Posts….

The Lost Summer…

The last day of July. Heading directly into the dog days tomorrow–August 1. The EIGHTH month of the year, putting us mere MOMENTS away from the Christmas crazies. (and I was so happy to see Christmas stuff only begin to arrive in the store this last week—No big CHRISTMAS in JULY themed nonsense…)

But tomorrow, we are no longer far away from 2010. We are frightfully close. Halloween and autumn leaves crowd our aisles. Shades of orange and rust are forcing away the fuchsia and yellows of summer.

This year, no garden death to lament. No, that doesn’t mean I was successful in planting, raising and keeping the critters away from my flower bed.

It means I never even bothered. For the past 6 years, gardening in the south had been an exercise in futility.  I enjoyed it every March, every April, and sometimes right into May.

Then, in early to mid-May, summer would arrive. With its crazy 100+ days, dripping humidity, and my horrid soil and southern exposure. All my efforts were for naught. Anything that managed NOT to be stolen under cover of night by the voles would die.

This year I was having foot issues. I was in a boot for a month trying to heal it (Have I?? I think, a bit. Sometimes) And then we took a slightly earlier, slightly longer vacation in late April.

By the time I was home and healthy enough to be crawling around in the dirt, I had emotionally removed myself from the garden because last year, by mid-May I had been waving the white flag of surrender.

A funny thing happened this year. It didn’t get hot! So, all this time, I COULD HAVE been working at it, and I didn’t, and now, its August tomorrow, and FINALLY the heat is here….

Where were YOU….

….Forty years ago, tomorrow??? Do you remember? It’s one of the seminal ones, folks. Forty years ago– July 20, 1969–mankind stood shoulder to shoulder, that summer of love, in front of grainy black and white televisions, witnessing the impossible, the improbable, the unbelievable.

Three American men traveled to the moon. A human stood on the moon’s surface, planted a flag and left footprints.

Pretty heady stuff. Do you remember where you were?

My memory of the lunar landing is 100% wrapped up inside an incredibly real dream that I had as a child of 4 1/2 years of age.

The only television set that we owned was kept in the playroom. The playroom was next to the kitchen; it had it’s own formal front door entrance from our front porch. Like all the other rooms in that house on Ellicott Place, the playroom had many incarnations during my life. At one time it was my grandfathers home office, and my father crashed there for a few years, on and off. Joe lived there for a time, too, before he moved to the basement (or the garage??) Ultimately, it was Daddy Gus’s last bedroom.

But in 1969, it was still, or currently, the playroom (with a leather chair in the corner behind the door, with a telephone on the table. Can still see Grandma Elaine sitting there, chatting with Aunt Ursula. “Yah, yah. Yah.”

The dream and the landing go together. The house was at the top of a cul-de-sac (of the old-fashioned, legitimate variety) referred to then as a dead end or a private street.

The television was on; I can see the grainy images, but the door onto the porch is open, as well. And outside—well, here is where things get a trifle odd. There were these loins, running round the grassy islands, manes flying in the wind, and this city bus had somehow wended it’s way up the block and was now desperately trying to make the curve around the island. And all of it was in black and white.

Yeah, I experienced the summer of 69! (What year did Born Free come out? Had I ever even BEEN on a city bus at that age??)

moon010 copy

(JANUARY 2009, From my back porch)

My other moon story comes many moons later (sorry for the bad pun, it was inevitable)…. I was a salesperson at a store that sold science-type gifts.

A older gentleman had come up to the counter and was looking at our Space Pens, nifty little bullet-like devices that could write at any angle. He questioned me about the pen, and I gave him my little spiel.

He then reaches into his pocket, and shows me his own pen.  Tells me that HIS pen had actually BEEN to the moon, didn’t I know? And of course, I didn’t.

Bet you don’t know who Michael Collins is,” he then replies.

And I told him yes, actually, he is a cousin to one of my best friends. Don’t think he was expecting THAT as a reply, and I probably ruined his little pleasure of the day, but…it’s a great story for ME to tell!

To infinity, and beyond!

OH, and by the way?? The question at the top begs a response, please!!! What do you remember?

Michael…

Michael Jackson didn’t change my life.

But, he has always been a part of it. His music, and that of his brothers; the cheesy Saturday morning cartoon that we watched (after eating breakfast and getting dressed and making our bed, of course), the advent of music videos; all of this can be inexorably linked to Michael in my world.

Not to mention, the purchase of my first record album. (Well, possibly the second, depending on whether Glass Houses by Billy Joel was rung up first by the cashier at the record store in Grand Central Station that day in 1980 while we waited for our Amtrak train.) I had birthday money to burn, if I recalled correctly, and Glass Houses and Off the Wall came home with me.

I played that album to death. I remember lying on the floor in the living room at night, the two stereo speakers on the floor on either side of my head,(Remember, youngsters—this was not only before the internet, and before the CD but before the Walkman and ear buds made it into common use!) blasting those albums.

I don’t have either album any longer. And while I am heading to a Billy Joel/Elton John concert next week, I have to admit there currently are no Michael Jackson tunes amidst the 3400 songs on my IPOD.

Today I turned on the television while I walked 1.3 miles on the elliptical (hey, I am working towards working out, ok??) Believe it or not, this was the first time I have watched television since Michael died. I have so far avoided all the wringing of hands and gnashing of teeth.

My first reaction to his death, and one that still stands, is that there is a sad, tortured life that has been freed.

Still, I tuned in to CNN and caught the last 15 minutes of the memorial, and they were singing We Are The World. A song that always sends shivers.

The heartbreak, however– the part that brought tears to my eyes, to mourn a man I rarely considered– was when Paris took the microphone. While I applaud Michael in his ability to shield his children from the craziness that is Hollywood, I think we never imagined him in the role that Paris and her brothers knew.

I think then and there Michael became to all of us something more than just a singer, an entertainer, a dancer; more than a late-night joke, more than a whisper of tabloid headlines.

He became a father.

And his death leaves three young, innocent and distraught children without the stability that he had yearned for both himself and for them.

Peace be with them.