FAREWELL

Hello to my loyal readers. I have now completed the book about my childhood in Levittown and distributed it to my family. I will not be posting on this blog anymore. I am now moving into art and poetry and will be creating a new blog shortly. I anticipate the blog will be called PoemArtPalace. Enjoy and thanks so much for reading and commenting on this blog. Hope to see you in my new online home.

It's late afternoon and the snow is two feet deep. The crust over the snow is slick and tinged violet from the slant of winter light.

"Do you think it's too late to go to Helen's?" Emilia asks me.

"It only takes fifteen minutes to walk to her house," I say. "And we really need to deliver the money from the Girl Scout cookies."

"Yeah we better go today. I'll be right over."

I hang up the phone and bury myself in leggings, socks, boots, coat and hat. After tucking the envelope of money into a deep pocket I slip my hands into red gloves pilled from making storehouses of snowballs for snowball fights. When Emilia gets to my house we head up Loring Road and discover that walking in two feet of snow for four blocks takes a lot longer than fifteen minutes.

Finally we arrive at Helen's house to find that no one is home. I wonder now if we just assumed that every family was home on Saturday afternoon in the era of tight knit families and limited monetary resources.

"I guess we have to go back,"I say, looking at Emilia.

We both look around at the dying light and watch the street lights blink on, our signal to go home. As darkness falls we try to walk faster but the snow and our freezing toes make the going slow and tedious. We each find a fallen tree branch to brandish as a weapon should we need it and also to help us navigate the slippery terrain. We're both a little fearful of the dark, especially walking along a quiet road alone. When a car slows we hide behind a bush and watch as it pulls up to the curb.

"Renee! Emilia!"

It's my Dad come to resuce us. Although rescue is an unworthy word to describe the urgency in his ordinarily smooth soft voice. We run out from behind the bush and into the warmth and safety of Dad's blue and white Chevy Bel Air.

"What were you thinking going out so late?" he asks. His voice is soft now with relief but the concern glints in his blue eyes.

"We didn't think it would take us so long." Emilia says.

"Yeah, the snow slowed us down. Usually it takes only fifteen minutes."

"Well let's get you girls home."

Dad drives toward Emilia's house where her Mom and Dad wait at the door for her safe arrival. Relief and a splash of anger in their warm brown eyes.

"You could have asked me to drive you," Dad says with a smile.

"I know."

I bow my head in apology and smile too knowing no matter what, my parents will be there to save me from my crazy ideas.

SEPTEMBER SMILES
I love the fresh September air and the fact that my job as an Assistant Principal allows me to live, over and over again, the joy of going back to school. Much as I love summer warmth, blue chlorine pool water and salty oceans, and the freedom of longer daylight hours, I always loved that return to the classroom. The smell of chalk dust, freshly sharpened pencils, stacks of blank notebooks and books with tight spines. That little plastic zippered pencil case that held pencils, pens, erasers, rulers and filler paper hole reinforcements, whose outside decorations changed each year to match the current fashion trends. And speaking of fashion--there was such fun in shopping for school clothes and wearing dresses and new shoes after a summer of shorts and flip flops. New teachers, new friends, and new skills and concepts to learn. Seeing friends I hadn't seen all summer and strolling down the school corridors with their faint odor of disinfectant and the mirror glow of newly polished floors.

Though these days I work all summer I still get that fresh punch of newness with a new school year. And I always felt September was the start of the year and a time to make new resolutions and fresh starts. But now the draw of blank notebooks holds even more. As a writer I like filling the straight blue lines with flowing poetic verses and dramatic fiction. Or opening a new notebook to begin scribing stories about my life that will keep me alive even after I leave this earth.

September is clean and crisp, a chance for new beginnings, an opportunity to make some new decisions about what to write, what to wear and how to make myself a better woman. I invite you to make a few resolutions of your own about how to live the way you want to live. Why wait till January when your muse is buried in snow?

CLOVER CHAINS




I crawl across the cool evening grass

of summer to pick the delicate white and green

balls of clover flowers that sprinkle the lawn

like out of season snow flakes.

I pluck the stems close to the sun baked earth,

tight and cracked from too little rain,

so the stiff green tubes will be long.

With a fist full of sweet scented treasures

I crawl into the shade of the cluster of evergreens

at the corner of the front yard,

my knees stained green, grass blades stuck

to the damp knobs of my knee caps.

In this tranquil corner, beneath the rose quartz

canopy of sunset, I carefully notch

a slit in each stem with a fingernail

curved and pearlescent like the sliver of moon

that peers over the peaked roof of the house.

I line up the flowers on the grass like a rainbow of gentle angels.

I link each stem together, slipping one into the next

until I have chains I can turn into

necklaces

bracelets

crowns.

I parade around the yard adorned in my jewels,

a princess in the blue-gray dusk as fireflies

light the path into the house for bedtime.

I pile the circles of clover chains on the book shelf

and slip into dreams of castles and kings

and wide moats that protect me from dragons.

The next morning the white and green flowers

are tinted brown, wilted and parched,

as my childhood disappears around me

and I make clover crowns too delicate to cradle me

in this glorious summer of innocence.

AUGUST IN LEVITTOWN 1960
A crisp blue sky unfurls overhead like a freshly laundered sheet. The sun is the color of sunflowers, like the ones that line the fence, their brown faces turned upward soaking in the warmth. The buzz of late summer cicadas fills the air, competing with the caw of bluejays and the serenade of a robin perched on the corner of the roof. This is the best time for me, the thrill of summer fun and the expectation and excitement of school opening next month.

