Bronx Reflections: Cherished Childhood Friends

I have always been sentimental, I take after my grandmother, but I find I have become even more so since I have been sick.  I have been thinking a lot about growing up in the Bronx and also in Manhattan, where my grandparents lived and where I spent so, so much time. The city was an ideal place for a child like me, independent and curious.  There was always something to do and, luckily for me, there was usually someone to do it with. 

Two of my childhood cohorts, Hank and Mary, are easily my oldest friends, going back well over 55 years.  It is amazing how an accident of geography placed us together and yet we were such a perfect fit.   Mary was one of only a handful of children who lived in our large apartment building, but we were made for each other, both of us mad for animals, horses especially, and yet content to spend an afternoon reading side by side or playing paper dolls, even if the weather outside was fine. She lived on the top floor, I lived on the ground floor.  I was sturdy and tough, she was tiny and delicate and we were inseparable. 

Hank’s aunt lived in the building next door and every summer he was sent to stay with her.  He, with his chipmunk cheeks and adorable, mischievous dimple (which he still has), arrived in late spring and left in the fall, but oh the fun we squeezed in for those few weeks every year!   

 We all romped, first, directly in front of our respective apartment buildings.  Then, as we got older, we branched out to frolicking around the entire block and into the wilds of the space in the center of that block, behind the buildings.  We called it the Back Lot and I have to laugh at how barbarous and rough that sounds, because this was a lovely, middle class neighborhood.  It makes us sound like grubby, neglected urchins, when we truly were closely supervised and strictly raised.  But children love leafy, mysterious places and that is what the Back Lot was.  It was filled with boulders, ailanthus trees and weedy shrubs, shot through with rocky paths, shortcuts through the block from one street to another.  A perfect setting for all sorts of adventures.  When I think of the kind of misadventures we could have encountered I shudder.  But we never did.  It was our own personal playground.  The park was off limits for us at that time, too far for us to go alone (although I, defiant and fearless, frequently sneaked down to the park that bordered the Harlem River, often dragging my hapless brother along).  The Back Lot suited us just fine for the most part.

(All the greenery in the middle is our "Back Lot", the wilds of University Heights.  The yellow line is the route I took every day from my front door to school.)

There were actually four of us, not just three.  Our dear Noel rounded out our particularly close quartet.  He was in my class at Holy Spirit.  He was quiet, smart and made funny faces that made me laugh.  I adored him.  We adored him.  It is one of my life’s great sorrows that none of us have seen or heard from him in over forty years.  We have searched online and found no trace.  There have been tantalizing clues here and there, including the possibility he entered the priesthood, but otherwise there is nothing.  His full name is relatively common in England, where he was born, and in Ireland, so that complicates things.  We miss him terribly.

One of our favorite games was acting out scenarios based on 1950’s TV shows, especially the Superman TV series. (We watched A LOT of television!)  It is so funny to think of now, because both Noel and Hank were sweet and gentle little boys, certainly not aggressive or in any way dominating, but they were our Supermen, taking turns in the role.  And Mary and I would take turns as Lois Lane.  Maybe I am being overly nostalgic, but I don’t remember ever quarreling in our weeks and weeks of playing together every single day.  When the other kids were added to the mix there was inevitably rivalry and, sometimes, tears.  But the four of us always got along on our own.

Both apartment buildings had roomy courtyards ideal for running around in and my building had a vast lobby and great open hall on the first floor that we also took great advantage of.  We always had some fantasy we were acting out, we were a particularly imaginative and creative bunch.  We also were bookish dreamers, which is why I think we were so close.  The other kids on our block were not bad, but they could be bullying and bossy.  The neighborhood at large had a hefty population of Irish Catholics with big families, but, ironically, our side of the block had a very small proportion of children, I can only think of maybe ten all together, including our siblings.  That was it for two large apartment buildings.   

Our building alone was a great big L-shaped that contained probably about 50 apartments.  My side of the L had the address of 106 W. 179 Street and the other side of the L was 1944 Andrews Avenue.  But the majority of tenants were older people, primarily Irish Catholics and Eastern European Jews, and many of the later were Holocaust survivors.  When the 1940 Census was first available online, you could only access people by address, not name.  So I looked up my Bronx address because it was easy to find.  Incredibly, several of the wonderful older people I grew up knowing had lived in the building since 1940, including the couple who lived in the apartment over ours, the Hartmans.  I was so lucky, because these were like an extended family and they were all very, very kind to me.  They really shaped the person I became. 

