Standing On Shifting Sand

When I think back to childhood, I’m sure the summer breezes and the winter winds, the ocean currents and the hill we lived on with its view of rooftops leading to the endless blues of the Atlantic Ocean meeting the sky, conspired, along with my family, to make me who I am. My mind fills with memories of the beach town we lived in, our apartment, my parents. I’m struck by the depth of feelings attached to these long-ago memories. In my mind’s eye, I see a canvas slowly covered with colors until a picture appears of this past world—my world in all its beauty, in all its haphazard shapes and contours.

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My first memory of home is that apartment near the beach. I can remember moving in. I was almost three years old and my mother was very pregnant with my sister, Gjertine (A Norwegian name pronounced Ya-tina.) My mother had just sold her Dry Cleaning and Alterations business in the Westerleigh area of Staten Island and we were moving from the tiny two room apartment in back of the storefront to this relatively spacious four room apartment in South Beach. My father had just got a job as a marine engineer on a tanker servicing New York Harbor and parts of the East Coast. I’m pretty sure there was a collective sigh of relief when my father landed the job. Before that, he was searching for work while my mother carried the household and its expenses. I remember very little of my life in Westerleigh and most of it is blurred by my parents’ accounts of our life there. But, my mother and father always spoke fondly of those years and so I think I was happy there. Just the word, Westerleigh, rolled off my mother’s tongue like music. Only later did I learn that those years were rough financial times for them. They had lost all their savings in a business venture. My parents were smart and hard working but, they weren’t entrepreneurs. They bought in when the market was shrinking and soon their ample cash investment, money they had worked years to save, evaporated. My father’s new job enabled my mother to sell her dry cleaning business and pursue less time-consuming work sewing dresses from home. This was a new era in our family’s life. I could feel my parents’ optimism and happiness. It was a very exciting time.

So there we were moving in to the third floor of this huge, yellow brick building. It was a walk-up. The wide, marble staircase wound around tiled landings in the center of the building and the apartment doors sat on either side. My father and a moving man were carrying our sofa up the stairs. There was much shouting of directions and I was told to stay out of the way but I couldn’t resist the excitement and action. I walked up the wide staircase, unseen, between them. Then it came time to round the bend to the next flight and the angles proved hard to negotiate with such a long piece of furniture. As they turned the sofa to find the right way to squeeze it around to the next set of stairs, my head got stuck between the sofa and the wall. It was incredibly painful but I didn’t cry out. I was afraid I’d get in trouble. Even then I knew not to interfere when work was being done. I was expected to stay out of the way. I should have known better. No one noticed that is was my head that was taking up the extra few inches that made that first turn so difficult.

The rest of the move was uneventful and less painful at least from my point of view. Soon, we settled in to our new home waiting for my sister to arrive. Once she was born, most of my mother’s free time was taken up caring for the baby and I was left to fend for myself-- quietly, so my sister could sleep. Living on the third floor meant that I was confined to the apartment. This was the 1950’s there was no such thing as play dates, at least in our house Were there pre-schools? If so I didn’t attend. I do remember watching my mother sew dresses on the industrial sewing machine she kept in a corner of her bedroom. I liked to sit on her bed behind her. She sat upright and so still, only her hands and feet moving to control the fabric and the speed of the machine. The sound of the roaring motor was mesmerizing. I would sit listening to the stop and start of the engine, the soft, gentle sounds of the machine moving slowly on intricate areas and the angry, loud whine as the needle flew over straight seams. I watched the almost imperceptible movement in my mother’s body as she guided the fabric. Sometimes, when she didn’t have to concentrate, she’d sing. One day, I joined in to a song she sang often. She called me over to the side of the machine and told me to stand next to her. Then, she sang a few bars.

“Now repeat what I sang,” she said. I sang.

“That’s not it.” She sang the same few bars again.

I sang again.

She became very quiet. I was used to her silence which happened when she had to think about what she was doing. She had explained that her work was piece work and she was paid by how many dresses she finished, not the time she put in. But, this silence was different. I could feel her frustration and disappointment with me. I could sense that I was lacking in something important to her but I wasn’t sure what. I did what she asked and still I didn’t measure up to something. But what?

It was very important for me to please my mother. Most days she was the only person I saw and I missed my father so much now that he was away from home for long periods, sometimes months. So I sat quietly and stared out the two large windows of her bedroom into the bright, happy blues of a clear day, the moody white caps and fast flying clouds in a wintery wind and the monotone gray of the ocean reflecting the sky when it was overcast. I learned how the color of the ocean changed with the sky creating different scenes and ever changing moods.

