My Lost Boy

When I suddenly birthed a child at home, my husband followed instructions from a nurse on the phone, moving me and the baby to our bed and settling us and the umbilical cord on clean towels. I was in shock and no help at all.

“It’s a boy,” he whispered, shocked as well, as we waited for the ambulance.

In the hospital, I asked my obstetrician to bring the baby to me. He did not. He would not veer from a certainty that it made no sense for me to see a six-month fetus weighing only two-and-a-half pounds, whose life would be fraught with problems had he lived.

He would not tell me what they did with my baby, with Kennedy—that’s what I’d planned to call him (or her), in honor of JFK who only months before had been assassinated.

How could this happen? I asked. What did I do wrong? I had just felt him bouncing around inside me. I was only twenty years old, healthy.

“These things just happen,” he answered. There was no ultrasound yet, no device that would have forecast trouble, only platitudes meant to soothe a distraught girl.

As I left the hospital a week later, the doctor handed me a round packet of tiny pills to be taken each day with strict adherence. The age of simple, reliable birth control had arrived. “No more pregnancies for two or three years,” he said. “Your body has to heal and grow strong. You need to take care of yourself and your husband and Andy.”

Andy. My eight-month-old son.

A year earlier we had moved from Philadelphia to the Washington DC area for a business opportunity that excited my husband. I hadn’t wanted to go. I didn’t want to leave my mother, who, at 40, was coping with brain cancer; our parting had been wrenching and most of me was still there, in her heart and household.

Our new apartment was in a modern high-rise in Hyattsville, Maryland, the only sign of life on an abandoned stretch of Route 1, the wretched, meandering road that preceded Interstate 95 as a means to travel from Maine to Florida. The University of Maryland was about three miles north of us. A mile south was the District line. We crossed it every weekend to visit federal monuments, the White House, the Capitol, Smithsonian museums, a harbinger of what would become, over the next forty years, a life brimming with adventure and learning.

As I struggled to adapt to my stark new environment, these expeditions distracted me, provided a respite from loneliness. Often, we went to the zoo, pushing Andy’s stroller among exotic caged creatures and diplomatic families wearing vivid saris and dashikis, turbans and veils. I would remember those days a decade later upon discovering “Woman at the Washington Zoo” by poet Randall Jarrell.

The saris go by me from the embassies.
Cloth from the moon.
Cloth from another planet.

And I would borrow his title for a play about a young woman lost in futility.

You know what I was.
You see what I am: change me, change me!

A week after my “spontaneous abortion,” my husband gave me a cobalt blue Chevy Nova convertible for my twenty-first birthday, hoping that would cheer me. But I could not stop thinking about my lost boy. There had been no ritual to mark his death, no urn of ashes, no teddy bear in a grave that we could visit. In my mind, he wandered alone in infinity.

Driving aimlessly in my little Nova one day, I began to cry. I cried that night and the next day and every day. My alarmed husband called my doctor, who referred us to a psychologist. “You should both go,” he told us, “because you both lost a child.”

After the first visit, my husband declared himself okay and never returned, but I was drawn to the comfort of Mrs. Osterman’s lovely office and her concern for me. I so hungered for the warmth of my large extended family back in Philadelphia.

We talked about my lost little boy, my valiant mother, my childhood. She counselled me on motherhood and wifedom and steered us toward a community of young families where I would find friends and Andy would have playmates.

With that move, I began to feel capable again.

My equilibrium returned.

The crying time ended.

Andy thrived.

On the death of Desmond Tutu – 12/26/21

I had the pleasure of meeting Bishop Tutu on the morning after his Nobel Peace Prize was announced, in 1984.

He was going to the Washington Post for an interview and I was going to my office next door.

As I am star-struck and given to chatting with strangers, I stopped to congratulate him as we strode past each other.

He clapped his hands and giggled, practically jumped up and down with joy, absolutely adorable. “How do you know already?” he asked.

“It’s on all the news,” I said, laughing with this hero who helped end apartheid in South Africa. A perfect moment in my cache of memories.

When Nelson Mandela was released from prison a few years later, he too was interviewed by the Post and I was one of many who gathered nearby to watch as he entered the building, surrounded by bodyguards.

