a flood of memories

Twenty years.

As of tomor­row, that is how long my beloved and I have been married.

I keep try­ing to pic­ture myself 20 years ago, with no house (much less two, on two dif­fer­ent con­ti­nents), no PhD (how­ever redun­dant these days), no child — how is that possible?

As if to punc­tu­ate this great mile­stone, yes­ter­day found us all in SoHo to go shop­ping. SoHo, the place of our first New York home in 1993, where we could stand on our “bal­cony” (this is what we called our fire escape) and look to the north at the Chrysler Build­ing and to the south at the Wool­worth Build­ing. Here we planted our adult lives, made our first New York friends, bought our first impor­tant art. And by impor­tant I mean…

I had art stu­dents. I was the youngest pro­fes­sor at Hunter Col­lege and my God, how I LOVED my job. Art stu­dents! Those who made art with their hot lit­tle hands and those who were train­ing to study it all, and what fun we had. At the end of every semes­ter, I invited my stu­dents home to my loft on Broad­way to drink wine, eat shrimp but­ter and show slides of their work. And one of those early semes­ters, I was lucky enough to find Brenna Beirne, who showed a slide of an instal­la­tion of sculp­tures I can only now describe to you, stored as they are in a mas­sive ware­house some­where in New Jer­sey until we some­day have walls tall and wide enough to hold them.

They are “The Ladies.” Five full-scale sculp­tural casts of Brenna’s own form, from the neck down, in five dif­fer­ent poses, cast in plas­ter, brushed with wax and graphite. When I saw the slide of these pieces, I sim­ply could not believe their beauty. “Where are they now?” I asked in won­der, and Brenna answered with youth­ful care­less­ness, “Oh, they were stolen from my senior show.” “STOLEN?” “Yep.”

“Weren’t you dev­as­tated?” I asked. “Why? I still have my body, I can always make them again.” Just then, John walked into the apart­ment to see the slide on the wall. “WHAT are THOSE?” he demanded, in thrall as I had been.

It was but the work of a moment to com­mis­sion Brenna to cast her body, one more time.

So she arrived on John’s birth­day, our friend Chris­tine in tow to steady the lad­der, and while John was at work, she installed “The Ladies.” Five Ladies all in a row, from full pro­file to the left, part pro­file, straight ahead, part pro­file to the right, full pro­file to the right. HOW I wish I had a pho­to­graph to show you.

And John came home, dropped his brief­case, and was stunned.

These sculp­tures fol­lowed us to yet another loft in Tribeca, and then had a wall designed just for them in our final loft before our move to Lon­don. Where­upon, they were wrapped care­fully, said a prayer over, and waved good­bye to their stor­age place far, far away. When will we ever see them again?

Yes­ter­day we stood out­side that old loft on Broad­way, remem­ber­ing the deli across the street where I bought our orange juice and “two eggs on a roll,” the block-long walk to Dean and Deluca where I bought crois­sants, and John’s mom once snapped a photo of me com­ing home, but­tery paper bag in hand, in a long form-fitting black dress, ready to teach my class… young and hope­ful and THIN and full of energy!

From there to one of our favorite shops on West Broad­way, where we helped Avery shop tire­lessly for clothes (she and her grand­mother have an inex­haustible sup­ply of energy for this activ­ity, long after John and I have stopped look­ing at our watches!). Sud­denly John emerged from the back of the shop, say­ing, “You will NEVER believe who I have run into back here!” And it was… Brenna. My dear girl, who had just peo­pled our mem­o­ries ten min­utes before!

A long, hug­ging reunion, exchange of how to get in touch with one another, a bit tear­ful at her encoun­ter­ing Avery at age 13, my ask­ing after her twins of 9 and a half years… life, in short, sur­pris­ing us once more.

A big gulp of life.

Off we went to the shop where we, 20 years ago, bought my gor­geous gold wed­ding ring, now too small (Avery’s arrival for some rea­son made my hands and feet grow!). We dropped it off to see if they could stretch it some­how, as my lat­est arrange­ment of it as a pen­dant on a leather thong is just not quite enough. More mem­o­ries, of us in the very same place, plan­ning our wed­ding, decid­ing we didn’t want a dia­mond, would just move straight to the wed­ding band, John choos­ing his own (years later lost in the wild snows of Canada on a ski­ing trip when he removed his glove with a flour­ish and…).

John’s mom and Avery went off on their Christ­mas errand of find­ing Avery’s sig­na­ture fra­grance, a per­fume she felt really iden­ti­fied her. And after try­ing on all she wanted to, guess what she chose? Chloe, my own high school fra­grance! How the past seemed deter­mined to haunt me yesterday.

