Beginning. Again.

 

I don’t know how to begin this piece because I don’t yet know where I am in this story. The beginnings and endings have become blurred. Perhaps, I will begin here simply for the sake of starting somewhere.

May 29^th, 2007. Late evening, the lazy summer sun just beginning to set. Ali and I met for drinks and dinner in our city neighborhood. I remember where we ate. I remember where we sat. I remember that I was seriously contemplating moving back to Maui to give that life a try. The details of our lingering conversation remain fuzzy, but I do know that by the time we said goodbye on the corner of 104^th, Ali heading into her building on the north side of the street and me into mine on the south, the night was deep and I had decided to move off my urban island. The next morning, she dropped off an 8 ½ by 11 piece of paper on which she had typed a quote by Goethe. I came across it the other day in an old journal.

Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness. Concerning all acts of initiative (& creation) there is one elementary truth – the ignorance of which kills countless ideas of splendid plans - that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves, too…

Yesterday morning, a young, Hawaiian woman ground a bag of coffee for me at a local coffee shop. She had a tattoo, big, bold, swooping across and around her neck. I couldn’t quite make it out as it wrapped around. Couldn’t see the beginning or the ending – both were hidden, veiled by her long, thick, deep hair. So I asked. She told me it was the name of a wind that blows on the Big Island carrying the scent of a certain flower.

Today I live in a land of many winds.

All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one’s favor all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance which no man could have dreamed would come his way…

In the dawn hours of a Wednesday morning this April, I awoke to an email offering me a job back in New York City. I would spend the year with 7 and 8 year olds, exploring the Hudson River. We would build and play and investigate and question and learn and grow. Again, I would mentor new teachers. Again, I would create. I would be near H and O and friends and afternoons spent wandering through my favorite narrow West Village streets or a new exhibit at Moma. My decision was clear. I was ready to go. I called the movers for quotes. I booked a ticket back to the city to apartment hunt. I found a realtor; she started sending me listings. The New Yorker arrived in my mailbox and there, on the cover, was a drawing of a dog, a spitting image of Petey, chilling on his city stoop. It’s a sign, I thought.

Meanwhile, the island became brighter somehow. Every rainbow, every cane field sweeping yellows and greens, every grey cloud afternoon, and the ocean shifting from slate to deep green to the clearest of pale blues. I wanted to be here now so I could be there soon.  For years, I had been asking for clarity and here it was. This is what it felt like.

The school year came to an end on June first. There were hugs, leis, good wishes and then I drove down the mountain. Ready. On second night of June, I went to a new friend’s home for a small get together. Dessert. Wine. He was the first person I saw in the small gathering.  I introduced myself. Offered my hand. He told me his name. Took my hand.

If someone else were telling me this part of the story, I’d be hesitant. Skeptical. Perhaps even write it off. Even I am tempted to do so.

Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin. Boldness has genius, power, and magic

in it. Begin it now…

For Steph.

With love, Ali.

In the fitful, sleepless early morning hours of May 30, 2007.

Two movies play in my head. Two versions of my life that co-exist in parallel times. In one, I am walking up the stone sidewalk along Riverside Park towards school, fall leaves twisting and twirling down to the hard ground below my feet, coffee thermos in hand. Music streams from a window. The yeasty, warm smell of bagels draws me across Broadway. I breathe and my breath is visible, a cool cloud.

In the other, the setting is less clear. The cast is changing. Auditions are still underway. Perhaps the path below my feet is paved. Perhaps it is sandy. Perhaps there is a honeysweet breeze flitting past. Perhaps it is another detour. Perhaps not.

“Hallo!” said Piglet, ‘what are you doing?’

“Hunting,” said Pooh.

“Hunting what?”

“Tracking something,” said Winnie-the-Pooh very mysteriously.

“Tracking what?’ said Piglet coming closer.

“That’s just what I ask myself. I ask myself, What?”

“What do you think you’ll answer?”

“I shall have to wait until I catch up with it.”

Fred

O and I went out for dinner last night. I wanted to do something special to mark the occasion that I was not unemployed.

In April, a company-wide email announced a “reduction in workforce” that would be completed before the end of the fiscal year, June 30. Dozens of qualifying employees were offered early retirement packages. My boss was one of them; he took it.

