Archive
06/22/10 - (4)
Going Back Home
Yesterday, from Rockefeller Center, we took the train (As natives call the subway), To the Utica Avenue station, in the heart of Brooklyn, Then a bus, packed with blacks, Hispanics, and Caribbeans, To Avenue B, in the once-Jewish section of Crown Heights, Where you grew to be eighteen, You, who, from two, would learn to dance, In your mother's studio, on Remsen Avenue, Determined to become a TV actress, Broadway star,
You, who took the same bus, same train, daily, into Manhattan, From age eight through eighth grade, to the Willard Mace School, Then, from ninth through twelfth, to Quintano's, Dancing and acting, acting and dancing and dreaming, Before youth's realities steered you away from New York, Forcing you to leave behind all but traces of your roots, Sense of place, that distinctive accent — Your identity as a scion of Austrian and Russian Jews Who emigrated to that fabled borough.
Tonight, I contemplate those locations, turns of fate's phrases, That pilgrimage we made to your beginnings, And I marvel at all that you recalled for me, Most especially the happiness of family gatherings, Neighborhood friends, afternoons at the corner candy store, Schmoozing with boys your age and a few years older, The love your father had for you, his eldest of three daughters, Before he and your mother died six months apart, When they were just to the left and the right of fifty.
Why I cared, so strongly, so deeply, to share your heritage, I conclude now, as I did sitting on that screeching subway, That bouncing, rattletrap bus, Has everything to do with loving you, Linda, Getting back to who you were, six decades ago (When I, too, was awkwardly coming of age), So that I might begin to know, intimately, your origins, That glorious source of your buoyant, joyous energy, The electricity, chemistry, joie de vivre of who you've become.
06/22/10 - (4)
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