365 Memories

In the summer of 1993, my ties to St. Louis were growing thin, though they were also at their strongest then, too. I had left law school during the spring semester, had trained as a volunteer with the Sexual Assault Response Team, and had also landed a public relations internship in a boutique-style marketing firm. I was fortunate to work for and with incredibly generous people, and together we did amazing things in the city. During the day, I learned how to write press releases and good industry newsletters; I helped plan special events to boost awareness for local businesses, and to raise money for charity. (The year I was there, I got my first taste of NASCAR culture, when the racing association teamed up with Northwest Plaza for a flood relief fundraiser.) At night, I stayed on call at home in the event I was needed in one of the area emergency rooms to comfort survivors of assault. It was a busy, intense time. My former law school colleagues were, many of them, away for the summe...

I remember quite a few things about St. Louis, but the quirk that after a while came to represent the city to me, like shorthand, is this: in St. Louis, no matter how old you are, no matter your professional standing or the other details of your life, your resume, or your CV, when you meet a new person there is a single question you are almost certain to be asked (really, without fail if I recall), and that is, "Where did you go to high school?" Your answer matters. Pretty much says it all.

One thing you do not do when you live in New York City is buy bulk; well, some people might, but generally not those of us who are renting cramped apartments. I have lived in big cities almost all my life, and mostly in small spaces. This suits me fine. Yes, occasionally I would really like to have more room to eat, sleep, breathe in. There are problems with clothes not fitting in the closets and where to store things like in-line skates. Only recently have my husband and I managed to upgrade to a place that has, while not really a dining room , at least something resembling an alcove that's reserved for meals; it's more than just a table in the corner of the living room. Living and eating are, in terms of spatial relation, finally separate in our home (psychically they still often seem the same, though). This is luxury. Anyway, the point is that there's just no room to store extras, and even the one box of . . . let's say cereal . . . had better be the small and not th...

This week, friends are coming in from out of town. They, too, live in urban environments, so instances of city rudeness are not unknown to them, especially on the road, I imagine. (How many times a day does someone in Southern California get exposed to a dose of road rage?). But when it comes to rude, New Yorkers—especially the cab drivers—have earned a reputation over the years, not wholly undeserved. Actually, I think that people in the city (including the cabbies ) have trended much more toward nice in the past decade, though maybe "nice" is just a relative term. Certainly there was a post-9/11 shift. Of course I hope that my friends have only the best experiences in public transportation during the next few days, but in case of any rudeness, I thought I'd share a story to convey that it happens to all of us sooner or later, even the locals—so it's not necessary to ask whether you, when you visit New York City as a tourist, are a target; odds are, it's nothing ...

The lights in the studio were cut. I stood in one darkened corner, then walked diagonally across the padded floor toward a man who approached me from the other end of the room. No one else was there. Every nerve in my body tingled with the anticipation of attack. He started a patter of trash talk that began with "Hey, baby, where you goin '?" and ended in four-letter obscenities. His wiry body advanced quickly, and I called up the tactics of self defense I'd been practicing for weeks. Let's call this a final exam. Let's say I flunked it miserably, right from the words "called up." It is an illusion, the idea that in a moment like this there is time to remind yourself of anything; your moves must be without thought, swift and accurate. The man approaching was the teacher of a scrappy "street style" self defense class offered in St. Louis in the spring of 1993. Since I'd been working for S.A.R.T., the Sexual Assault Response Team run out ...

It's late at night, and you're alone in your apartment, tired but on high alert, unable to sleep. In the dark, you pray. Despite the fact that at this time in your life you would never describe yourself as a "religious" person, it is definitely a true prayer, not the bargaining offer of an exchange ( I'll reform, if only . . . ); you are not the one in need. You are the one whose job it is to help those in crisis, and although you signed up for this gig, you wish desperately that your job didn't exist, wasn't needed—not tonight, not anytime. Not while you are the volunteer on call, committed to driving at whatever hour of the night to whatever hospital emergency room phones in a case of sexual assault. Given that a possible career in criminal law was what brought me to St. Louis, it's easy to see how I found my way to S.A.R.T., the city's Sexual Assault Response Team. The program was (still is) based out of the Metro St. Louis Y.W.C.A. For voluntee...

