#51 Never Again

“If anyone is separated from their child, there is a TA employee with them at 59^th Street.”

It is 33^rd Street or 23^rd or 51^st when I hear this announcement on the 6 train. I can’t believe my ears, because as long as I have lived in this city, 25 or so years, I have never heard this before. The thought of a child and parent being separated on the subway is terrifying. Though in many ways this announcement is heartening, it also throws me tumbling back to a recent memory that I prefer to forget.

One week ago we were in Unadilla, NY, a charming upstate town.  My 11–year-old is asking for more independence and I want to give it to her (she had been walking to and from school on her own all year). Many blocks of a Main Street flea market were set up and we needed to find some boring store display items. In the center of town by a permanent playground in a field, there are food trucks set up along with a BBQ Chicken and a Homemade Fudge tent. It was a great place to let her wander on her own.  No cell phone exchange, just the promise to stay in the area and that we would return shortly.

After 25 or so minutes of scavenging through some fun stuff but finding nothing useful, we return to our meeting spot.

We cannot find her.

The panic immediately set in. It was the day before we were to drop her off for 6 weeks of sleep away camp. This would be the tragic beginning of a terrible summer. Greg and I split up to search. First, I circle the tents selling plastic junk, then the Bouncy House and the Henna and Temporary Tattoo stand. I look around each and every food truck. Ice Cream, Funnel Cakes and French Fries. I search the entire play area. She is too old for this, but I stoop down on my hands and knees and check each crevice where she might be. She used to slide down those yellow plastic tubes.

 My heart is sinking deeper and more quickly than I can fathom. I start to yell:

“Nell! Nell! Nell! Nell!”

I approach people sitting at wooden picnic tables.

I hear the panic in my voice as I ask with my hands,

“Have you seen a girl this tall with black frame glasses?”

“What was she wearing?”

That awful question. I hardly remember.

There are port-a-potties to the left of the field. I circle them and continue to yell.

“Nell! Nell! Nell!”

How could we have left her? What is the next course of action for reporting a missing child?

What if I never see her again because of my terrible judgment?

My life would be over. Ruined. Destroyed.

What kind of parent am I to leave her alone in a town with who-knows-who wandering around preying on young girls?

Where can I find the Chief of Police without too much time passing by while she is in harm’s way?

It is so hot and humid. The sun is blinding. The bouncy house is empty and I can hardly remember the last time she actually wanted to play inside one. There it is, empty yellow plastic. The grass is blazing and the smell of BBQ chicken is sickening.

A text comes:

“I found her, we are near the street” I breathe and laugh as I look over to the left and in the distance I can see she is smiling and bouncing around. I walk past the blazing white Victorian library with a wrap around porch brimming with boxes of records and used books for sale. The sidewalk is cracked and beautiful.

She is buying homemade fudge and got the very last piece of peanut butter and offers me a taste, a teeny tiny piece.

She is alive. I grab her and promise myself to never let her go.

Never again.

I am the luckiest person alive to have her in my arms.

#50 Something Vanished

For two weeks it was out of sight and A didn’t care much. Compensating for the missing __________ was easy enough. It didn’t cost a lot and it wasn’t something he couldn’t live without. It was just so strange that it was gone.

Strange. The house was generally messy and things got pushed under piles, under mail, under magazines. Clothing, dirty socks, dust bunnies accumulated and as he searched he became caught up in finding outdated LL Bean Catalogues and found himself regretting the missed sale on flannels. Before he realized it, it was time to do something else, or the phone rang or a work text came through and looking for ___________ became momentarily inconsequential.

The issue of not cleaning the house became the barrier to finding ____________.

He knew it.

He always knew it.  At 50 it never dawned on him to be embarrassed by his poor housekeeping. He was comfortable and it wasn’t until something went missing that he considered, or reconsidered, the benefits of being more organized.