Working next door to the Washington Post was very exciting.

You Go Girl ca. 1963

I don’t want to hear stupid
Girl you were never stupid, only foolish
Saw the stories in your books
but not the stories all around you
But now it’s done and what I say is
A woman’s place is with her husband
Your husband says go, you go
Don’t say you’ll miss me
Don’t say you’ll miss your mama
You had us all nineteen years of your little life
Now you have a husband
That’s all you have
That’s all you’ll ever have
‘Cept children
You’ll have those too
for a while
I had eight
Children
All gone now, the girls like your mama following their husbands
because I said so
Don’t matter if they slap you around
Make you feel panic like dirt flying off a swept floor
I got thirteen grandchildren
And I’m telling you grandchild
Your place is with your husband
He says go, you go

Ironing Handkerchiefs

Remembering my mother

It is 1977 and I fold a load of laundry at the kitchen table. The noonday sun suffuses the large airy room and my mood with warm comfort and I reminisce:

It is 1972 and I am folding laundry in my bedroom. The radio is on and a frantic voice says “George Wallace has been shot.” My baser self thinks, “Good,” but my kind side, the one I inherited from my mother, thinks about his wife and children. Does he have parents? I am a mother and daughter, primed to sidestep politics and feel the human side of a story.

I take my husband’s shirts to the ironing board, out of the sun’s reach, and think of the Tillie Olsen story that begins with a woman ironing and musing. I am that woman, musing about my mother sweating over the ironing board in our dark, cramped apartment, teaching me to iron handkerchiefs.

I have a PhD in ironing handkerchiefs.

Ocean Air

In the time of corona, I long for the sea.

From Philly, where I grew up, it was only about two hours to Atlantic City. As we approached the coast, the air grew cooler and the humidity of the city faded from memory. A stench of sulfur told us we were passing Egg Harbor. Then salt air breezed in, wiping away all unpleasantness and we knew we were almost there.

I practically hung out the window waiting for the Atlantic City skyline to come into view. This was decades before gambling and glitz took over, and I could pick out each grand old hotel, Steel Pier and Million Dollar Pier, and the spot where Mr. Peanut would bow genteelly to passersby and wave them in to a shop that roared with the frolicking sound of the roaster and teemed with the delectable salt water taffy coveted by visitors each summer.

Once we arrived at our rented flat it would take only a few minutes to toss our stuff into our rooms and head out to the beach. The best moment was climbing the stairs to the boardwalk and then clambering down another set of stairs onto the broad expanse of scorching sand. With burning feet we’d find the perfect spot for our blankets and umbrella and, amid shouted warnings from our exhausted parents, rush into the endless, gray Atlantic. If we were lucky, the jelly fish and stinging flies had not appeared yet and we could float and swim and ride the waves in bliss.

In the lonely time of corona, my mood lifts when I recall those days.

And just as the mood of my parents lifted then, as the sea air enfolded us, my mood lifts with anticipation of a day when I will walk along the water’s edge, my thirsty feet splayed among an array of shells peeking out of the cold mud. I will meet friends for dinner and we will drink a toast to all we have endured and enjoyed, to life.

I Wish — May 29, 2020

For four days in 1968, after Martin Luther King was murdered on April 4, a Washington DC neighborhood burned.

We lived in Rockville, Maryland, about 30 minutes from the flaming 14^th Street corridor, but were embroiled in the event as our three news channels broadcast frightening images 24 hours a day. Images of the smoking remains of shops and apartments. Images of people lugging televisions, groceries, even washing machines, from the rubble. Looters. The story became more about looters than the murder of an American hero. More about the National Guard aiming their firearms at frenzied, fed-up citizens, than about the murder of an American hero who would become an icon; whose name would be emblazoned on street signs, schools, monuments all over the world; whose birthday would become a national holiday.

When the flames finally had been extinguished, the salvaged delis and appliance stores boarded up, we assessed the damage and hoped those four raging days and the hopeful message of the martyred King had changed America.

We hoped America had seen the light. We wished it so.