What was it, apart from a secondary satisfaction to ride out the 1992 recession in the shelter of graduate school (not that incurring additional expense made sense), that had me moving through the Gateway to the West, settling in St. Louis, Missouri, for a doomed attempt at law school? Was it because I'd been told numerous times in my life that I'd make a good lawyer? (And why was that? For a logical mind or an eye for detail? Because I was good at arguing?) I remember that during orientation at Washington University (a.k.a. Wash U), I quickly came to dislike the getting-to-know-you chitchat at social events, because I'd be asked first where I went to college and then what my major had been. Coming from a small liberal arts college with no official pre -law program (we got taught how to think across subjects), I got used to the incredulous looks I received when I said I'd majored in French Language. It was obvious, too, from my urban, "updated Annie Hall" styl...

  Seventeen years ago, the mortarboard cap and gown put away and the parties over, I closed the door on my undergraduate years, boxed up my affairs in the Hudson Valley (things and relationships), and prepared to move on. On this day in 1992 (a Sunday then, as now), the New York Times reported on weekend commencement ceremonies that had taken place the day before. My college was cited among them. " Bard College held its 132d commencement yesterday on the main campus lawn in Annandale -on-Hudson, N.Y. William Julius Wilson delivered the commencement address to the school's largest graduating class [. . . ]. Dr. Wilson, a sociologist and a professor of race relations and public policy at the University of Chicago, received an honorary doctorate of humane letters." It was not an uplifting ceremony; I was wilting throughout. First, it was hot—or anyway I was hot, sitting under the white tent, shoulder to shoulder with the two hundred plus seniors, doing my best to stay hydra...

It seemed like a good idea when I first thought of it. Of course, when you're six or seven (or even much older), lots of things seem like good ideas that aren't, including conning a babysitter into letting you wobble around the neighborhood wearing your mother's high-heeled boots, many sizes too big and in any case off limits; or else sticking a tiny seashell up your nose, far enough so that a couple weeks later—because you'd done this on the sly and were afraid to say anything when it got stuck—the shell had to get vacuumed out at the pediatrician's office. You know, stuff like that. (What? You mean to tell me you never put a shell up your nose when you were little?) Anyway, this was no big thing, didn't have any serious consequences. No getting in trouble, no trip to the doctor. Still, it marked me for its foulness, and I've never forgotten. To give some background: I don't know whose idea it was, mine or my mom's, but together we started a mini t...

May 1992. Might have been during Memorial Day weekend. I was closing in on the last weeks of my undergraduate education, and I had a bad case of " senioritis ." Not that I had classes to blow off, even if it had been a weekday; spring of my senior year, I had only my thesis to work on, and it (translation of a novel from French into English) had already been submitted to my advisor. I was pretty much home free. On the May day in question, the sun shone over the Hudson Valley. It was a perfect day to be out on the wide river, part of a flotilla of small rowboats rustled up from who knows where, catfish hunting. I don't know who was responsible for this annual tradition—in fact, there are more things I don't remember about this event than things I do, but it comes to mind from time to time, like tonight, so I guess there's a reason. I was invited by a local guy, some years older but not many, who had connections to people at my college. The connections involved alu...

What is it with pistachios in the middle of the night? I have always loved these tree nuts with their mottled purple-green color and their use in savory and sweet dishes from the exotic east. I have come across some sublime uses of pistachios in Europe as well: a recipe for a red grapefruit-pistachio tart that I found in the company of a French chef friend, plus the creamiest Italian gelato . . . makes eating the typical pistachio ice cream here in the States pretty much pointless. I won't even mention the time that I decided to make my own and used salted nuts in the frozen custard base instead of unsalted. (Except that I just did mention it.) Could've been a happy accident, as many culinary discoveries are—but it wasn't. I ate the stuff anyway, because I can't bear wasting food. There are two memories I have, though, of pistachios past the midnight hour: one funny, the other incredibly unfunny. The not-at-all funny moment involved my pregnancy. I have to say that I ...

One thing I have always known and will always remember about my mother is that she is a voracious reader. I see her now in my mind's eye, sitting at my parents' long dining room table, a stack of newspapers and magazines piled up to one side. Here are the publications I remember her reading over the years, most of them simultaneously: the New York Times , the Wall Street Journal , the New York Post , USA Today , the New Yorker , People ,  Time , Money ,  Newsweek ,  BusinessWeek , Inc ., and the  Economist , along with assorted trade magazines and investment newsletters. I'm not sure I ever saw her flipping idly through, say, Vogue or Cosmo —sometimes Vanity Fair , for Annie Liebowitz's photos—but occasionally she did pull a copy of the National Enquirer from the rack in supermarket checkout line, add it to our groceries, and absorb its sordid content in the privacy of our home. This, mind you, is a list of just the periodicals—and I know I am missing some important ...