In a cab uptown via 6th Avenue, haunt­ing me fur­ther with mem­o­ries of Avery’s bal­let classes at Jof­frey, with the hated “Miss Liz,” one of Avery’s long string of early-childhood hated female author­ity fig­ures! No won­der bal­let lasted only about a year. But I loved those days, when I’d run her up the three floors of skeevy stairs, drop her off in her pink tutu, then race back down­stairs and up the block to Jef­fer­son Mar­ket, one of my favorite foodie des­ti­na­tions: the per­fect moz­zarella, the plumpest pork roasts, a fruit stand to die for. Then back up those three flights of stinky stairs to hear what I came to think of as Avery’s “Moan of the Week.” How she HATED ballet!

From there past 11th Street, a brief look at the yel­low facade of the school where Avery was evac­u­ated after Sep­tem­ber 11, 2001… ter­ri­ble mem­o­ries of Sep­tem­ber 19, drop­ping her off into what felt to me the most dan­ger­ous of all pos­si­ble traps… ter­ri­ble hol­low, black mem­o­ries of dread.

Uptown fur­ther to Shun Lee restau­rant to meet up with my dar­ling Alyssa and Annabelle! Alyssa and I agreed later that we can sur­vive being 3000 miles apart when we ARE apart, but when we’re sit­ting together at a din­ner table, the num­ber of din­ners we’re miss­ing together sud­denly seem over­whelm­ing and we feel quite fer­klempt. The girls have become so ele­gant, so sleek and grownup, that the shim­mery vision of their 2-year-old selves together just breaks our hearts. How have the years so dis­solved since then?

From din­ner, clutch­ing each other in good­byes, we headed in a tremen­dous wind across Colum­bus Avenue to Lin­coln Cen­ter, and… the Nut­cracker!

When Avery was tiny, maybe just past her third birth­day, John’s mom and dad decided she needed to go to the “Nut­cracker.” Friends and rel­a­tives alike shrank from our plans to spend untold dol­lars on a late evening of bal­let for a tiny child who would prob­a­bly melt down. I brought along a lit­tle plas­tic bag full of jelly beans, pre­pared to bribe her with them should her patience flag. My psy­chol­o­gist father objected strongly, say­ing, “You should not give her a treat to con­vince her to behave, but rather give her one after she HAS behaved!” This sub­tlety was entirely lost on me, intent only on three hours of good behav­ior, no mat­ter what the­o­ries I ruined in the doing.

As it was, she was an angel, com­pletely riv­eted. And John’s par­ents took us to the Nut­cracker for all the years to come, until we moved to Lon­don. As if we needed one more rea­son to be sorry to move away.

And even then, when we returned for the hol­i­days to Con­necti­cut, John’s dad was too ill for the “Nut­cracker” to be part of our plans. And then he was gone. Unbe­liev­ably. A stun­ning gulf of loss where our Christ­mases, our end­less games of the Fab­u­lous Four­some who were John’s par­ents and we, and then the Five­some when Avery arrived, had played such an enor­mous and joy­ous part of our lives.

Here’s some­thing strange, some­thing I’ve learned. When you know you’re going to lose some­thing unut­ter­ably dear to you, you try to believe that the love you’ve felt, the appre­ci­a­tion you’ve always hugged close, will count for some­thing, will give com­fort. “At least we never took any­thing for granted,” you say to your­self, try­ing to believe it. You hold your mem­o­ries close, you trea­sure the person.

Then when the loss comes, you feel that all that assur­ance, all the past appre­ci­a­tion, doesn’t count any more. What about now? What about want­ing to tell him some­thing now, right now? About Avery’s school accep­tance, a new dish I know he’d love to share with us, a first look at our new house. There is only sad­ness at the void.

But what I’ve found this Christ­mas is that the mem­o­ries DO help. The streets of SoHo were filled, yes­ter­day, with images of John’s dad, his love of shop­ping, his care­less dis­re­gard for how much a dress might cost at Mor­gane le Faye, if it looked beau­ti­ful on Avery. His joy in find­ing just the right extrav­a­gant bot­tle of Scotch for John (and a secret black sweater for me, most years). His shy pride at meet­ing our friends, see­ing the cool new sculp­tures hang­ing on our wall, hear­ing me tell about teach­ing, John’s reports of exotic busi­ness trips, my try­ing out a new recipe that he’d later report was “a meal to kill for.” He was there, with us, all day yes­ter­day, and never more so than at the “Nut­cracker,” look­ing back over all the years of tiny Avery, right through the ele­gant teenager she was last night.

The mem­o­ries really do help. They do.

Home we came, visions of snowy Sug­arplum Fairies danc­ing in our heads. Christ­mas trees alight, our cozy house here to wel­come us, a day of beloved friend­ships to pore over.

Twenty years. They couldn’t have been more full, which means great joys and great sor­rows, putting down roots here, pulling them up and start­ing again, hold­ing peo­ple close and say­ing good­bye, say­ing hello again, hold­ing onto images from the past and know­ing that yes­ter­day will pro­vide many more for the future.

A huge sigh of thanks for every­one we hold dear.

Most of all, thank you to my hus­band. Twenty years. Here’s to twenty more, at least.