Nine years ago, I was temping at an office that didn’t need me. I sat for hours a day minding the desk of a woman never in town, whose phone rarely rang. After several days of being paid to appreciate the close-up view of the Chrysler building across the street from where I sat, I called my agency and told them I would go stir crazy if I held this gig much longer. Soon enough, I was walking into an interview with the best boss I’ve ever had.

His office was filled from floor to ceiling with memorabilia of his life in music. Framed photos lined every shelf and all the walls. As I sat down in front of him, he said without looking up from my resume, “It’s between you and one other person, and I’m leaning towards you.” He asked me where I’d grown up. When I mentioned Rome, his eyes lit up. When was I there, he asked. As it happened, while I had been going to pre-school in my pint-sized burgundy blazer and gray skirt uniform, he had been hosting a radio show from the station he owned a few miles away. In 1976, he had been the host of the July 4th bicentennial celebration for ex-pats at the American School of Rome. My family had been there. I sat before this man whose life’s path had intersected with mine almost thirty years earlier. And here we were, again.

I got the job.

It was supposed to be a temporary assignment but three months later, I accepted a permanent position. I told myself it was for the salary, the health insurance. Just until my acting career got off the ground, I said. My boss wanted to promote me. I resisted, for fear of additional responsibility. We argued about it. At one point, he yelled, “let me give you more money!!!” to which I yelled back, “I don’t want it!!!” I got the promotion and the raise that came with it. I quit acting. He put me through a Professional Skills Certification course. I got married. Despite his having had heart surgery five days prior, his was the first face I saw as we approached the venue. He was waiting at the entrance, his camera ready.

The man who became a father figure, my mentor and a friend was now leaving, and suddenly the job I never meant to have was now the job I needed.

I found out on June 28 that my name was not on the list for the chopping block.
The next day, I walked with my boss as he headed out of the office. Bereft of the company ID no longer affixed to his shirt pocket, he stepped into the elevator, rolling his suitcase filled with the last personal contents of his desk drawers.

Our paths have crossed twice already. If it happens once more, I’ll be the luckier for it.

Daddy: A Memory

It was summer. I was seventeen. I had managed to snag my first job – the late afternoon to closing shift at a local Dunkin Donuts. I proudly donned my yellow, orange and brown donut tree dress and headed off to the neon lit rectangle on the edge of town. Our customers were primarily day-trippers leaving the Rhode Island beaches, stopping on the way out to Providence and Boston and places beyond for their ‘large, light, sweet’ and boxes full of crullers. I only remember one regular. Willy. He was a small man with greased back, wavy hair. While I managed the counter and drive-through window, he’d sit on a stool and talk with me, a naïve teenager still new to America. I didn't mind working on my own in the afternoons, but when the last steaks of sunset retreated into the  empty night, the space was too quiet. After closing, I'd lock the doors, croon along to Journey, and close down the shop. My last job was to throw out the uneaten doughnuts, dragging the garbage bags out and heaving them into the dumpster at the back of the parking lot.

My father didn’t like it. I called the manager and asked to be  put on the late shift with a co-worker. But no, if I wanted the job it was me and me alone. So I stayed. From then on, every night that I worked that shift, my father would show up just as I was closing. My tall, strong father, most comfortable in a shirt and tie, or slacks and polo – not once in my life did I see him wear a pair of jeans – my father, the spy, who made phone calls from train stations in northern Europe, my father who would leave for work in his trench coat and hat, briefcase in grip, my father the ultimate host, poised behind his bar, telling stories, pouring drinks, his thick fingers dipping into the orange, plastic bowl of salty peanuts, his deep, explosive laugh bouncing off the walls. We worked in silence, side by side. As I mopped the floors, he wiped dried icing off the display case shelves with a damp towel.  And then he’d help me haul the day’s unsold donuts out back.

With the store shut and locked, we headed home together, my car following his. Or perhaps, his car followed mine. Perhaps we drove side by side down the four-lane Route 1 through Westerly, passing JC Penny,  McDonald’s, the movie theatre, the Chinese restaurant and down towards the river, turning onto quiet, tree lined Elm Street. Number 9. Home.

(Below, After Westerly, written in 2006. Dedicated to my father.)

After Westerly

Elm Street, number 9.

The door, a new family green.

Someone else's car

parked in the drive.

The memory of my mother

perches inside on a kitchen stool,

Peter Jennings talking news,

a cocktail on the counter,

dinner on the stove.

