Wednesday, June 11, 2003
GRANDMA AT MOMA Monday, May 26, 2003
Being born on Picasso's birthday, October 25th, always seemed like an omen to me. I started copying Degas when I was 12. My parents didn't discourage me. As long as it was a "hobby". My mom enrolled me in things like weekend ceramics classes. She came along and liked to select the premade but unpainted figurines and greenware. She picked the glazes herself but she never had the guts to actually take a hunk of clay and make something. My mom lived a fearful life. She was only comfortable playing by some predetermined set of rules. Uncertainty was to be avoided at all costs. This led to a deadly existence. I don't remember ever having a "good time" with my mother. But if you just evaluate her based on a guidebook of abstact rules, some would say she was a "good mother". She kept the house very clean. There was always milk in the fridge. She cooked all our meals. She arranged music lessons (violin), made costumes for trick or treat, enrolled me in Brownies and then the Girl Scouts. She attended my dance recitals and school plays. She was there at the school Christmas concert. But she was like a robot. She was my mother. She was there, sort of.
Now Grandma was another story. I loved my Grandma. She lived in Queens NY most of her life, in a house on 198th Street where I was born. She was a petite woman whose hair stayed more pepper than salt her entire life. I would beg to stay with her and my grandfather every school vacation. I can still see every room in that house (it was laid out a little like the Archie Bunker house in that now gone sitcom, but cozier with more interesting "stuff" around.) It had an attic. No house my family ever lived in had an attic. My Grandma taught me how to roller skate. Not only that, she let me practice for hours in her basement. (These were 4 wheel, metal, outdoor roller skates. Can you imagine the racket the endless scraping of metal against the concrete basement floor would have made?) She never complaind. She'd call down to the basement every now and then in her cheery voice "how'y doin hon?".
Everything I appreciate or have a feeling for in nature came from the endless summers with my Grandmother at our family shack on a cliff overlooking Long Island Sound. My parents would ship me out there as soon as the closing bell of school rang at the end of June. Gram and I would explore the wild, overgrown strawberry patches and pick the remains of the potato fields after the farmers were done. We'd cook our meals together, she'd always let me "help". She was relaxed. Happy. She loved me.
New York City was our regular stomping ground. I always loved the city best. My grand parents would take me to Rockefeller Center to ice skate at Christmas. Gram and I would explore the city like we did the tangled, overgrown dirt paths out on Long Island in the summer. One day, I had read about an art exhibition at the MOMA that I had to see. It was a Max Ernst show, the first retrospective in NYC. I was 14 at the time. Grandma was in her 60's, she had never been to MOMA. She had no idea who Max Ernst was or what Surrealism was either, but when I suggested that we go, she was eager. I will never forget the look on my grandmother's face when she confronted those huge paintings for the first time. Her jaw dropped, "How did he do that?" she asked as she nearly touched her nose to the canvas (the guard yelled at her and she snapped back). I felt a great joy then, knowing that she and I shared an ability to wonder at creation, to experience life and she taught me that no matter how old you are there are still things to learn.
DRIVING
Getting your license was THE rite of passage at my regional high school in northern New Jersey. We all took driver ed. We had a smoking lounge for students too (would you believe! this was 1962). The PTA and the faculty figured it was better if they had a place for kids to smoke in school instead of having them sneak out back behind the gym between classes for a smoke.
I took driver ed., passed, got my license and started driving the 10 miles or so to school instead of taking the bus. My mom and I shared a Corvair. This was the same Corvair that catapulted Ralph Nadar to fame with his expose, UNSAFE AT ANY SPEED. Of course at the time when I was driving it, no one knew.
Things did not look promising for me right from the beginning. Parking was always difficult and I had had several fender benders in the Safeway parking lot within the first few weeks. I also had no sense of the weight of my foot on the gas and got two speeding tickets on route 46 on the way to school.