Along with sunshine and the reggae beat of UB 40 coming from a friend's boom box by the lake at my Michigan boarding school, late spring in 1985 brings another memory: the first "real" kiss. I was fifteen years old, school would dismiss for the summer in a few short weeks, and when I came back in September, I'd be another couple weeks shy of turning sixteen. Sweet sixteen and . . . never been kissed? I remember feeling ambivalent. On the one hand, I didn't much care. On the other, I knew that I was supposed to care, so it began to bother me. And springtime conspires to create young love. And there was this one guy who seemed kind of interesting, a little different—though it's hard to remember now exactly what it was that struck me as unusual. Maybe it was the way he dressed. He was tall and slim, and clothes draped nicely on him. He had very blond hair, and the brightness of it was emphasized by his choice of wearing mostly white. He wore linen, I think; he w...

It's mid-May and gray today. Unseasonably cool temperatures. Hard to recall days of sunshine and nothing doing, but that's really all I'm fit for in my wishful-thinking mode. So what I remember is this: Warm sand between my toes, finally. Fifteen years old, the thaw of my first real Michigan winter; snow and icicles gone, rain and mud gone, and the sun working its late-spring magic on my sour, pale-skin self. My school at the time was situated between two lakes, adjacent to State Park property. In the spring, shanties for ice fishing gave way to calm blue water, gentle waves carrying sparks of light. Between or after classes, I would head with friends to a two-story, yellow-painted structure by a small patch of beach—the boat launch location for summer camp students. Throughout the year, we'd head there to talk or not talk, to smoke or not smoke, to sulk or to smile as our mercurial moods demanded, and very often to listen to music. We listened to a lot of classic rock ...

Some of the best memories are simple. Nothing profound, nothing to analyze at all. Just the bliss of a sunny spring day in an urban childhood. A day for shedding winter layers, for walking in sandals in the park, hand in hand with Mom—who agrees that, yes, it is a day made for ice cream. I remember being in Central Park with my mother, seeking out the ice cream wagons, looking for their boxy white freezers and striped umbrellas. Before the roll-out of the Chipwich , before the advent of the Dove Bar—each of these brands appearing in the decadent 1980s, the first boom decade of "pay more, you deserve it" (these ice cream bars broke the $1.00 barrier of the times)—there was just Good Humor and Popsicle. Simple, affordable, artificial, but still good. I remember Toasted Almond bars (my favorite of the genre now), Chocolate Eclairs, King Cones, and Neapolitan ice cream sandwiches. I enjoyed Fudgsicles , red-white-and-blue Bomb Pops, and the packaged ice cream treat I loved perhap...

Back to the summer of 1990, between my sophomore and junior years of college. I was working at the 9-G Diner (see post, here ) and was also wrapping up some Human Biology coursework at a local community college—the credits would transfer over to fulfill the rest of the "interdisciplinary" requirements I needed in my own school's science department. I thought that the community college's biology class was more appealing, and hoped also that it would be easier to complete, than the offerings during the regular school year. This was pretty much confirmed, though I did have a lot of studying to do regardless. But the class was coming to an end, and as the summer ground down also, I found myself with a bit more time on my hands. Which is when a spontaneous opportunity arose: my parents were on their way to Geneva, Switzerland, for a few days, and they asked if I wanted to join them, on their dime. Of course I did. I remember asking N. and R., the owners of the diner, wheth...

Edward Steichen's 1924 portrait of Gloria Swanson (cropped detail at left). I would stand in front of this photograph in the Museum of Modern Art for long periods of time. The first time I saw it, I was fifteen years old, and my parents had just moved back East from Los Angeles. We were staying in an apartment that was owned by my father's employer (Pan Am). The small one-bedroom was located in the Museum Towers building on West 53rd Street, next to MoMA . Because the museum was, essentially, my back yard, I went there a lot, often alone. I was with my mother, though, the first time I saw this print. We walked through the galleries, and I was immediately drawn to this photograph. At the time, I didn't know who Gloria Swanson was, but I fell in love with her veiled face, her hypnotic eyes. In them I saw the kind of mystery and sensuality that I longed for—that I hoped to possess one day, when I had come into my womanhood. I also admired the challenging stare, straight into ...

