Death is an impenetrable wall.  I can etch messages into my side of it, yearning, regretting, remembering with exquisite fondness her smile...
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Unlike the barracks and prefabs we had lived in, the modest new house in East Lansing had a righteous Midwestern full, unfinished basement.  Wooden staircase near the back door, cinder block walls, divided in two sides.  Washing machine and dryer, furnace, storage, and tools on one side; if we had canned, the fruits and vegetables would have been stacked there too. Ultimately, the other side got painted walls, linoleum, a couch and TV, toys and doll furniture. In case of a tornado warning, the basement’s northwest corner was our shelter.

Heaven forbid we would have a TV in the living room, so in the evenings we would watch it downstairs–Mitch Miller (sing along!) and Perry Como–while my mother ironed the clothes.  They were stacked in damp rolls inside a dish towel before being smoothed into shirts and dresses and then placed on hangers.  Suddenly realizing that the people on TV might have actual lives, I asked, “Do you think Perry Como has a wife too?”  Mother: “I imagine so.”  Filled with wonder, I followed up, “Do you think she could be ironing while watching his show, just like us?”  My mother, probably with an eye roll: “I doubt it.”

One day a shipment arrived from afar—a whole case of nuoc mam (Vietnamese fish sauce), which my dad developed a taste for while we were in Saigon. It was destined for the storage side of the basement.  Somehow in the excitement of the delivery, the case was dropped and at least one bottle was smashed, creating an overwhelming pungent pall of fish throughout the room that lasted for weeks.  My mother was not amused, especially as she not only didn’t share his love of nuoc mam, but also had to schlepp up and down the stairs regularly for the laundry.  This now meant braving the persistent odor while she hung the sheets on the basement clothes lines .

When we moved to Bethesda during my high school years, there was no basement, just a “utility room” on the ground floor.  My mother hated that room, which she quickly renamed the “futility room”.  It was maybe 11 cramped feet square, stuffed with a washer and dryer, a furnace and very little storage space, She complained bitterly.  She still hung up the sheets, but it created a dense maze in the tiny room. That was just how sheets were done, even though cotton was becoming cotton blend and less wrinkly, and dryers were more efficient.  And of course, there were no fitted sheets—the top sheets were rotated each week to the bottom before being washed.  By now, we girls were old enough to inherit the job of retrieving the clothes from the dryer while they were still damp, rolling them up and stacking them in the dishtowel, and then ironing with the steam settings, still watching TV but in the adjacent family room.  Shirts were done collars first, then shoulders, then cuffs and sleeves, then front and back.  It was the sixties, and my mother grumbled about the assumption that she was responsible for my father’s laundry at all.  After the kids moved out he took his shirts to the cleaner’s.

Years later, when I bought a little house in Oakland, I was thrilled to have a washer and dryer tucked a bit awkwardly into the generous crawl space under the house. No more laundromat for me! It helped that I was not very tall.  When my mother visited, I bragged about how great it was to have the appliances, and how perfect that they were out of the way in the (albeit small) basement where laundry belonged!  But I must have mistaken my mother’s scorn of the “futility room” for a dislike of laundry on the same floor, because she raised her eyebrows quizzically—wherever had I gotten that idea?  She had always loathed going up and down stairs into the basement to do laundry.

When we renovated the house where I now live, the laundry went right next to the bedroom, with a pass-through chute.  My mother would have approved.

 

I am not exactly sure when I knew I would in fact live forever. Oh, not in the same body of course. “Reincarnation” I thought to myself, “yeah that’s the ticket.”

As for this body I feel like I have a responsibility to keep it in reasonably good shape and healthy and so I behave myself and treat others kindly so then I can sideslip Karma and have an even better life in my next life. What defines better? Trying different things; this life I seem to be focused on The Arts; music, writing, Playwright, stand up comedy, painting, sculpture and a stint as an Impresario.

Do I sometimes feel like I’ve met others in a previous time, a previous life? Yes. I was lucky enough to ride up the old World Trade center elevator once with Cameron Diaz where I tried to convince her that we were married to each other in a previous life (no really) but she could not remember. Her loss.

Knowing I have been here before, that I am here now and I will be here again has made me a very patient man.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

David was a very shy youngster, so shy that his nursery school teachers wanted him to do a transition year. We thought that was not in the best interests of a child who was already interested in reading and math, so instead, we found a small private school for his kindergarten year. There, his best friend was Ollie Murphy.

Ollie lived with his mom, Juliet (she explained that her mother was reading the Shakespeare play when she was born; an immediate connection for me) in a South End condo. They commuted out to Chestnut Hill by the MBTA each day. The stop was a block from the school. Juliet was herself in school to finish her degree. Ollie’s father worked in broadcasting for the Christian Science Monitor, which was also close by and lived a few blocks away. They had parted amicably just after Ollie was born.

Ollie, too, was shy and he and David became fast friends. He frequently came back to our house after school, or I’d drive over to the South End and visit with Juliet while the boys played. I noticed posters for various high-profile play productions in the hallway along the entrance of the condo. It was a one bedroom condo and Juliet showed David the futon she pulled out to sleep on so that Ollie could have the huge bed. David loved playing with Ollie.

Jeffrey was a little boy at the time; sometimes Dan took care of him, but often Jeffrey would come too. Since Juliet didn’t have a car, I’d take them all when we went to various places around greater Boston to play…out to the Old Grist Mill in Sudbury (near Longfellow’s Wayside Inn) to run around, or take in the Children’s Museum. Or play make believe at our house. Clearly at one of these venues (probably the Children’s Museum), there was a photo booth and David and Ollie crammed in together to have a souvenir of their deep friendship and time together. David barely made it into the photo. Ollie must have the other snap shot.

David spent one year at the school, then came out to our public school. Ollie remained in the area for one more year, but it was less easy for them to get together. When Juliet finished her degree, she took an offer from her mother to teach at the American School in Vienna, where her mother was Head of School. David was bereft to lose such a close friend. We tried writing, but Juliet wasn’t a good correspondent. They came to visit once or twice. Below is a snap shot of one of those visits, in August, 1993. You can see how happy David was to be with his friend again.

As a gift for David, Juliet brought a little flag stand with a French, American and Austrian flag standing in salute. I no longer remember the relevance of the French flag, but David was delighted and kept it on top of his bureau, where it remains to this day.

During the year that David was in kindergarten with Ollie, they slept over at each other’s homes a few times. Juliet and I became close as well. She finally confided in me how she was able to afford such a fine condo in the South End (even before it became the hottest location in Boston) and why there were those theatrical posters, hanging in the hallway. The condo belonged to her brother – Harvard grad and former theatrical “wunderkind” Peter Sellars, who had moved to California, but kept the condo, as he still worked often enough in Boston to make it worth his while to have the place when he came back. He now worked mostly directing operas. This was an interesting revelation, which I kept to myself. I tried to not be over-awed. As a theater person, of course I knew of him, but it had nothing to do with how I related to Juliet or Ollie.

We missed them very much when then left. We haven’t heard from them in years.