I left Washington in 2002, thirty-four years after that apocalypse, just as its burnt-out remnants finally had been cleared away to make room for gentrification, for Whole Foods and over-priced condos. The 14^th Street corridor was becoming Washington’s theater district! Reminders of those four days in 1968 were eradicated.

But today they are resurrected in my memory, as flames engulf neighborhoods across America after another incomprehensible murder of an innocent black man, George Floyd.

Our world has not changed.

And wishing won’t make it so.

The Story of My Novel

When I began to write my novel, I had a theme in mind: the universal, routine violence suffered by women. The seed of this tale is a true story of the rape and murder of a mother of three on a trail near the one on which I walked every day. I had just moved from what then was the murder capital of the world, Washington, DC, and had chosen Walnut Creek for its small-town simplicity and peace. Yet, almost immediately this terrible crime happened. There were press reports of how the victim was talking on her cell phone to her husband when her assailant appeared, of how vivacious and loved she had been. The murderer eventually was found, tried and given the death penalty. A kind of closure.

But not for me. Her story stayed with me, nagged at me.

On the day I began writing my novel, I had walked to our downtown Farmer’s Market and noted the absence of the usual Sunday crowd of joggers along the trail, no ball games on surrounding grassy areas, no bikes whizzing by. And then realized: it was Super Bowl Sunday; everyone was huddled around TVs, noshing and yelling. I felt a chill as a ragged man stepped out of a glade behind a patch of tangled shrubbery, remembering the lovely young woman killed a few years earlier, and quickened my pace.

At the Farmer’s Market, I selected my fruit and vegetables, then decided to avoid the trail for my walk home. Where a horrid tale began to pour into my computer—it had been waiting for the right moment to emerge, a moment when my business had slowed, when I had time to attempt my lifelong dream of writing a novel. I typed a title, “Brenda Corrigan Went Downtown.” I described a lively 60-year-old woman walking on a lonely trail to the downtown Farmer’s Market, intending to purchase ingredients for an “un-Super Bowl” dinner party. I imagined her valiant effort to deter a vicious attack by a man who appeared from nowhere, who raped and maimed her and left her for dead.

But she doesn’t die and what develops is the story of this spirited woman, of her brave, warm friends, of familial relationships that are loving and quarrelsome. A tale of doctors, foolish and wise, who keep her alive, of resilience and hope, of despair and reconciliation. A tale of chance, for she could have taken her car that day, could have avoided the lonely trail, had she realized it would be deserted on Super Bowl Sunday.

I suffered during years of writing and rewriting, as Brenda fought to recover, as her life unfolded. I loved my new companion. She embodied my young mother who had recovered from painful, debilitating surgery only to succumb to brain cancer three years later. She was so like dear friends who fought similar battles.

I suffered, but couldn’t give her up. With each reading, this old editor would discover a misplaced semi-colon, a dangling participle (God forbid). I did endless searches to ensure that words like ‘gray’ and ‘grey’ were always ‘gray.’ I tripped over my many characters’ names and attributes, discovering that Brenda’s son was sometimes ‘Jeff,’ sometimes ‘Jack,’ then created bios for each with subtext, a tool I used as a playwright.

And then, on Super Bowl Sunday 2013, while doing one more “final proof,” I was struck by this passage:

There’s a big adjustment ahead, thought Brenda. My children and I will have to free each other again.

I realized I had to let go. My characters had lived in my imagination for four years. Now they wanted out. The story was finished.

Having received no replies from the dozens of agents I queried, I uploaded my document to the self-publishing arm of amazon.com—I was too old, did not have years enough ahead, to pursue traditional avenues. I asked a graphic designer I’d worked with in Washington to create the cover illustration, knowing that she would portray the essence of my girl. And voila! my book was alive, stacked on my office shelves, its digital counterpart on my kindle.

I hauled out my marketing skills, sent a Constant Contact letter to several lists, developed a website, posted the news on Facebook so often that old friends probably wanted to un-friend me.

Orinda Books hosted a launch party, local papers interviewed me, a church dubbed me their ‘Author of the Year” and hosted a discussion group. Synagogues and book clubs invited me to speak and sign.

