My parents met at a Catskill resort catering to young singles in summer of 1942. After a torrid eleven month courtship courtship involving train and bus trips between New Jersey and Long Island and dress-up dates at the ballet, opera, and restaurants in New York City, fully documented in their midweek love letters, they married in the garden of my grandparents’ home in Glen Cove,…
❤️ Valentine’s Day was a huge deal in elementary school in the 1950s. My mom bought me a packet of Valentine cards at the five & ten to address to all my classmates. On February first, the teacher set up a box, covered in red crepe paper and paper doily hearts, with an opening on top to insert our envelopes. As the days progressed, I…
As a recent Boston College Law School graduate, engaged to a handsome hairdresser on the North Shore, I accepted a one-year judicial clerkship in Superior Court – Criminal Session in Newark, New Jersey, my home state. Judge Harrison, my mentor, assigned me to escort Lady Kenyon, a visiting magistrate from England, on a courthouse tour. She was an engaging and elegant woman who took an…
A light-hearted story I wrote before the pandemic, when we could meet old friends or a new love and clink our wine glasses together over dinner . . . . RITA & MANNY I slather sunblock on my arms and legs and pull my straw hat down firmly onto my head. I expect to mess up my T-shirt and shorts with dirt and my knees…
Dear Readers, I am working on completing my memoir this year. This is a chapter about me at age twenty-two: LIFE STORY DATE I graduated college in 1966 with both a cum laude liberal arts degree and a devastating romantic breakup to my credit. I didn’t want to return home to my parents in Linden, so I stayed in my college town and rented a…
Readers, if you have not yet read Part One or Part Two, you will find the story of Anthony and Nadine at these links on my blog: LOVER’S LEAP (Part One of a Short Story) LOVER’S LEAP (Part Two of a Short Story) THERE GOES MY MIRACLE (Bruce Springsteen) When she completed her clerkship at the end of June, Nadine felt oddly adrift in New…
If you have not yet read Part One, you will find it at this link: LOVER’S LEAP (Part One of a Short Story) DREAMS OF LOVE Nadine was due to complete her one year clerkship for Judge Halliday at the end of June. He offered to write her as many letters of recommendation as she needed. She appreciated how easy he made it for her. He…
MEETING ANTHONY Nadine surveyed the grand vista of the courtroom, paneled and wainscoted in carved mahogany, the jury box to the left, prosecution and defense tables in the center. Classic marble columns on the right separated the row of windows reaching to the ceiling. The American flag stood behind her, the seal of the State of New Jersey on another flag within her peripheral vision.…
❤️ When my Grandma Rifka died at seventy-five, my Zayda (grandpa) Mutka was bereft. He was twelve years older and you’d think he’d be content to live with his memories for his twilight years. Instead, he offered to take me to Paris—this was in 1970—to visit my grandmother’s family. I wore outfits in the fashionable style of the mademoiselles and ventured out daily to museums,…
The seasons of the year in New England are distinct, demarcating almost exactly at the three-month mark. Each asserts its strong identity, worthy of poetry. In New Jersey, spring comes earlier, fall arrives later, playing games with the calendar. Tonight, cozy in front of a crackling fire, I muse at the moonlit winter scene outside my window. Memory transports me to another winter, sixty years ago,…
In my 71st year, going into my third as a widow, I decided to join a newly formed literary discussion group at the local library on Saturday afternoons. It was a step out of darkness, away from the mourning, then grieving, first for my husband, then for my mother ten months later. I had not understood—how could I have known—that recovering from three years of…
Today, December 7th, is my mother’s birthday. Rose was a member of the greatest generation, born in 1915 and living through the technological advances and formative tragedies of the twentieth century: the major wars, the Great Depression, the loss of her extended family in the Holocaust, the assassinations. She was a “late bloomer” in her personal life and began the career of her young dreams…
UNE FEMME TRES CHIC Is this Paris? No, it’s New York City on a September afternoon. Walking at my leisure, free to take in the street life, the buildings, the signs, the storefronts, the ornate facades and wrought iron grill work, I see Frenchness everywhere. WEST 73RD BETWEEN COLUMBUS AND AMSTERDAM I’ve collected several books of photography over the years that for me embody the signature sensibility…
If we reconstruct the run-up to a meaningful encounter or life-changing event, and follow the trail of random decisions that preceded it, it would be a miracle that it happened at all. In my case, my very own existence depended on the direction of a weather pattern and a decision made as a result by my mom Rose while on her summer vacation in August of ’42.