The worst thing was my concentration. My mind wandered. I'd be driving along and slip into some window in my mind and suddenly WHAM! I'd hit something or something came out of nowhere and hit me. We had been living in Parsippany but we moved to Dover in my senior year. Dover was an old mining town and we moved into a house on the side of a steep hill. I had to drive to school every day. On my way home once I forgot to stop at the light at the bottom of our hill. There was a 1950 something Oldsmobile in front of me who had thought to stop. Suddenly the whole front end of that Corvair was in my lap. It crumpled up like an accordian. The bumper on that Olds was unscathed. The guy at the wheel got out to see if I was O.K. Miraculously I was fine, just stunned. And miraculously the Corvair started up and I drove it home peering over the crumpled hood. Oh the joys of the rearend engine.
My mom and dad were pretty upset, my dad was in the auto repair business, but he did engines not body work. Mom had to have a car. The insurance company said there was structural damage, they called it a total and dad bought a new Corvair.
I managed to survive high school. I was in another accident or two with friends, but they were driving, not me and no one was hurt. Off to college I go (far enough to fly not drive) but come home that first summer (1964) mainly to be with my boyfriend who stayed in NJ. I was on my way to meet him one sunny summer afternoon. I was wearing a thin white cotton dress. I had my mom's Corvair and I was speeding along an open road in Parsippany, not another car in sight. There were houses on my left, but set back from the road. On my right there appeared to be nothing but fields of over-grown grass. Suddenly it was as though the hand of God came down and grabbed my steering wheel. I had not been drinking. The Corvair hurtled off the road just as I was at a curve. There was an old farmers harrow lying rusted with prongs up that ripped into the underbelly of the car as it skidded over it. There were no seat belts. I went straight through the windshield. It must've given way as my head struck. Dazed, I hauled myself off the hood, my hand was holding the side of my head. It felt hot and sticky. I moved my hand down and was whiping it across my dress. A woman from a house across the street came out to see what was up. I turned to look at her and she screamed and rushed inside. Soon I heard the sirens and an ambulance drove up. My white dress was drenched in blood. The EMT's tried to make me lie down on the stretcher. I was still standing and staring at the car. I was in shock. They said all I kept say was "my father's going to kill me, my father's going to kill me".
There's a white cloth over my head. I'm just coming to and I can see out a small slit. There are hands and I can feel the needle as they push it through what must be skin on my head. I fade out and come to again. I'm in a hospital emergency room. My mom is there and she is pissed. The left side of my head was shaved and I had 80 + stiches. Luckily the wound started at my hairline and went around my ear to the back of my head. It just missed my eardrum. My dad refused to come to the hospital. The car was totaled. I think they only kept me overnight then sent me home. They said it was amazing that I came through. My parents were quite upset about the car. My dad said he would no longer insure me. I decided to quit. Driving was just not for me.
I've lived in several different countries, moved many times and have never owned my own car and my last drivers license was dated 1964.
ROE VS WADE AND ME
It was 1969, my last year of grad school. We'd been married a few months. He was ten years older than me. I hadn't yet figured out the role I was supposed to play with his two kids. His divorce papers were still wet and we were flat broke. Based on the alimony settlement this condition could last indefinitely. Those birth control pills I'd been depending on for years had started to wreak havoc with my skin. Dark patches of pigmentation around my eyes - kind-of like a racoon, it was the high level of hormones in those pills. Back then, in the '50's and 60's they had no idea what a "safe" level was - so we "early adopters" were like guinea pigs. I'd quit the pill and had switched to other means, usually a condom. Life was speeding along, going to school, working in my studio getting ready for my thesis exhibition, teaching adult ed courses at night when - whamo!!!!!!! I'm pregnant. Holy shit. I can't believe it. I can't accept it. We were trying to prevent it. We can't afford it. I'm just a kid myself. I don't want kids. I'd be a lousy mother.