1990: spring, summer, and fall. Closing in on my twenty-first birthday, I was studying French in college and, on weekends, working in a podunk diner at the intersection of Routes 9-G and 199 in Red Hook, New York. The diner is no longer there—I'm not sure what's taken its place—but I remember it well, and fondly. I was dating a "townie" at the time (since I lived off campus, I ended up knowing more locals than students by my senior year), and he's the one who introduced me to the diner's owners, N. and R. They were a hard-working couple, solidly blue collar, of Italian-American background. N., the cook (to say chef would stretch things a bit), had learned his trade in the navy mess (or the marines?), and was a reservist. He was a big brawny guy, but a sweetheart most of the time. R., his wife, was a woman with painted fingernails and frosted hair, who looked her age or older due to a smoking habit, a penchant for sun exposure, and what I guessed was a wearyin...

In 1931, one year before my mother was born, a fifty-four-year-old woman named Irma Rombauer predated the current DIY approach to book publishing and self-published a collection of recipes and kitchen knowledge for $3,000*. That book, once commercialized, would go on to become the American cooking classic, the Joy of Cooking . More than fifty years later, I would cook the first meal I remember making completely on my own from this book: at age thirteen or fourteen, I used my mother's yellowing edition (the fourth from the top in this post's photograph; the aqua colored one with no dust jacket and a bright red ribbon to mark your place, which I think was the sixth edition that appeared in 1962) to prepare a special breakfast of "German Apple Pancake" for my family. We were living in Los Angeles (or my parents were—I don't recall whether I made this dish before going to a boarding school for the arts in North Carolina, or if I made it during a vacation), in a two-...

This is not about food. It's about homework. It's about parents helping kids, about adding a dose of levity to assignments that seem dreary or overwhelming. And it's about instilling confidence and boosting a student's trust in his or her own capacity to remember vast amounts of information, or else minute details—which may in and of themselves be helpful or not, but they are anyway necessary for the process of learning how to learn, learning how to think. The mind is a powerful machine, but sometimes it needs a little jump. Like the one I gave my son yesterday, as he worked on a weekly spelling assignment. (As an aside, let me point out that my son is a kindergartener . Spelling tests? I have mixed feelings about this. The copy editor in me knows that good spelling goes hand in hand with literacy. I lament the general downward spiral of spelling skills in our electronic age, so I'm glad his school cares about it. Still . . . in kindergarten? I don't think I had...

When I was much younger, still a teenager—when danger held an allure, and when I thought my outward appearance was the best defense against a vulnerable heart—I wanted a tattoo of an ornate dagger on my arm, up close to the shoulder. And yet, I knew better than to mistake myself for someone ready to make a permanent commitment; I'd have to grow into that mentality. The urge subsided, then returned years later. Older, I became more discriminating, and less defensive. I became a social pacifist. I was intensely relieved I had not inked the image of a violent blade on my body. But I still wanted a tattoo. I began to do what my adult self has nearly always done when confronting a decision: I started researching. I was living in Chicago at the time, and I remember my quest for finding the best (and cleanest) tattoo parlor, though I don't remember the results of the search. I never even got to the point of meeting any tattoo artists, though (the research was by reputation), because I...

Today is Mother's Day. My fortieth as a daughter—as a mom, it's my sixth. As a nation, we are celebrating the ninety-fifth official Mother's Day, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, which says that Congress designated the second Sunday in May for this holiday in 1914, at the urging of one Anna Jarvis, who organized the first observances as early as 101 years ago today, on May 10, 1908. (There are some interesting statistics on mothers in America—married, single, employed or not, all age groups—at the Census Bureau's "Facts for Features" page, here ; you might want to have a look.) What do I remember today? It's been hard to focus on any one memory. This may be because there are so many to choose from. Or it may be because, to be honest, I'm really rather tired (a condition chronic for mothers of small children). Today has been lovely, though. I was treated to two beautiful handmade gifts: a colorful card and a draw-it-yourself decorative plate. The ca...

During the first few years of the 1970s, when I was three, four years old, my parents and I lived in Greenwich Village, New York City. We lived at Two Fifth Avenue, which sounds like a ritzy address, and is in fact rather gentrified now, but at the time it was not. The building was (still is) a low-rise apartment building across the street from the arch that marks the entrance of Washington Square Park. We could see the arch and park from our living room, and I remember spending long moments watching life pass outside the windows. It was some life. The most flamboyant memory from this time is of a tall man on roller skates who, on weekends, donned a pale orange chiffon dress and glided around the park waving a wand (at least, I'm pretty sure he had a wand). He was the "Peach Fairy," though I don't know if the name was neighborhood legend or just our own description. I remember thinking he was the greatest and being really envious of the flowing chiffon. It was a time ...