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captainsblogAugust 15th has always been a personal, and pretty intense, holiday of mine and my own. It recalls the day in 1978 that I dropped off a check, picked up some keys, and began my life away from the family of my upbringing, never to return. Yeah, I'd lived in a Cornell dorm the previous year, but that was never the same thing as what was to come. Home was still away- down there. But when I packed up my relatively few possessions and turned that key on this August Ithaca morning, it was for real and for good.
I've observed this holiday many times before in posts (most recently this one, probably this as the first, and at least this one in between); I thought I'd referenced the song lyric modified above at least once, but I can't find where I did it- it's from this Indigo Girls song from the first CD we ever bought. It was the beginning of my independence, of learning life things I'd either avoided or been spared, from cooking to cleaning to getting along with people in and out of my one true home who, for the first time, I wasn't blood-relative with.
Thinking about it overnight- mainly to get away from the anxiety of a court hearing this morning that has been kicked like a can into next Wednesday morning- I brought my mind back to Ithaca, and to those first baby steps. Of learning the Ithaca Transit schedule to get around (I had no car, and wouldn't for two more years). Of discerning the difference between a cabbage and a head of iceberg lettuce in the Cayuga Mall supermarket we called the Grand Onion. Yet somehow, this year, my thoughts focused more on what a time of transition it also was, forty summers ago, for the one blood relative I've remained closest to in terms of geography, emotions and just about everything else.
----
In at least the 2008 recollection of this date, I mentioned that my sister Donna had been going through some changes that summer, as well. She'd been in Binghamton for a decade by then, for college and eventually work. In my first year at Cornell, we visited often, and I got to know her boyfriend Joe, who was ::cue soap opera organ:: still married. He'd stay over at her place sometimes, and they'd "head out" to various destinations, but his home was still in nearby Endicott, with a wife and kid and limitations.
Around the time of my ill-fated move back "home" for the first and last time between freshman and sophomore years, Donna also moved back to Long Island for the first and last time since leaving in 1968. She'd reconnected with an old flame named Jerry, given up her cool apartment on Bingo's west side, put a bunch of stuff into storage and moved to where he lived not far from our childhood home. It was Jerry's Caddy which held all the worldly possessions I intended to take from East Meadow- basically a suitcase of clothes, my stereo, some books and record albums, and my father's army foot locker chock full of tschockes and whatnots.
I set out on my new life- my two (eventually two and a half) roommates arrived within a few weeks, we set to our classes and me to joining the daily paper, and I didn't miss the quick weekend bus trips to Binghamton to see family as much. Until, all of a sudden, it was over: Jerry was out, Joe was back in, and this time in for good. He left the home, the wife and the kid, helped her get her stuff out of Jerry's and (just as annoying) the storage joint, and took up housekeeping with Donna in a new apartment up the road from the mall in Johnson City. She got a new job, and had some rough months in the early transition back, but in the end there was no question that the move back was the right move for both of them.
They'd be together the next 15 years, moving from that place to the first and then second homes Donna bought herself, through my mother's move first to her area and then into that second home with her, and finally through Joe's final year of illness (we got the news the weekend of Emily's birth) until he passed about a year later. In an even soap-opera-ier ending to the whole thing, Donna and Joe's wife wound up being close friends, both at his side for most of his final months. She remained close to Rose until her passing only recently, and still is close to her daughter and granddaughter. Donna and Joe never married- which likely helped with those good feelings- but I don't think they needed any liturgical blessing of what they meant to each other than the blessings they each bestowed directly.
I wonder how things would have gone if there had been different twists in the river of time. If she'd never moved back that summer. Or if she had stayed. Or if I hadn't totaled my first-ever car in my third week back in Nausea County, immediately losing my freedom and employability and making that one summer the miserable experience that it was and convincing me to never to go back. I can't imagine the next 15 years without him as part of her memories, or him and her in mine. They were there in so many ways for so many things for me, through two graduations, job and life changes.
So even though you never knew what it was, Happy Anniversary, Donna:)
I've observed this holiday many times before in posts (most recently this one, probably this as the first, and at least this one in between); I thought I'd referenced the song lyric modified above at least once, but I can't find where I did it- it's from this Indigo Girls song from the first CD we ever bought. It was the beginning of my independence, of learning life things I'd either avoided or been spared, from cooking to cleaning to getting along with people in and out of my one true home who, for the first time, I wasn't blood-relative with.
Thinking about it overnight- mainly to get away from the anxiety of a court hearing this morning that has been kicked like a can into next Wednesday morning- I brought my mind back to Ithaca, and to those first baby steps. Of learning the Ithaca Transit schedule to get around (I had no car, and wouldn't for two more years). Of discerning the difference between a cabbage and a head of iceberg lettuce in the Cayuga Mall supermarket we called the Grand Onion. Yet somehow, this year, my thoughts focused more on what a time of transition it also was, forty summers ago, for the one blood relative I've remained closest to in terms of geography, emotions and just about everything else.
----
In at least the 2008 recollection of this date, I mentioned that my sister Donna had been going through some changes that summer, as well. She'd been in Binghamton for a decade by then, for college and eventually work. In my first year at Cornell, we visited often, and I got to know her boyfriend Joe, who was ::cue soap opera organ:: still married. He'd stay over at her place sometimes, and they'd "head out" to various destinations, but his home was still in nearby Endicott, with a wife and kid and limitations.
Around the time of my ill-fated move back "home" for the first and last time between freshman and sophomore years, Donna also moved back to Long Island for the first and last time since leaving in 1968. She'd reconnected with an old flame named Jerry, given up her cool apartment on Bingo's west side, put a bunch of stuff into storage and moved to where he lived not far from our childhood home. It was Jerry's Caddy which held all the worldly possessions I intended to take from East Meadow- basically a suitcase of clothes, my stereo, some books and record albums, and my father's army foot locker chock full of tschockes and whatnots.
I set out on my new life- my two (eventually two and a half) roommates arrived within a few weeks, we set to our classes and me to joining the daily paper, and I didn't miss the quick weekend bus trips to Binghamton to see family as much. Until, all of a sudden, it was over: Jerry was out, Joe was back in, and this time in for good. He left the home, the wife and the kid, helped her get her stuff out of Jerry's and (just as annoying) the storage joint, and took up housekeeping with Donna in a new apartment up the road from the mall in Johnson City. She got a new job, and had some rough months in the early transition back, but in the end there was no question that the move back was the right move for both of them.
They'd be together the next 15 years, moving from that place to the first and then second homes Donna bought herself, through my mother's move first to her area and then into that second home with her, and finally through Joe's final year of illness (we got the news the weekend of Emily's birth) until he passed about a year later. In an even soap-opera-ier ending to the whole thing, Donna and Joe's wife wound up being close friends, both at his side for most of his final months. She remained close to Rose until her passing only recently, and still is close to her daughter and granddaughter. Donna and Joe never married- which likely helped with those good feelings- but I don't think they needed any liturgical blessing of what they meant to each other than the blessings they each bestowed directly.
I wonder how things would have gone if there had been different twists in the river of time. If she'd never moved back that summer. Or if she had stayed. Or if I hadn't totaled my first-ever car in my third week back in Nausea County, immediately losing my freedom and employability and making that one summer the miserable experience that it was and convincing me to never to go back. I can't imagine the next 15 years without him as part of her memories, or him and her in mine. They were there in so many ways for so many things for me, through two graduations, job and life changes.
So even though you never knew what it was, Happy Anniversary, Donna:)