He loved me and he loved kids and would have dealt with the pregnancy if I'd wanted it but he also knew our struggle would be all that more difficult. I figured I'd get an abortion. I hadn't looked into anything like this before, there was no need till now. I took it for granted I would just go to my doctor and ask for one. After all, this is Boston, a liberal college town. We'd been marching in the streets for our rights, for civil rights, for women's rights and against this insane war. We women were strong. Right? Wrong! Abortion was not being done, legally, anywhere in Massachusetts. I was a bit stupid to assume I had control over my body. I panicked. There is only a very brief window of opportunity here and decisions have to be made that can change your life FOREVER! My husband started asking around discretely if anyone could help us. A friend of his knew about a clinic on some island off shore somewhere. I'd have to fly there, it was so expensive, I was scared, out of the question, no way.
A former college roomate and friend was working in a hospital in Philly. She told me she knew they did abortions there but only for residents of Pennsylvania and only under very special circumstances. You had to apply to a hospital review board. It was made up of doctors and a psychiatrist. After applying you had to go home and wait till they called you. My friend Mila had the inside scoop and she said the only women that were approved for abortions in that hospital were the ones that appeared to be totally nuts, who were a danger to themselves and potentially to the child should they have one. I decided to give it a try. Mila let me use her home address as my residence. I stayed with her a few days between the application and being called before the review board. I was sweating bullets that day which was helpful. I knew this would have to be the performance of my life. I'd done theater in high school, got a standing ovation once in the senior play. I knew I could freak out. I still don't remember exactly what happened that day. I literally drove myself crazy. I remember someone leading me out of the room where I had sat infront of the hospital board. But I was dazed. I had no idea what they thought of my case. I flew back to Boston and waited. Mila told me that if they approved my abortion they would call when they had a bed available and I would have 24 hours to show-up or loose my chance. Guess they'd offer it to the next poor soul in line. Back in Boston, my husband was out of town at a track meet. (he was a coach at a local university)I was at work when I got a message there was a call from my friend in Philly. This is it. My hands shook as I dialed her number. Mila? "Get your butt down here now. They've got a bed for you and we've got to get you to the hospital". I thought I would faint. No time to get intouch with my husband, got to get to the airport, and get a flight-will there be a seat? This is all a blur..I got a flight, my friend Mila helped me get to the hospital, checked in, in the bed, lights out. Don't remember a thing till I came to, must've been a few hours later. It was all over. I could go home.
Being born on Picasso's birthday, October 25th, always seemed like an omen to me. I started copying Degas when I was 12. My parents didn't discourage me. As long as it was a "hobby". My mom enrolled me in things like weekend ceramics classes. She came along and liked to select the premade but unpainted figurines and greenware. She picked the glazes herself but she never had the guts to actually take a hunk of clay and make something. My mom lived a fearful life. She was only comfortable playing by some predetermined set of rules. Uncertainty was to be avoided at all costs. This led to a deadly existence. I don't remember ever having a "good time" with my mother. But if you just evaluate her based on a guidebook of abstact rules, some would say she was a "good mother". She kept the house very clean. There was always milk in the fridge. She cooked all our meals. She arranged music lessons (violin), made costumes for trick or treat, enrolled me in Brownies and then the Girl Scouts. She attended my dance recitals and school plays. She was there at the school Christmas concert. But she was like a robot. She was my mother. She was there, sort of.
Now Grandma was another story. I loved my Grandma. She lived in Queens NY most of her life, in a house on 198th Street where I was born. She was a petite woman whose hair stayed more pepper than salt her entire life. I would beg to stay with her and my grandfather every school vacation. I can still see every room in that house (it was laid out a little like the Archie Bunker house in that now gone sitcom, but cozier with more interesting "stuff" around.) It had an attic. No house my family ever lived in had an attic. My Grandma taught me how to roller skate. Not only that, she let me practice for hours in her basement. (These were 4 wheel, metal, outdoor roller skates. Can you imagine the racket the endless scraping of metal against the concrete basement floor would have made?) She never complaind. She'd call down to the basement every now and then in her cheery voice "how'y doin hon?".
Everything I appreciate or have a feeling for in nature came from the endless summers with my Grandmother at our family shack on a cliff overlooking Long Island Sound. My parents would ship me out there as soon as the closing bell of school rang at the end of June. Gram and I would explore the wild, overgrown strawberry patches and pick the remains of the potato fields after the farmers were done. We'd cook our meals together, she'd always let me "help". She was relaxed. Happy. She loved me.