The 1940 Census shows our upstairs neighbors, Mr. & Mrs. Hartman, were living there 14 years before my parents moved in.  Mrs. Hartman's mother was gone by then and they had no children.  They were very, very nice to me, and I shamelessly dropped by for visits with embarrassing frequency.  They always treated me to cookies and milk.

Mrs. Clune lived upstairs with her little dog, who she walked, it seemed, constantly.  She was a teeny, delicate lady, very sweet, always with a smile.  I have no memory of Mr. Clune, who must have died before I was born.  Their son was probably in his thirties when I knew him, but I thought he was an old man.

But back to us...our idyll only lasted until we were about 12.  My parents moved our family to the wasteland of rural New Jersey in 1966, where there was literally nothing but our hideous, cracker box development and cornfields.  My mother didn’t drive and there was nothing within walking distance, not friends, school, shops or, worst of all, the library.  I don’t think I have ever gotten over it, going from independence and my cherished friends to trapped isolation.

I wish I had pictures of Hank, Mary, Noel and I together, but we don’t.  Almost all the pictures I have of the neighborhood are as it is today.  A few exceptions are snaps of me in my mother’s arms outside our building, but facing the apartment house across the street.  That was a sumptuous complex with gardens, sunken living rooms and multiple bathrooms.  Now it is boarded up.  Although now the neighborhood is more family oriented again, the terrible, crime-ridden days seem to have passed, they left an appalling legacy.  The courtyards where we ran and played our games are locked up, with some gates topped by barbed wire.  The cement steps between the buildings that we used to access the Back Lot have crumbled.  The decorative limestone balustrades that lined the front steps of our apartment building have been demolished and replaced with cinder blocks.  Crime is less, but shabbiness and poverty exist where pride of place ruled before.

The building I grew up in; no gate or barbed wire in my time.  The first two windows to the left were my bedroom.

The other side of the building.  There used to be grass and decorative wrought iron fencing where those concrete slabs are now.

The space between our building and Hank's; the steps are all crumbled and broken now.

The gate enclosing the courtyard of Hank's building.

The beautiful building across the street from ours, the gardens are now all boarded up.

My mother and I took a trip in to see the old neighborhood about 14 years ago, with a friend from the Internet who had gone to my grammar school and his wife.  We had such a nice day exploring, even got to go into Holy Spirit school, as CCD was being taught that day and the school was open.  It was like a time capsule, absolutely immaculate, from the shining wood floors to the bright, windowed classrooms.  It was so good to see, and I am glad I had the chance, as the Dicosese of New York is shutting it down this month.  It is a disgrace that a school which has been in operation for almost 100 years is being closed and the education of inner city children, who are the most vulnerable, is being sacrified.  For shame.

It goes without saying that Hank and Mary grew up to be just as wonderful as they were when they were kids.  Mary is a devoted mother of a large extended family.  She still has a big, sensitive heart and a special love for animals.  Hank is a loving, loyal friend and he works hard to make a difference in this world (here is a link to his website).  Life and geographical distance prevent us from seeing each other as we would like, but, especially since I have been sick, they never fail to remind me how important I am to them and how I am in their thoughts and prayers.  One cannot ask for much more than that.

I am so grateful for how my sweet friends enriched my life and I thank you all, Hank, Mary and Noel.  I believe somewhere in the universe there is a faint echo of the laughter and pure delight in life that four children shared together a long time ago.  There is no way that joy, that simple pleasure in each other’s company, could ever fade away.

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Home, Once Upon a Time

One of the things I have found about being so sick is a tendency towards nostalgia about bygone days.  Another way of putting it would be wallowing in the past.  It can be an exercise in fond memories or a descent into self-pitying regrets.  If I am not careful, I can go way too far into darkness, where to re-hash sadder times is pointless.  It is one thing to learn from one’s mistakes and move on, quite another to relive the same sorrow over and over, to open that book of pain and keep reading.  I try to find a balance, but it is hard.  Pity parties can be such fun.

In a particularly idle moment the other night, I typed into Google the address of the first apartment Dennis and I lived in together, rented in an act of daring months before we were actually married.  It was on East 65^th Street in Manhattan, a locale with a usually chic cachet.  But our apartment, on the top floor of a five story walk-up, was a classic Barefoot in the Park pit. I used to joke the tiny one bedroom was the only tenement on the upper East Side.  There was a single sink in the place, immediately to your right when you walked in the door.  The tub had once been in the “kitchen”, a five by five open space with a refrigerator against the wall along with a teeny, ancient stove that had to be lit with a match.  There was a little counter bordering one side with open shelves underneath.  No cabinets.  Crude plywood enclosed the tub.  There was no door on that space, so I hung a curtain over the opening.  Very Bohemian.