My sister and I bounce

down carpeted stairs

to set the table,

light the candles,

pour the milk.

Upstairs, my father

pecks at the typewriter,

a green mug full of coffee cold

standing guard.

At dinner, he builds boats

out of orange rinds and toothpicks,

and sails them across the table.

Most evenings, he walks Riley,

their respite

from a house full of women.

He wears the navy blue trench coat

that I now wear,

so boxy

I can barely reach the bottom of the pockets.

After Westerly;

I think that maybe if I stand outside,

he’ll do so again, passing by

the thirty-four year old me

he’s never seen.

In the city, a photo hangs on my fridge

of my parents laughing at the end of a party,

their arms flung high,

my mother shoeless

in black stocking feet.

On Skin, and the More and Less of it.

Today was my routine six month appointment with my dermatologist. Thanks to my remarkably thorough Northern European heritage on both sides, and a hardy dose of melanoma in my family history, neither I nor my dermatologist take these meetings lightly. I cannot leave a dermatology office without a divot of skin removed. Consequently, my body now looks like the landscape of a golf course practice tee.
It started at an age when I was too young to appreciate that the mole removed from somewhere in the vicinity of my undeveloped breasts would, as my pediatrician phrased it, “not distract from the bikini” I would one day wear. These inspections continued through college, when I would come home over school break and submit to the smattering of mole removals from foot, finger, lower back. Once I became an adult with my own insurance, I approached the task of finding the right skin remover with due diligence: the office was close to mine. I could squeeze in a visit over my lunch hour.
One should not underestimate the emotional duress of undergoing a full-body scrutiny for the first time. Where there is skin, there could be skin cancer. In short, lots of nakedness is involved, and I’m the only one playing this game. The day came when I donned my birthday suit in front of Dr. Kim. We upheld all statutes of professional decorum, enduring the breast-lifting to look beneath, and the – yes, I’ll say it – cheek-spreading, to, ahem, cover all bases.
Then I moved away for a while.
When I returned to New York, by pure coincidence, my new job was in the same neighborhood and offered the same insurance. I scheduled a follow-up. In the exam room, I sat with nothing on but a flimsy paper dress tied shut with a plastic string serving as a meager nod towards dignity. I comforted myself that at least he’d seen it all before. In walked Dr. Kim.
Only.
It wasn’t the Dr. Kim who had seen my most private nooks and crannies a year earlier. It was, by sheer dumb luck, a different Dr. Kim who just happened to succeed the other Dr. Kim.
What’re the odds, I ask?
The amusement factor got me through the new once-over (so unfair), and then that asshole got married and moved to New Jersey. Next! His successor sang the praises of cosmetic enhancements. Her successor is who I saw today.
I’ve gotten over the whole naked thing. It could be that this is my fifth doctor. It could be that I’m getting too old for modesty. These days I show up, I strip to my skivvies, and she sees more of me than I do.
My laissez-faire attitude does not extend to my age. Today, I asked her about my skin care options for my aging forehead, stressing that I was going to be 39 this year. My doctor, who is as white as I am – and I make this point because there are some ethnicities for whom aging seems magically elusive – chuckled, and said, “I’m sorry to laugh, but I’m 62.”
This woman doesn’t look a day over 45. The secret of her success?
“Sunscreen.”
I understand that the Evil Rays will age me before my time. I already am that freak who will spend a day at the beach wearing a sun hat and SPF 50 while sitting under an umbrella. But this woman either has the best sunscreen known to man, or there’s a painting getting older in an attic somewhere. Regardless, my faith in all things Shade has been renewed.
I may be dragged to 39 kicking and screaming, but I’ll get there pale as a ghost and with one less wrinkle on my face. And one more divot on my body.

Taking Off.

Ten years ago this summer, I landed on Maui for the very first time. It was late and dark and I couldn't see a thing, but the air was gentle, warm, sweet.

My dear friend, Katie, and I rented the ubiquitous tourist Sebring, and drove off into the inky night, convertible top down. I had no sense of the island or lay of the land; I didn't know we were driving across the flat of Central Maui, or that our route to Lahaina was carved into the hills of the West Maui mountains. All I knew was that the sky was saturated with bright stars, the salty ocean was nearby, and it felt heavenly. I woke early the next morning from a jet-lag heavy sleep and stepped out onto the beach. Behind me, bright, green mountains stretched toward the blue sky, a light morning drizzle lending to their sparkle. In front of me, volcanic islands rose from the sea.

