Friday, September 9, 2011
Sunday, July 31, 2011
Monday, July 25, 2011
Friday, July 8, 2011
Fishing With The Webster Brothers - Out Of Greenport, NY - Sept. 2010
Fishing With The Webster Brothers Sept 2010. From Greenport, Long Island, we chugged out on the charter boat Peconic Star. It was a gorgeous, shiny, autumn day, the chubby little porgies were jumping onto our clam-baited hooks. On the cruise back, we had a little bridge top dance down, cigars and the general mayhem and hilarity. Thrown in is the Lido Beach Hotel and the Montauk Lighthouse, Long Island icons dear to my heart. As are the Webster bros. Along with a Mr. Charlie tribute.
Tuesday, June 21, 2011
Father's Day 2011
It’s Father’s Day and I figured a good way to deal with it would be a vigorous, sweaty, distracting yoga class. It was a good idea. We got to that last part, the relaxing, welcome part where you just let everything go. Sometimes it brings tears, sometimes laughter, sometimes just pure…“thank God that’s over.”
This time I was flooded with memories of my father. I couldn’t seem to settle on one. My eyes closed, my body limp, I pictured him on the golf course, in plaid pants, lanky and lean, flicking cigarette butts like Arnold Palmer. I pictured him smiling at Pete Fountain’s jazz club in New Orleans. I pictured the back of his handsome head driving the Country Squire station wagon out to Eastern Long Island, cigarette smoke floating around his head. I saw him staring at the Herb Alpert album cover with the whipped cream girl on the cover. I saw him landing in a small plane on Nantucket to spend a summer weekend with us. Him walking through the back den door after a long workday in the city, cheerfully roaring “greetings” to us all. I felt his fingers stroking through my hair, counting to a hundred, while I fell asleep as a little girl. I saw him in church, with his eyes closed, savoring that weekly one hour of peace. Dancing with my beautiful mother to “The Bells Are Ringing For Me and My Gal” as we watched from the stairs in awe.
I saw him on Christmas morning, full of pent up excitement, mixed in with a little hangover. Concocting a massive salad in his favorite salad bowl, artichoke hearts, roasted red peppers, plum tomatoes, gorgonzola, extra extra virgin olive oil. I saw him sitting in his favorite chair, the old leather reclining one. I saw him forever tapping his foot and slapping his knees at the best music ever. I saw him playing the snare drums, accompanying Count Basie. Sitting in his lap following the bouncing ball with Mitch Miller. Sipping a glass of wine, surveying his “estate” from the lawn chair overlooking the bay. I saw him being a good son to his mother, a good husband to my mother and a good brother to my uncle. I heard him belting out The Summer Wind and My Way. I smelled the Old Spice, the English Leather and the Aramis Devin.
These images came at me rapid fire and I couldn’t land on one. It was good thing I was lying down, my head was spinning. Couldn’t stop.
So I asked him. Simply. In my mind. “How do you want me to remember you, Dad?” Before I could complete the thought, there was one word that blew through my head. In his voice. Booming. Echoing. Reverberating. Definitive.
“Love,” he said.
“I want you to remember me as love.”
Tuesday, June 7, 2011
Remembering My Friend John
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| John, 1971, Southold, New York |
It’s never too late to divulge a memory. We should do it more often. Especially a memory of someone we have lost. We all have such different experiences; it can be so comforting to hear what others felt about a loved one. And what they shared.
I think about my friend John often. He was one of my earliest and dearest friends. This photo is from 1971 and I remember him from years before that. This picture always stops me as it captures just how complex a person he was. He was caring. He was troubled. John had dark brown eyes that at one moment would radiate life and the next reveal a gripping void. I saw how gentle he was with animals. He loved the beach and the stars and the moon. He sat alone on the giant sand heap near the canal a lot.
What people teach us at a young age is so important.
We had a wooden raft that our parents used to anchor up out in the bay for the summer. We'd swim out to it and dive off it all day long. We'd sit on it and laugh and talk and push each other off. John and David, my two buddies, would dive under it and swim the length of it underwater. It was about 10 feet wide and long, couldn't have been much bigger, and they would both emerge out of the other side while I sat on top of it. They were triumphant, popping up like happy dolphins. I was in awe that they would risk what I perceived as imminent danger.
I was deathly afraid of swimming under the raft as I imagined that it would suck me up half way through and I’d run out of air pockets, gasp my last breath and then drown, stuck to the slimy bottom like a barnacle. Over-imaginative, dramatic to be sure. And, needless to say, my two buddies thought I was a big, whiney baby.
So, one day, at their urging and taunting, I took the dare. I was in a two-piece bathing suit - red, white and blue. I looked like a flagpole. I was petrified, shivering, and blue with fear. All 95 pounds of me. Skinny legs. Flat chest. Pseudo nerves of steel. I took a big breath, plunged down and started to swim under the raft.
Half way through, I panicked.
I cut to the side and came out at the half way mark, gasping for air, spitting out salty water. When I could finally focus, I couldn't believe what I saw. The two of them huffing and puffing, pushing the raft. My immediate reaction was that they were pushing it away from where I started as to make my trip longer. Again, I panicked. I swam as fast as I could to shore and ran into my house, into my room, a crying mess. They hated me. They were trying to kill me.
Not long after, John came to my house and my mother told him I didn't want to see him. So he left. I watched from behind a curtain upstairs in my parent's room. He had on his usual droopy olive green t-shirt and denim cut-off shorts. He had wide, bony shoulders and as he walked away, barefooted, his head hung down and his brown curly hair bounced. He looked sad.
That evening, around sunset, he came over and threw stones at my window, which was at the back of the house. I snapped up the window shade and peered down. He looked up, and sang. Actually sang.
"Dear Prudence, won't you come to play?"
I was at that teenage crush age. If any boy looked past my freckles and stick body and stringy red hair, he was my next crush. But this was John and he was my best friend, and he sang to me. I went downstairs and out the back door.
We walked down the rocky driveway to the beach and sat on a little knob of grass in front of our neighbor’s house. He explained that what they were doing was actually pushing the raft towards my entry point so my underwater swimming jaunt would be shorter. They knew how scared I was. They were trying to help me make it to the other side.
I'll never forget that.
It taught me volumes about trust. I think about that day sometimes when I get scared. I remember that they cared enough to want to help me. I remember that things are not always as they seem. So I keep swimming.
And there isn't one, single, solitary time when I hear the Beatles sing "Dear Prudence" that I don't think about John.
The impact people have on each other can be life changing, unbeknownst to anyone, especially the recipient. Until it hits you. I miss him and I wish I had gotten to know him as a grown up. I never got the chance, as he died a short few years after that day.
Saturday, June 4, 2011
Emma DeCoste 2011
Meet Emma DeCoste, junior tennis champ. Emma finished her 10th year as #1 in "10 & Under," USTA Juniors/Florida. Now 11 years old, she has Grand Slam aspirations, specifically the French Open, and I don't doubt for a minute that she'll make it.
I was struck with not only her tennis skills, but her poise, her unflappable focus, her wit and her insight. A young lady with a big heart, a warm smile and fierce determination.
I was struck with not only her tennis skills, but her poise, her unflappable focus, her wit and her insight. A young lady with a big heart, a warm smile and fierce determination.
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