The toilet was in a separate little closet all by itself.  It had a skylight, which leaked when it rained or snowed.  The floors were the original wide planks, painted white in the bedroom and covered with hideous dark brown faux wood vinyl tile in the little space that passed as the living room.  There was actually a wood-burning fireplace in the bedroom.  We often had to use it for heat as the building’s boiler was frequently broken.  There was no closet. 

Yet I loved it.  I was thrilled to be living in the city.  Every step on the long walks to and from the subway reminded me of how happy I was to be back in New York, where I had grown up before my parents moved us to New Jersey when I was 12.  That sense of energy and unlimited adventure was what New York represented to me.  But as pleased as I was to be there, I have no photos of the place, except for one of me smiling, sitting on the bed with our puppy in my lap.  All you can see is the wall behind me, so it is pointless to even post it here, except that it shows I was happy at least once.  Mostly when I remember that year it is through a mist of pain and disillusionment.  Our brand new marriage was going badly and I was shattered.  I had been so certain that my all-consuming love for him would be enough, but nothing could heal the broken history he carried with him.  Neither of us knew how to be a spouse, so we did what we had learned.  We each stayed in our family roles:  I put on a relentlessly cheerful face and he engaged in deeply wounding abuse, the way he had always been treated and the way his family treated each other.    

I was working as an editorial assistant at Avon Books in the landmark Hearst Building on 57^th Street and Eighth Avenue.  It should have been a dream job for anyone who had been an English major, but I hated it.  As a guileless kid, faced with the back stabbing and cut throat ambition, I was completely out of my league.  By that time I was expecting our first baby and that was all I cared about.  I just wanted to be a mother.  I had no other career goal.   But if I was unhappy at work, I was desolate at home, frightened by the hurtful stranger I was married to.  I was confused because I was so nice to him, yet it made no difference.  Sometimes he would be warm and loving, sometimes cruel and cutting.  I never knew which I was going to get, so I was constantly on guard.  I was only 22 years old, naïve and with no alternative but to stay with him. My mother had provided this helpful wedding day advice: you’ve made your bed, you have to lie in it.  She made it clear there was no recourse there.  I was emotionally exhausted and we had only been married a few weeks.   Because hope springs eternal, and because I did not have resources or the courage to do anything else, this would be the pattern for the next seventeen years, ending only with his fatal heart attack at the age of 40.

So the little apartment I had been so excited about became a symbol to me of the beginning of a long, hard road.  What I had entered into with such optimism came to be a place that echoed with anger and disappointment.  We lived there for a year before moving to Brooklyn to be near his family.

Incredibly, when I Googled the address the other night, a realtor posting popped up.  It was for the exact same apartment we had lived in.  At first I thought I was being silly, that would be too much of a coincidence.  I looked at the pictures, nothing like the shabby little dump we had had.  We had no shiny new floors, recessed lighting or exposed brick.  But the more I looked, the more I could see the footprint of what had been.  The transformation was jaw dropping.  Our rent had been $165 a month.  The current rent was now $2,350.  For a fifth floor walk up with no proper bathroom and no closets at all.     

Here is the layout of the apartment as we had known it:

The front of the building, pretty much the same:

And here are pictures of its present day transformation with notes on the original configuration:

So the memories have been flooding me over the past week, how sad it was that two young people, two good people, should have lived in so much unhappiness.  But of course nothing is black and white and there were some good moments, and laughter.  Dennis bought our Christmas tree at the florist around the corner, Exotic Flowers.  But he didn’t cross the “x” on the check, so it looked like he had purchased something at Erotic Flowers.  We laughed about that for a long time, our erotic Christmas tree.  Our puppy Ellie was a constant source of fun.  Sometimes Dennis would surprise me by meeting me at the door as I came out of work and we would walk home together through the Manhattan twilight.  Most of all though, we were overjoyed about our coming baby.  We were both thrilled about becoming parents and loved our precious child from the moment we knew. 

And there was this.  Right before we moved in, Dennis was painting the apartment.  One evening before he quit for the day, he playfully painted something on one of the unfinished walls.  If an archeologist scraped though the dozens of layers of paint that have probably been applied since 1976, they would find in big letters “I LOVE MARIE LYNN”.  Me.  And I hang onto that, the most important thing to remember.  Despite the things he did and said, I think that deep down he really did.  As I loved him.  If only we had known how to prove it to each other.

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