On the subway home he made a deal with himself to look for it in a structured and methodical way. ‘When I get home I will take off my shoes and start to go through my closet. I will take every thing out and either find it, or rule out that it is absolutely not there. Today. Then I will move the search under the bed. I will pull every thing out and (same deal).’

When he arrived home he felt happy to be there. ‘There’s no place like home, isn’t a popular saying for nothing’, he thought.

He pulled off his shoes and sat on the couch and looked at the mail. The cat leapt onto his lap and he was warm and comfortable. He picked up the book he was almost finished reading and wanted to see how it ended.

Then he wanted to start the next book on his Kindle.

The next day he went to ______________ class and of course he still didn’t have it. He was doing just fine without it and a new one would cost around $50. He was still determined to find the one he had before spending the money on a new one.

He started to think more about it. It was about 3-years-old and even though he liked the color a lot, he thought that maybe it was starting to wear out. Wearing thin. He was starting to think about that even before it vanished, or was misplaced. He could not quite yet admit to himself that it was lost, because where could it have gone? Seriously?

After a few more _________ classes he realized that it was not returning. Never coming back. He remembered his dad telling him to always retrace his footsteps, but there were really none to retrace. The lost and found was no help.

That night, with the cat on his lap, he ordered a new one. Spending a bit of time to consider a new color and careful not to spend more on this one than the last.

It arrived in three days and he still liked the color of the old one more, but that’s it.

‘It will probably turn up eventually and I’ll feel really foolish.’ he thought. But he never felt foolish and was glad when the new one arrived. He also realized that he didn’t even need it anymore, but like an old friend, he was glad to have it around.

#49 Blue

Sitting around the pool at night and it is a strange, beautiful luminous blue; lit by underwater lamps which make the splash of fins look like sparkly, golden droplets of fire which magically dissolve, immediately. And again, with every mermaid's tail twirl and slap the surface.
Breaking the tension.

She breathes underwater. Her hair is weightless seaweed.

Earlier- a cloudy overcast and stormy sky.

As the sun set, the pool, ocean and sky merged into blocky blue tones, like a Rothko. Of course better than a painting, but the rectangles of soft blues, so close in tone, were remarkable.

How light constantly shifts everything with the setting sun, is hard to put into words.

There are Green and Leatherback turtle nests all along the beach. Each nest is protected by tall wooden sticks and florescent tape, so no one will trespass. During July 4^th festivities on the beach do wonder, aloud, how the thousands of buried eggs handled the fireworks booming above them.

Grandpa joked, “they must have their fingers in their ears!”

“Grandpa, turtles don’t have fingers!”

The orange deck lamps, hugged in dark blue, are lit so as not to attract any of the older turtles swimming to shore near the dangerous road. Every home on the shoreline has dimmed lighting so turtles won't mistake the moon for anything else.

No one wants to hurt a turtle. 

Every afternoon, there is at least one thunder and lightning storm. Watch the lines of silver lightning pierce the sky. A half dozen rainstorms are spaced apart, miles away.
Dark, hazy streaks connecting the clouds to the ocean.

Oh bla di, oh bla da.

Which direction is the storm headed.

It is humid and the waves are loud.

Time to sleep.

#48 Icy Lane, by my mother Evelyn Rhea Eichen Weiss.1946 Hatchet Year Book, George Washington HS, NYC

ICY LANE

The snow feels soft beneath my sodden feet,
As falls white dandelions' feathery down,
And it performs God's greatest winter feat
To present each tree a silver crown.

The world is dressed in creamy winter white,
And gently falling bluish angels' hair
Gives sky and river both a misty light
Which leaves no twig or rock or bridge-post bare.

The icy branches locked above my head
Are much like arbors of the whitest rose
Whose fallen milky petals form a bed
That's oddly tufted by the rabbits' toes.

This scene of ancient beauty I behold
As night writes a new story yet not told.

Evelyn Rhea Eichen, 1946
Age 17