A Walker in the Suburbs

Reading essayist Joseph Epstein’s autobiography recently, this sentence made me smile:

As to what phrase my children might have heard most frequently from me when they were growing up, my guess is that it might be, “I’ll be there as soon as I finish this paragraph.”

I had the good fortune of being Epstein’s student. It was in his class that I first produced an assemblage of paragraphs that deserved to be called an essay. Now I know that when he was teaching me, he was also raising four sons as a single parent … and penning beautiful essays at the same time.

Like Epstein, I had the opportunity to freelance while raising our children. I didn’t become an editor in an office again until the youngest was in third grade. As a result the girls grew up with a mother who was available for the big things (cuts and bruises of body or spirit) but who made them wait for the little ones (a snack, a story, a trip to the pool on a hot summer day).

Most mothers and fathers now don’t have this opportunity. For me it was made possible by a burgeoning magazine market and a willing and good-natured partner.

I’m forever grateful that I had the opportunity to conduct interviews while nursing an infant, to wrestle words on the page while listening to giggles and shrieks from the next room, and the opportunity to say, over and over again: “I’ll be there as soon as I finish this paragraph.”

My first clear memory is of holding a nickel. The coin was a bribe, no doubt about it. In fact, it may have been the first bribe I was offered, coinciding neatly with my first memory.

I was three years old and had just acquired a baby brother. I wasn’t allowed into the hospital, but the nurse held him up to window so I could see his little bald head. He looked vaguely interesting — but nowhere near as fascinating as the nickel. Suddenly I had come into a fortune. I could buy a whole candy bar, or five pieces of penny candy.

As it turned out, the candy was only a fleeting pleasure. But my brother Phillip, who I tried to smother with baby powder, who I implored my parents to remove immediately — “take that baby back to St. Joseph’s [Hospital],” I said — he stuck around much longer.

Today, he celebrates a birthday. I hope he celebrates many, many more.

I usually cede the blog to Mom on this day, search among her papers and writings, find the words, type them here. But today is a milestone birthday: Mom would have been 100 today.

She always deplored February 1 — the cold, the snow. At least once in my lifetime she spent the day entirely alone because she was snowed in. We were grown and out of the house, and Dad was away.

Today I wake to severe weather advisories, single-digit wind chills, a February 1 that proves everything Mom ever said about it.

But to me, February 1 was always special. No snow, ice or gloom could erase the fact that this is the day my mother came into this world. And no polar vortex will spoil it today.

It’s been ten years since Mom died. It’s been ten years and a day since I last heard her voice.

I heard it at Metro Center, where I was walking to the spot where I’d wait for an Orange Line train to Vienna. My phone rang. It was my sister, Ellen.

“I thought you’d want to talk to Mom. She’s feeling better.”

Mom’s voice was breathless and bubbly. She sounded girlish, giddy.

“Hi, hi,” she said. I distinctly remember that she said “hi” twice. Not because she was confused, it seemed, but because she was excited.

“Hi, Mom. I’m on my way home from work. I’ll be coming to see you tomorrow.”

Ellen got back on the line and quickly rang off. I’d be with both of them the next day; there was no need for conversation. Except there was, because that was the last conversation.

What I’ve thought since then is that maybe Mom’s final words to me were a replay of her first ones. I imagine her holding the newborn me, cooing and smiling and saying, “hi, hi.”

Mom and I were big talkers. Through the years we spent countless hours chatting, solving all the world’s problems. Could it be that this long conversation began and ended with a two-letter word, with a word that is little more than a breath?

Yesterday the world warmed and most of the snow melted, but late in the day a cold wind sprang up, and it’s blowing still today, bringing us back to winter again.

But nothing can dispel the wellspring of warmth that this day exudes. It’s a day devoted to love, love in all forms, all languages.

Night before last, I dreamed I heard a knock on the back door. It was two of my grandchildren, wanting to come inside. Later today I’ll see those two, and the rest of them, and give them big hugs and too much candy. It will be loud, chaotic, sticky fun. It’s a perfect way to celebrate this day.

Mom would have been 99 today. Today I cede this space to the person who inspired me first, and inspires me still. In this “guest post,” Mom muses on her earliest memory.

Where do I start to tell the story of my life? Do I start with the beginning? But what is the beginning? Is it that cold early February morning when I was born, only minutes after midnight? But to write of those moments and the moments that followed would be only hearsay. So do I start with my own first memory? I think that would be the honest way.

My first real memory is of sunlight streaming through a window near the little chair where I sat. It was a rocking chair, red maybe, and I must have been fascinated with the way the light seemed to jump through the windowpanes and dance around until it chose to fall right at my feet.

Did I laugh at its playfulness? Did I try to catch it and hold onto it? Did I sit very still and wonder where it came from and where it would go when it left? Or did I just enjoy it while it stayed close to me?

There was a hush abroad in the land when I woke this morning. All I could think about was that there’s a new little person in the world who wasn’t here this time yesterday. On any given day this is always case. But yesterday was special because this little person is our newest granddaughter.

When the pandemic began in 2020 we had no grandchildren. Now we have six. Not that I feel old or anything. Okay, maybe just a little bit old. But mostly I feel blessed.

What we have here is an embarrassment of riches. What my daughter has is her newfound status as mother of three. As I helped her out yesterday, scrambling like crazy to get a preschooler and toddler out the door, dealing also with two large dogs and a cat, I wondered how she will ever manage with a third. But she will. I did (minus the two large dogs), and many manage much more with far fewer resources.

Our job as grandparents is to support the family however we can. Which is what I’m planning to do, starting … yesterday.

(Between them, these two “babies” now have six kiddos.)

,

Mom has been gone nine years today. Almost a decade. Nine rich years for me — though not always easy ones. Years she missed.

What I would give for one more heart-to-heart, sitting at the kitchen table with everyone else asleep. What would I tell Mom?

I would fill her in on the new additions to the family, the grandchildren and the sons-in-law. I would tell her about my work and my travels. She would marvel at it all, I’m sure.

And of course, as was our habit, we would try to solve the world’s problems. We would find it more difficult than we used to because the world’s problems have grown considerably thornier since she’s been gone. But we would give it a go.

There would come a point, though, when we’d say enough. Let’s end on a high note. And that would be this: I’d be sure Mom knew that the four children she left behind are always there for each other. We live our own lives, of course. But we are, and we always will be, a family.

Mom, center, in black shirt, with her sister, brother, sister-in-law, children, grandchildren, nieces and nephews (1997).