Soon, I was punchy from the attention, from losing my way on serpentine back roads as I searched for each venue. And from managing reader response—revelations of rape, heated debates on the ethics of Brenda’s decision to live well or not at all. I wasn’t equipped to handle these discussions and longed for a therapist or minister to moderate.

Some readers were disappointed that an interlude with Charley, an old lover, did not lead Brenda to eternal bliss. They wanted a sequel, impossible given her sad end. One suggested that her daughter, Lynn, could find Mr. Right and all would be swell in sweet Walnut Creek. I gave it a try, imagining Charley and Lynn and a chance meeting in Santorini, but that didn’t go well.

There were good moments, too. One book club felt like a safe haven—these women had shared life’s joys and sorrows for 25 years and vividly connected with Brenda and her close friends. And I liked waking to emails from readers stating they could not put the book down, or they’d just sent it to their aunt in Poughkeepsie or a sister in London.

But mostly the conversations exhausted me, the opinions, the rugalach (yes, rugalach; my character Rose bakes rugalach, so I brought apricot and chocolate to each event, baked by Sunrise Deli).

I grew tired of people calling me Brenda, of confusing fiction with autobiography, and wrote a witty post for my blog called, “I’m Not Brenda,” to no avail. Strangers bombarding me with photos of past boyfriends and tales of illicit love, sharing their regrets and sorrows, made me want to post “I’m Not Your Shrink,” but I didn’t.

“Oy. Enough already,” my weary brain whimpered as I snaked down an unfamiliar foggy road one night. I needed to get back to my own life. I had a business, a monthly deadline to meet. There was fun to be had. The next morning, I canceled future engagements and returned to LBB—life before Brenda—happily scribbling snippets and stories for the joy of it. I had no desire ever to publish again.

When I began to write my novel, I intended to portray an example of the universal, routine violence suffered by women. I did that, but a novel meanders, refuses to adhere to a planned route. My polemic became a life story, which is always more than one thing. And which holds innumerable meanings for its readers.

“The Story of My Novel” appeared in the Spring 2023 issue of Vistas & Byways.

The Past Holds Sway

Thinking about my novel, Brenda Corrigan Went Downtown.

I began the writing on February 1, 2009, prompted by a walk on the trail near my home and finding it devoid of the usual rambunctious Sunday afternoon activity. Having lived through 9/11 in Washington, DC, I felt a sense of foreboding.

As does Brenda, when she comes upon:

. . . a nearby field where dogs usually romped off-leash, bounding after Frisbees, barking wildly, ecstatic to run free, then saw it was empty. Where was everybody? She felt disoriented now. Where were the walkers, the bikers who usually swarmed over the trail on a Sunday? Had something terrible happened? A terrorist attack?

Then she remembered. The Super Bowl. The whole world was nestled on couches, watching warm-ups and wrap-ups, stuffing itself with nachos and salsa. And here she was, alone . . . .

I’d been noodling an idea for a novel for a few years. I thought it would be interesting to imagine the life of someone who had been subjected to childhood abuse. Calamitous childhoods are so much more common than we like to think, but often are well hidden. Most people vigorously put an unpleasant past behind them, never realizing how much energy this fruitless task consumes. For the truth will find its way to freedom— through pores, temper, an inability to cope with life’s vicissitudes, post-traumatic stress syndrome.

Brenda is a determined woman. She has overcome her roots, she believes, the facts of her foundation. She would not consider herself one of the walking wounded, that she is owed something. If she were to think about the past at all, it would be with a sense of victory. She lives in the present, enjoying her days to the fullest among family and friends, partaking of all that life has to offer.

Until she is struck down with unimaginable force. Then the past holds sway. Her hard will bends to dreams and nightmares, memories, and she is steered away from recovery.

The Story Teller

“How come there are no pictures on the walls, no photos?” asked my first date. “Did you just move in?”

I looked around with alarm, embarrassed. . . .

Did I tell him there was little disposable income in our household for art and frames? That my mother was often depressed and had no interest in home decor? That my father held maximal frugality in high esteem?

No. Those stark white walls, that blank slate, took hold of my imagination and I said YES, we had just moved in.