I would move from window to window in each room and stare at the different views. Looking down, it seemed like our apartment sat in the sky anchored to the earth by the wide marble staircases that led down to the street.. We were above the roofs and tree tops. Almost directly below us, a majestic weeping willow tree stood in our neighbor’s yard swaying in the constant ocean breeze. On ground level, the air often smelled like diesel exhaust from the two different bus lines that stopped on the corners of McClean Avenue and Sand Land. Three stories up, the air smelled salty and fresh.

But, actually, we weren’t at the very top of the hill. Across McClean Avenue to the north was an empty lot which, when I grew older and was allowed outside to play with others, alternated as outer space, the jungle or a stick ball field. The lot sloped upward toward McFarland Avenue where my elementary school, P.S. 39, stood in all its brick and cement majesty. That was the view from our living room windows.

The sweeping view of the town came from the south facing kitchen and master bedroom. Roof after roof, some tarred, others slated or tiled descended down the hill to the ocean creating an ever widening expanse of sky. There weren’t many trees that could grow tall in the sandy soil and small yards of a beach community but there were a few. I watched those trees bud in the spring turn green and heavy in summer and flash gold and red in fall. Their branches swayed in the ocean breeze so their shapes were fluid like fabric. The bedroom my sister and I shared faced east. We woke up to the sun rise and the red brick side of the firehouse next door. Other than the sun passing high overhead, there wasn’t much to watch from our window and I spent very little time in that room.

I loved when my father came home from work. In his case, being off from work was usually a few complete weeks of being with us. He ate dinner with us, was at the breakfast table in the morning and took first me and then, when she was old enough, my sister for long walks, winter ice skating and summer rowing on Clove Lake. Life was so much more interesting, so much more fun—so much less lonely. My mother, relieved of taking care of us all day, finished her work much faster and she had more time to spend with us also.

There were so many things I did with my father that were new and exciting. He took me out of the house and I discovered the larger world around me. One of those days stays with me clearly even though decades have passed since he bundled my sister and I up and together we walked the three long blocks down to the beach. It was the day after a massive, early September hurricane that had battered our neighborhood with winds and rain that pounded the windows and shook their frames the entire previous day. Once we walked under the deserted, wooden boardwalk and onto the beach, there was nothing to buffet the still strong winds. I remember the wind pushing me so hard I struggled to maintain balance and my father held Gjertine’s hand to keep her steady as we walked through the sand down to the shore. We were the only people there. Looking toward the raging waves, I could see all kinds of debris littering the usually smooth shoreline. We trudged down to the surf winding around the dead sea creatures and hulks of wood and metal the waves had thrown up. There were dozens of horseshoe crabs looking mean and dangerous even in death. There was driftwood in gnarled shapes lying at weird angles. Broken shards of glass stuck out of the sand and my father pulled a half buried wooden wheel out of the sand and decided to spin it home with us. As we surveyed all that was around us and my father explained what things were and how they got there, the sun came out and the shore began to glisten. At that very moment, a young boy, who my sister knew, Tommy she said his name was, called out to us. “Hey!” he screamed and ran from the nearby jetty to the boardwalk pilings.”Aaaahhhh Eeeeee Oooooo,” Tommy yodeled, peeking his head around the wooden pole. I could see anger in my father’s blue eyes and it scared me. Clearly, he didn’t appreciate the interruption. I thought he might call Tommy over and include him in our outing. Instead, he yelled even louder than Tommy. “Go home, little boy!” Such vehemence in his voice! I didn’t like to share my dad with anyone else but his stern exclusion of Tommy upset my stomach—he was so uncharacteristically severe, so mean. Tommy disappeared and we walked on for a few more minutes before we left to walk back home. A few weeks later Tommy, who was all of seven years old, drowned when he fell off the jetty. Somehow, I felt like we failed him leaving him on the beach all by himself. And so, the incident remains indelible in my mind.

It was easy to think of my mother and father as a team of opposites—he with his blond, wavy hair and blue eyes, she with black, shiny, straight hair and the soft brown eyes of a doe. And, the differences went way beyond appearances. Their interests, their behavior, the things they valued diverged along paths that, when I got older, I tended to consider rural oriented versus city oriented. These disparate outlooks, I’m sure, arose from where they grew up.