Yesterday, I came across a photo of that very first morning. I’m in a yellow bikini, arms raised exuberantly at the wonder surrounding me. I remember thinking that I'd had no idea this beauty existed. And, I thought, I need to be here.

So I moved here. Twice.

The first time I moved was for ten months, a delicious break from what hurt. During those delirious, free-spirited months, I steeped myself in life on a tropical island. And I lived in three different places. My first six months were spent in a clean, simple vacation rental in the lush countryside of Haiku. My view reminded me of the picture on the back of the old Cornflakes box; vast meadows, golden sun, birds in the sky. I then moved down the coast into the small neighborhood of Kuau, makai side. I lived in a tiny pale, yellow cottage where the kitchen sink doubled as the bathroom sink, and the mildew-speckled refrigerator stood outside. A black and white coral beach was a stone's throw away. When the owner decided to move back into the space, I found yet another temporary home. My final stop was a light and breeze-filled apartment atop a garage, a short, plumeria scented, bike-ride to a mile-long sandy beach. And to get to my Volleyball 101 class, I biked along the airport’s runways.

Without realizing it, with each new home, I had moved closer and closer to the airport. Six weeks later I was back in Manhattan.

This time, I’ve lived in Maui for five years. Again I’ve had three different homes. This last one, my lovely studio in Spreklesville, happens to have again landed me right beside the airport. And soon I will be taking off for New York City, a one-way ticket in hand.

People have asked me why I'd leave the beauty of this island, the perfect weather, the warm year-round sun for the grit of the city, the unpleasant smells, the horrible summer humidity. Fair questions. I wonder about those things, as well. I am not tired of the beauty, the sun, the sea, the full moon over Haleakala, the jungles full of ginger and waterfalls. No, I am not.  I can list the reasons for my move if pushed to do so. I can appeal to my, and perhaps your, logical side. But in the end, there is just a knowing that it is time to go back… for now.

From the beach by my house, I see the planes as they take off. And from the path where I run, I can see them land. I often stop and wait for the plane to touch down. I watch it take the traditional landing route, heading away from me as it crosses the island to make a giant u-turn over the south side. It glides back towards me into the head winds, easing its way down gradually until it touches the ground, roaring its arrival.

Each time, I wonder if there is someone on the plane landing for the first time. Looking out the window. Excited. Wondering what it will be like. And each time, I whisper a welcome and I wonder if - no, hope - they will experience even a little of the magic that I have.

Distance is Relative

When I met O., I was living on the Upper East Side. He lived in the East Village. Our apartments were 76 blocks from one another. By car that translates to less than 3 miles, but in terms of (fastest) public transportation, that amounted to a 5 minute walk + a bus + train + transfer + another 5 minute walk = 45 minute commute. By Manhattan neighborhood math, this is considered not close. By Manhattan standards, we had a long distance relationship.

Dating O entailed planning ahead, packing bags for the weekend, lugging around the next day’s wrinkled work clothes, gym clothes, and any other foreseen necessities. I often complained that I felt like a beast of burden. When my lease was up for renewal, O asked me to move in with him. I’m pretty certain it was largely motivated by the welcome idea that we wouldn’t have to have yet another conversation about whose turn it was to do the bag-toting.

O has lived in Manhattan all his life, most of which time has been spent below 14th Street. Whenever our conversations veers towards the notion that we one day move to a larger apartment, what we are really talking about is whether the rental rates will force us to leave Manhattan for a land far away and across a river. To Brooklyn, for instance.

This weekend, we found ourselves trying to get to Red Hook for dinner with friends – 8 miles from home. Train stations were under construction, an electrical “situation” was forcing re-routes on multiple lines. We hailed a cab. The driver wouldn’t go to Red Hook. We hailed another cab, and then spent an eternity in bumper to bumper traffic trying to get to the Brooklyn Bridge. We watched the taxi meter tick away while we made progress at the rate of an inch a minute. Our frustrations amplified as the time that we were due at our destination came and went and we hadn’t even left Manhattan.

In the middle of this, I thought of my sister in Maui and her proclaimed woes of traffic in her little North Shore town. I thought of her decision to move back to New York.