Emilia and I sit on the grass under the maple tree eagerly waiting for the mailman. Any day now we will receive the letter from Wisdom Lane school telling us whose class we will be in. In fifth grade we were in separate classes and not happy about it. We attempted to eat lunch together every day but that didn't always work. First of all we had to either both be buying lunch or both bringing lunch from home because those two groups sat at different tables. Then we had to hope our classes got to the cafeteria at the same time. It was a social dance that didn't always fall into rhythm.

By lunch time we tired of the wait but only ventured to the backyard after our tuna sandwich lunch to turn on the sprinkler and situate it just right so when we swung on the swings near the cherry trees we arched right into the cool spray. After we'd had enough of that we perched on the wall around the garden next to my house and ate blueberries right off the bush. By the time the mailman arrived our fingers and lips were stained a bright blue. But I snatched the letter from the stack the mailman gave me and tore open the envelope with the school's return address. Lo and behold I would be in Mr. McNamee's class. We raced to Emilia's house and met her mother hanging clothes on the line in the backyard.

"Did the mail come?" Emilia asked.
"It did. It's on the kitchen table."

We ran inside and found the letter from school. Tearing it open Emilia read it and smiled with delight when she found out we would be in the same class. It would be our last year in the elementary wing of the school before entering junior high and we wanted it to count.

We ran outside and shared the good news with her Mom. Then the bells of the Bungalow Bar ice cream truck filled the hot afternoon.

"Can we..."
"Yes," her mother said. "Go get ice cream to celebrate."

We ran to place the order while Emilia's mom went inside to get money.

It was a triumphant day in a magical summer and now as I relax in the summer sun with a book and an ice cream bar I recall those childhood days and continue writing my stories so those days will never end.

FIESTA BURGER

In nineteen fifties Levittown breakfast, lunch and dinner were home cooked affairs. We didn't eat frozen dinners or processed meats or instant anything. Meatloaf was made from scratch as were chocolate cakes, Toll House cookies and masked potatoes. McDonald's, Taco Bell, Wendy's and Checkers were nowhere to be seen as we drove along Hempstead Turnpike, Jersulam Avenue or Wantagh Avenue. I suppose it was easier then, when most if not all mothers were home all day taking care of their houses and their children. More time to shop and let fragrant stews and soups simmer on the simple but functional stoves.

Then one day there was a new face in town. It appeared on Hemptead Turnpike like a newly carved visage on Mount Rushmore. It was called Fiesta Burger. You pulled your car into a parking space and rolled down your window to place your order through the speaker that looked like the ones you hooked onto your car at the drive-in movie. I guess that's one reason they called it a drive-in food place. Oh, you don't know about drive-in movies? Well, that's another post.

Anyway, you placed your order and someone would come and bring it to your car. I remember the hamburgers and fries were pretty good, but still being rooted in home cooked fare we only ate there twice. But it wasn't the food, it was more the process of ordering and having food delivered to your car that made it so special. No matter how tasty it might have been, homemade food was better. But we had fun going there, the novelty of it making it a treat. And some kids added there own twist to the experience by walking up to a speaker, ordering food, and then running away. Kind of like a prank phone call gone one step beyond.

It was good clean fun--I guess. It's a memory now. Fiesta Burger was pushed out by all the other food chains serving Bic Macs and Whoppers. Times will never be the same. Now when I drive by the chain of stores and medical offices that took over that spot I can still see the little waitresses emerging with their trays of hot burgers looking for the car to bring the food to and finding the space empty. I hope she enjoyed her lunch.

SUMMER DAYS
I awoke this morning to cool leaf scented air waving through the bedroom window. The blue sky was painted with wisps of clouds and streaks of translucent pink light. It was five thirty but my muscles trembled with eager energy. It all reminded me of childhood summers in Levittown when I guzzled down orange juice and Rice Krispies and padded out the kitchen door in my P F Flyers.

Under the maple tree I bounced a pink Spaulding ball between the lacy shadows on the sidewalk. Songs like "A my name is Alice and my husband's name is Al," joined the songs of robins and bluejays and the distant bark of a dog on his early morning constitutional. As I bounced and sang I planned my day. I would swing on the swings in the backyard, next to the row of three cherry trees we'd brought from my grandparents' home in Kentucky. Perhaps a relaxing lunch of tuna on white bread with a glass of cold milk, while lazing in the shade. I would call Emilia and we might follow the black tarred lines along the street to the candy story at the Village Green to buy a new book of paper dolls, or a new Venus Paradise colored pencil set. Just before dinner we might make up another story to act out in our secret game of "Sisters." We called it "S" for secret when someone else was in earshot. The only secret part of the game was that it was the one thing we did that we didn't allow any other friends to share with us. It wasn't an actual game, but rather just a signal that we wanted to play by ourselves.

After dinner we would go outdoors again and ride bikes or join in a jump rope game in the neighborhood. When the street lights blinked on like so many diamonds in the dusky light it was time to call it a night and go home to "Amos and Andy" or "The Mickey Mouse Club."

Now as I sit in my room writing this post the light is graying and cool air tickles my arms and hands as they fly across a computer keyboard I'd never dreamed of when I wrote stories and poems as a child. Somehow summer days are not the same. Maybe its global warming, environmental destruction, or just my own aging. I don't know, but when a summer day like this one mimics the ones in my memory I cherish it for its golden light and warmth, heady scents of roses and mown grass, and the lift of strands of hair on the back of my neck when the breezes blow.

I'm still writing and reading in the shade of trees and inhaling the magical aromas, but these summer evenings will never feel the same.