New York City was our regular stomping ground. I always loved the city best. My grand parents would take me to Rockefeller Center to ice skate at Christmas. Gram and I would explore the city like we did the tangled, overgrown dirt paths out on Long Island in the summer. One day, I had read about an art exhibition at the MOMA that I had to see. It was a Max Ernst show, the first retrospective in NYC. I was 14 at the time. Grandma was in her 60's, she had never been to MOMA. She had no idea who Max Ernst was or what Surrealism was either, but when I suggested that we go, she was eager. I will never forget the look on my grandmother's face when she confronted those huge paintings for the first time. Her jaw dropped, "How did he do that?" she asked as she nearly touched her nose to the canvas (the guard yelled at her and she snapped back). I felt a great joy then, knowing that she and I shared an ability to wonder at creation, to experience life and she taught me that no matter how old you are there are still things to learn.
DRIVING
Getting your license was THE rite of passage at my regional high school in northern New Jersey. We all took driver ed. We had a smoking lounge for students too (would you believe! this was 1962). The PTA and the faculty figured it was better if they had a place for kids to smoke in school instead of having them sneak out back behind the gym between classes for a smoke.
I took driver ed., passed, got my license and started driving the 10 miles or so to school instead of taking the bus. My mom and I shared a Corvair. This was the same Corvair that catapulted Ralph Nadar to fame with his expose, UNSAFE AT ANY SPEED. Of course at the time when I was driving it, no one knew.
Things did not look promising for me right from the beginning. Parking was always difficult and I had had several fender benders in the Safeway parking lot within the first few weeks. I also had no sense of the weight of my foot on the gas and got two speeding tickets on route 46 on the way to school.
The worst thing was my concentration. My mind wandered. I'd be driving along and slip into some window in my mind and suddenly WHAM! I'd hit something or something came out of nowhere and hit me. We had been living in Parsippany but we moved to Dover in my senior year. Dover was an old mining town and we moved into a house on the side of a steep hill. I had to drive to school every day. On my way home once I forgot to stop at the light at the bottom of our hill. There was a 1950 something Oldsmobile in front of me who had thought to stop. Suddenly the whole front end of that Corvair was in my lap. It crumpled up like an accordian. The bumper on that Olds was unscathed. The guy at the wheel got out to see if I was O.K. Miraculously I was fine, just stunned. And miraculously the Corvair started up and I drove it home peering over the crumpled hood. Oh the joys of the rearend engine.
My mom and dad were pretty upset, my dad was in the auto repair business, but he did engines not body work. Mom had to have a car. The insurance company said there was structural damage, they called it a total and dad bought a new Corvair.
I managed to survive high school. I was in another accident or two with friends, but they were driving, not me and no one was hurt. Off to college I go (far enough to fly not drive) but come home that first summer (1964) mainly to be with my boyfriend who stayed in NJ. I was on my way to meet him one sunny summer afternoon. I was wearing a thin white cotton dress. I had my mom's Corvair and I was speeding along an open road in Parsippany, not another car in sight. There were houses on my left, but set back from the road. On my right there appeared to be nothing but fields of over-grown grass. Suddenly it was as though the hand of God came down and grabbed my steering wheel. I had not been drinking. The Corvair hurtled off the road just as I was at a curve. There was an old farmers harrow lying rusted with prongs up that ripped into the underbelly of the car as it skidded over it. There were no seat belts. I went straight through the windshield. It must've given way as my head struck. Dazed, I hauled myself off the hood, my hand was holding the side of my head. It felt hot and sticky. I moved my hand down and was whiping it across my dress. A woman from a house across the street came out to see what was up. I turned to look at her and she screamed and rushed inside. Soon I heard the sirens and an ambulance drove up. My white dress was drenched in blood. The EMT's tried to make me lie down on the stretcher. I was still standing and staring at the car. I was in shock. They said all I kept say was "my father's going to kill me, my father's going to kill me".