I thought of how I can’t wait to have her back here. I daydreamed: We will meet in Central Park for a run; we will window-shop in Soho; we will sip afternoon cocktails in a cozy French bistro on a lazy Sunday; we will get stuck on a train platform due to “an earlier incident,” and we will miss the start of our foreign movie at Lincoln Plaza.

I thought of these things as O and the driver volleyed directions back and forth to one another, each getting more heated with yet another wrong turn.

My sister has been living 5000 miles away from me for five years. I want her to be glad she came back. I’ll start by not making her travel to Brooklyn. At least not for a while.

April: Remembering Rwanda

It’s April in Maui. The sun is hotter, the ocean is warmer, and the whales have begun to head back to their summer homes.

In Rwanda, April is a month of mourning.

One of the first questions I am often asked when someone hears I visited two summers ago is if I felt safe. If I felt scared.

Eighteen years ago this April in Rwanda, the killings began. In the short span of one hundred days, eight hundred thousand men, women and children were killed, many by machetes. It’s hard to wrap the mind around. Before my visit, I began to read about the genocide. I wanted to understand a little of the history of this place where I was headed. I brought the books with me.

Rwanda means land of a thousand hills, and the hills ripple in the distance like a vast ocean of green. Every day for the better part of three weeks, I walked a dirt path with my colleagues. Along the way from the orphanage where we were staying to the school where we were working, the green hills dazzled as we took in our surroundings: thatched houses, children in threadbare clothes, women drumming, people carrying water, leaves, branches on their heads, sorghum piled high outside homes, laundry drying on the tips of shrubs.

As we kicked dry, red dirt up behind us, the villagers in this small, rural town would call out, Mwaramutse! Good morning! When we passed back through, they'd call out, Mwiriwe! Good afternoon! We greeted them in return, and were rewarded by smiles and laughter. Others watched us silently.

Sometimes as I walked alone in my thoughts, the only noise would be that of the women hacking away at stalks of maize with their machetes.

800,000 people. Neighbors killed neighbors. Family killed family.

Most days, our thoughts and talk revolved around daily life. Our work, the teachers and the children, our meals of boiled potatoes and tough meat, our daily habit of buying Coca Cola in glass bottles from the bare walled room of a house that doubled as a shop. In the evenings, the teenagers at the orphanage played Jenga with us and listened to 50 cent.

One night, we stopped at a gas station on our way back from a trip to the city. The electricity was out and the gas station’s shop was lit by candles. In the dark, we picked out snacks from almost empty shelves - British cookies and chocolate. Later we learned that the cost of our nighttime snack was equivalent to that of the vice principle’s monthly salary at the school. Our van continued on. As we wound round the country road towards the orphanage, someone pointed to a mine. That’s where the dead townspeople were thrown, someone said.

I stopped reading about Rwanda’s genocide when I was there. I was too immersed in the experience itself to be able to process the history. Also, I’d had a couple of bad dreams. So, instead, I read Julia Child’s My Life in France. Under the mosquito netting and by the light of a bare bulb, I read about fish fried in butter, bottles of wine, apple tarts.

Now and then, a few of those I met in Rwanda email me or find me on Facebook. They tell me about their studies, their friends. One young, women with whom I’ve stayed in touch gifted me big, brown, woven earrings when I left. She is beautiful, but also kind, one of those people whose hope and goodness seems to radiate out from within. Her Facebook pictures show her dressed up, laughing and dancing with her friends. She is in love with a young man who is away studying in New York. They see each other once a year when he returns home. She works in an office to help pay for her university studies. Her father was murdered in the genocide when she was four. He was drowned in the river.

I was afraid only once. It was night and my roommate, another teacher, and I were awoken by a flurry of voices outside our room. It sounded like a crowd gathering. She and I peered through the window shade at the shadows racing by. We crouched beneath the window and wondered what to do. And though I didn’t say it, I thought it: I’m in a country where the people killed masses of their own not so long ago.

The crowd dissipated. In the morning, we learned it had been a crowd of our own students having a welcome back party for a friend.

It’s April in Maui, and I find myself thinking of those I met two summers ago. I think of their past, their survival, and their incredible ability to live life in the present.

This past week, I was stand up paddling on a serendipitous Tuesday morning. A pod of dolphins played nearby and two swam right in front of me, their backs rising side by side from the water. At the same time, a family of humpbacks rose to the surface. My friends and I paddled quietly alongside the whales for a quarter of an hour.

Every morning

the world

is created.

- Mary Oliver, from Morning Poem