Gil's Centennial

Here was a man I barely knew, yet I quote him and tell stories about him all the time.

Gil was our neighbor when we lived in Fort Greene, NY, back in the days when there were actual neighborhoods with not just racial diversity, but age diversity, too. Try to find an elderly person in Fort Greene now who owns their own home and knows their neighbors. When I lived there, I was in my 30's and 40's. Unless you're very wealthy, you can't afford my former home. It would set you back $1.25 million.

I'm glad I got that off my chest. Gil lived four houses down the block from us. He used to stand out front in his garden as the summer day cooled off a bit, saying "hi, how you be?" to all who passed. I immediately stopped and introduced myself, and he, himself. He was originally from the South but moved to New York City to work and raise his family. He settled in Fort Greene and was now retired. I remember he drove this huge old car from the 70's, a living room on wheels. It was two-tone, one color being a burnt orange. Man, he was a dude.

His wife "passed" a year or so after we'd moved in. She'd been a shut-in and I'd never met her. He told me,  she'd had a good long life. Then he did what he always did, cut some roses from his front bushes and presented them to me. "A beautiful woman must always have roses." What a gentleman!

Some nights, when Gil glimpsed me out back (townhouses all have side-by-side yards), he would say "hey young lady, come out front." There would be Gil, with a huge bouquet of roses from his "real" garden. "A beautiful woman must always have roses." What a gentleman.

One day, after his wife died and after he could no-longer drive due to cataracts and glaucoma, I told him it was my birthday. I was born in January or else he'd have cut one rose from every bush in his garden. "Well young lady, you are twice my age!"

As he grew older, he would would still sometimes be standing and leaning on his front fence in the evenings, but usually sat in a chair.

When I saw him and approached he'd immediately stand up.

"How you be, young lady?"
"Fine and how are you?"
Aw, what's the sense of kickin'?"

He was declining in health but he'd never complain. He was like my grandfather in that regard.


I'm not sure when he left his rose gardens behind for good, because we moved a few years later. What a loss to my neighborhood, and my life.

"This Is My Life!"

My daughter is working in Brasilito, Costa Rica teaching English to kids in grades k-8. I know she's happy because she shares her adventures with me.

She went to a bullfight last week. In Costa Rica, bullfights are big events. The whole family goes, because the animals are never killed, although the frenzy of the bull is still there. Men go into the ring and try not to get gored, but it's risky business. Mariel sat on the make-shift fence at the edge of the action, feet dangling into the ring. She had more than one adrenaline rush as bulls came near.

My daughter isn't much of a swimmer, but most nights, she and her friends swim out to an island off the beach and watch the sunset.

This how she puts it:  I feel like every day I have these moments where I just pause and think to myself, "this is my life. Can't believe it sometimes."

The Uninterestings

I finally finished Meg Wolitzer's The Interestings. While I could relate to some of the themes (aging, feminism, accepting that there's more to life than genius, talent and money, the AIDs crisis in it infancy), but found the characters to be flat, even though the main characters grew up more or less like me. She was ashamed of the LI town she grew up in. She's three years younger than I am, and she attended undergraduate school at SUNY Buffalo. I even have wealthy friends who lend me money.  Guess the book is just not my taste.

In other news, we had a bust of a snowstorm but they're promising another six inches overnight. It means I was able to  keep my appointment to have a tooth extracted. All went well--very little bleeding or swelling and only minor pain. That's what drugs are for!

Country Life, Hard and Beautiful

Finally, after many years of being practically snowless, we were hit with a storm that added a foot of snow on top of the 4-6 inches we already had. I went out yesterday to shovel a path for my dog and the UPS man who was supposed to be delivering a package. He never made it, but Buck and I managed a walk. Buck is a big dog, but even he has trouble standing in deep snow to do his business.

Today, I  tried to tackle getting my car out. I have no driveway, merely a pull-in parking spot in front of my garage, which can't fit a car in it and would have made the snow removal worse. The village does a great job plowing but there's no place for the snow to go except to the side of the road. I took one look at the 2-foot wall of ice imprisoning my car and wanted to cry. There I was, at the foot of a mountain I planned on moving with an ice pick and spoon.

My neighbor Jim who's always there, just like State Farm, has a nifty red pint-sized snow plow. He was just coming home, so I flagged him down and asked for help. He seemed so happy to move the snow around. He even drove my car out and dug a wide parking spot for my convenience when I returned.

The scenery right now is picture-postcard spectacular. If you don't look down in the roadway and see all the muck, that is.

More Reads

I'll just mention some books I've been reading.

On Such Full Sea by Chang-rae Lee is a must-read. He's one of my favorite authors and this book will lull you with it's calm prose and frighten you by the implications of of the story's dark soul.

The Story of a Happy Marriage by Anne Patchett is a series of short stories she's published elsewhere. Patchett's Bel Canto is to me her finest novel. State of Wonder was published last year You feel the sweat, hear the birds and the crunch of the jungle, along with it's earthy smell. You're there.