There's a white cloth over my head. I'm just coming to and I can see out a small slit. There are hands and I can feel the needle as they push it through what must be skin on my head. I fade out and come to again. I'm in a hospital emergency room. My mom is there and she is pissed. The left side of my head was shaved and I had 80 + stiches. Luckily the wound started at my hairline and went around my ear to the back of my head. It just missed my eardrum. My dad refused to come to the hospital. The car was totaled. I think they only kept me overnight then sent me home. They said it was amazing that I came through. My parents were quite upset about the car. My dad said he would no longer insure me. I decided to quit. Driving was just not for me.
I've lived in several different countries, moved many times and have never owned my own car and my last drivers license was dated 1964.
ROE VS WADE AND ME
It was 1969, my last year of grad school. We'd been married a few months. He was ten years older than me. I hadn't yet figured out the role I was supposed to play with his two kids. His divorce papers were still wet and we were flat broke. Based on the alimony settlement this condition could last indefinitely. Those birth control pills I'd been depending on for years had started to wreak havoc with my skin. Dark patches of pigmentation around my eyes - kind-of like a racoon, it was the high level of hormones in those pills. Back then, in the '50's and 60's they had no idea what a "safe" level was - so we "early adopters" were like guinea pigs. I'd quit the pill and had switched to other means, usually a condom. Life was speeding along, going to school, working in my studio getting ready for my thesis exhibition, teaching adult ed courses at night when - whamo!!!!!!! I'm pregnant. Holy shit. I can't believe it. I can't accept it. We were trying to prevent it. We can't afford it. I'm just a kid myself. I don't want kids. I'd be a lousy mother.
He loved me and he loved kids and would have dealt with the pregnancy if I'd wanted it but he also knew our struggle would be all that more difficult. I figured I'd get an abortion. I hadn't looked into anything like this before, there was no need till now. I took it for granted I would just go to my doctor and ask for one. After all, this is Boston, a liberal college town. We'd been marching in the streets for our rights, for civil rights, for women's rights and against this insane war. We women were strong. Right? Wrong! Abortion was not being done, legally, anywhere in Massachusetts. I was a bit stupid to assume I had control over my body. I panicked. There is only a very brief window of opportunity here and decisions have to be made that can change your life FOREVER! My husband started asking around discretely if anyone could help us. A friend of his knew about a clinic on some island off shore somewhere. I'd have to fly there, it was so expensive, I was scared, out of the question, no way.
A former college roomate and friend was working in a hospital in Philly. She told me she knew they did abortions there but only for residents of Pennsylvania and only under very special circumstances. You had to apply to a hospital review board. It was made up of doctors and a psychiatrist. After applying you had to go home and wait till they called you. My friend Mila had the inside scoop and she said the only women that were approved for abortions in that hospital were the ones that appeared to be totally nuts, who were a danger to themselves and potentially to the child should they have one. I decided to give it a try. Mila let me use her home address as my residence. I stayed with her a few days between the application and being called before the review board. I was sweating bullets that day which was helpful. I knew this would have to be the performance of my life. I'd done theater in high school, got a standing ovation once in the senior play. I knew I could freak out. I still don't remember exactly what happened that day. I literally drove myself crazy. I remember someone leading me out of the room where I had sat infront of the hospital board. But I was dazed. I had no idea what they thought of my case. I flew back to Boston and waited. Mila told me that if they approved my abortion they would call when they had a bed available and I would have 24 hours to show-up or loose my chance. Guess they'd offer it to the next poor soul in line. Back in Boston, my husband was out of town at a track meet. (he was a coach at a local university)I was at work when I got a message there was a call from my friend in Philly. This is it. My hands shook as I dialed her number. Mila? "Get your butt down here now. They've got a bed for you and we've got to get you to the hospital". I thought I would faint. No time to get intouch with my husband, got to get to the airport, and get a flight-will there be a seat? This is all a blur..I got a flight, my friend Mila helped me get to the hospital, checked in, in the bed, lights out. Don't remember a thing till I came to, must've been a few hours later. It was all over. I could go home.