But the next morning I called my friend Rosie Greene, whose house was beautiful, full of paintings and photos, whose mother treated me to plays and concerts, plied me with books I had to read.

“Rosie, can you and your mom help me? I need to buy pictures to hang in my living room.”

My plea was Mrs. Greene’s command. Within an hour we were in a shop where canvasses were strewn upon tables, stacked in bins.

“Now look at this, girls.” Rosie and I stared, dumbfounded, at a rectangle covered with triangles, a floating eye. Was that an arm???

Noting our disdain, Mrs. Greene tossed that print aside and reached for a cacophony of squiggles. We groaned.

“GIRLS — you have to broaden your horizons. Modern art is all the rage!”

Not for this girl. I was drawn to a wall of gilded frames. Elegant women gazing serenely from posh velvet chairs. Dashing caballeros riding Arabian steeds.

New worlds opened before me. Each painting told a tale.

“Bathsheba at Her Bath,” Rembrandt, said a tiny plaque, below the heroine of my favorite Bible story. I had always felt sorry for her. Plucked from her husband, by mighty King David, like ripe fruit from a tree. How could a great poet, composer of the Psalms, have such wickedness in his heart?

“No, no, no. That won’t do, dear,” said Mrs. Greene, steering me away from voluptuous, lost Bathsheba.

“Let’s choose something less . . . imposing.”

She redirected my attention to tangled red roofs and chimney pots, rosy-cheeked babies, a field glowing in bright sun.

Yes. This time, Mrs. Greene was right. These indeed were more appropriate for my cramped rowhouse walls.

I bought the prints with my saved-up baby-sitting money, and in years to come would feel a thrill each time I saw these old friends in the world’s great museums. I would come to know their makers well: Renoir, Cassatt, Cezanne.

My sweet Mom watched as we transformed her living room, a rare smile on her lovely face. Within a few years, she would be gone. Brain cancer. But that is a story for another time.

She offered us a dusty shoe box filled with old photographs and we culled the best from the stack — my little sisters and I dressed in identical taffeta dresses, my grandparents, a shot of my Mom and Dad at the Philadelphia Navy Yard, where they met during the War.

Rosie and I hammered together frames. I cut a picture of Rock Hudson from a Photoplay magazine — he was my heart throb of the moment — and framed that, too. His teeth sparkled as if this were an ad for Ipana toothpaste.

“Who’s that?” asked my beau on our second date. “Your brother?”

“Yes,” I answered, fingers crossed. “He lives in California.”

Among the many things we did together

On the death of my dear friend Carol Parsons . . . 9/7/13

We worked all day at jobs we loved, then rushed home to grab a bite, change into jeans and get to the movie theater on time. For we were part of a group of Washingtonians who previewed films scheduled to open that weekend. Waiting in line, we’d hash over the day’s challenges, chat with others and speculate about the indie or soon-to-be blockbuster we were about to view.

Carol generously invited me to countless gala openings at the Hirshhorn Museum, where she worked. I met Chuck Close! I enjoyed private viewings of works by Ed Ruscha, Clyfford Still, Brice Marden, Kiki Smith, Cindy Sherman, George Segal — the list goes on and on.

On one Saturday each month we lunched. We called our group “Ladies Who Lunch”—a little homage to Sondheim and Stritch—and took turns choosing a restaurant. I have a photo of Carol, Ros Kaiser, Diane Munro and Julia Su happily smiling for my camera. Ros passed away in April; she was one of Carol’s oldest and dearest friends.

In late 2002, I moved to California because I was about to have a grandchild there. Until then, Carol kindly shared her grandchildren with me. We called purple ‘pupple,’ because that is how little Sophie said her favorite color. We wiggled our hips and sang Madonna songs like Madeline. After my grandson was born, Carol and I talked on the phone almost weekly about his progress, about Luke and Will and the girls, and 10 years passed and they were all so grown up, but we still giggled over ‘pupple.’

Several times a day I smile to see a colorful mug on my kitchen shelf, hand-painted with images of adorable girls. Carol saw me admiring it at an exhibit of work by one of her many creative friends and surprised me with it that Christmas. After I left Washington, it became an important memento of our long friendship. With Carol gone, it will mean more to me than words can say.