortable at home and did not want to get dressed up, take the subway and go to Carnegie Hall. He would just not show up. But at the last minute he changed his mind, decided he wanted to go anyway, and arrived at the concert late. Obviously the blind date was a success because I am here now writing this. After the concert he took her for a long walk around the reservoir. My mom said they discovered they had so much in common. She fell in love with my dad “because of his vocabulary, he sounded so educated." And that night she wrote her dad she met a wonderful man.

Two weeks later they married, they had had 3 dates. Her boyfriend had apoplexy. He had kept her waiting for two consecutive Friday nights now, the two Friday nights she went out with Leon. When he called her to say “let’s go out Friday,” she said “I can’t, I’m getting married.” Raymond was very mad, he had made her do without him, so she would be enthusiastic about him. He said “you can’t marry him you just met him.” “I am marrying him” Marion said. “How can you be so impetuous!” he said. Raymond must have had quite a vocabulary himself. Who calls the woman who jilts him “impetuous”! It is a word I have never once used in real life, and would never consider using at the height of emotion.

Exit Raymond, who she didn’t marry. Enter Leon, who she did. They married on a Friday morning at City Hall, she wore a suit. He took her to Longchamps afterwards for lunch. Then they went to her apartment, she had just started to share with her friend from nursing school, and got all her stuff. And moved it to Leon’s apartment on Riverside Drive. Then because he had tickets for Carnegie Hall that night, they walked to Carnegie Hall and walked home again.

Everyone forbade my mother from marrying my father after only 3 dates. Raymond the jilted lover said she is not allowed to do something so impetuous. And her parents wrote her she is not allowed to do this.

But she did and 15 months later I was born. I have the letter she wrote to my dad in the hospital the day after I was born (she sent it to me on my birthday last year). She said the nurse had brought the baby out to her that morning, and she had gotten a chance to take a good look at her, and the baby had a chance to take a good look at her. And baby must have liked her because she did not scream. And then she had her breakfast and read the New York Times. And there was a review of the concert at Carnegie Hall that night. And how did Leon enjoy it? and who did he get to take with him to it?

The day I was born my mom was sitting up in bed writing to my dad about the concert at Carnegie Hall.