My father’s childhood home was nestled in a tiny hamlet in northern Norway, fifty miles within the Arctic Circle. It was predominantly a fishing village and they lived on the proceeds on their catches, supplemented by their small farms and dairy livestock. When I was eight, my parents took my sister and me to Norway for a six week stay. We visited all my father’s numerous relatives but our home base was the attic bedroom of my grandparents home. The room was small for four people and it had only one window but that window looked out over the fjord that was their backyard. Since we went at the end of June after our school year ended, we were there for the midnight sun. Every time I looked out that window, day or night, I saw a sea and sky vista and I felt right at home. The big difference, of course, was the mountains, some still snow-capped, that framed the view on three sides.

My father’s mother was the most serious woman, indeed person, I had ever met. She scared me. One Sunday, we were going to church and then to visit a couple of my father’s brothers. My mother dressed my sister and me in dresses she’d made that were flared in the style of the 50’s. I came down from the attic, walked into the tiny kitchen area where my mother, father and grandmother were sitting. I stood in the center of the room and twirled around to show off the umbrella shape of the skirt. My grandmother frowned—not the reaction I expected. She said something to my father in Norwegian and then, at my mother’s urging he translated. “She asks if Mary Catherine is vain.” I could see my mother swallowing her urge to respond. Most certainly, what she had to say would not result in a happy exchange between the two women. I looked at my father who sat shaking his head and I hung my head down sorry that I had been the cause of this awkward moment. My grandfather was different. He smiled and laughed and loved my mother’s black hair and brown eyes. The reason for our trip at that particular time was to see my grandfather who was dying. We were only allowed to see him for brief moments during the day. It was hard for me to imagine he was so sick because he looked so happy. But he was very ill, he died six weeks after we left.

In early August, we left my grandparents’ village and headed south to Oslo for a few days and then, on to a two week stay in Rome. While we were in Oslo, my mother insisted on visiting the Catholic Cathedral. My father said it would be very lonely there since there were only about three Catholics in Norway. Everyone else was Lutheran. We met the Monsignor who did seem like he wanted to talk to someone. He had spent several years at the Vatican and so he and my mother conversed in Italian—a language my mother learned from her immigrant parents. When we left Oslo, my mother carried a letter of introduction that got us a private audience with Pope Pius XII.

When we arrived in Rome, I could see my mother’s joy. She was in her ancestral home—sort of. My maternal grandparents came from a small fishing town near Palermo, Sicily. It was much like my father’s childhood home except in temperature and temperament. But, we didn’t visit that town or any others. We stayed in Rome, ate in restaurants, attended an outdoor performance of Aida, we walked to the Vatican as well as at least a dozen other churches, stared at the landmarks and threw coins in the Trevi Fountain before we hired a car to take us to Castel Gondolfo to see the Pope in his summer home. Before we left, just to round out the experience, we took a side trip by train to the beach and spent the day swimming in the Mediterranean Sea. Compared to the brooding twenty-four twilight we’d become accustomed to, the clear, bright yellow sunlight was so festive and the beach—well, the sand was a lighter tan and the water was a deeper blue but it still very much like home to me.

Soon after that trip, the idea that my parents were opposites really took hold in my mind. I was too young to realize that their differences had a big affect on our family but it was clear to me that they did not have a united front. He was north, she was south. He was January, she was July. Most of the time, they fit this stereotyping and so the labeling stuck in my mind. It was an easy way of explaining their differences and often, it was reinforced by others who observed not only the different coloring and features of the two but also the differences in behaviors, in attitudes, in their approach to life. I thought of my father as methodical. He was interested in science and literature and it was he who encouraged me to read, read, read. My mother was more of a free spirit who was interested in social and artistic pursuits. It was she who insisted on giving my sister and I piano lessons and she took us to operas and concerts. She brought us to her friends and family gatherings and I could tell that she loved the adult conversations and companionship. There were times when Gjertine and I felt neglected by her especially when the visits were long and we were left to sit and behave. On the other hand, these outings exemplified adult activities like no others we were exposed to.

Yet, there was so much my parents agreed on.. They both loved current events and news programs provided continuous background. They loved long drives to State Parks and Beaches on Sunday afternoons. Most of all, they were totally united on one front—they wanted to own their own home. They both worked long and hard for the first eleven years of my life for their dream. Even after they bought a Cape in a desirable neighborhood, they continued to work long and hard, now for a secure future.