This is how it started.  I asked him to write down the lyrics to “Both Sides Now” for me.  We were both seniors in high school, hanging out in the same circle of hippie wannabe ne’er do-wells. The song was on the radio all the time and I wanted to learn the words. I knew he knew them. So the next day he handed me a tiny yellow scroll made of stuck together Zig-Zag papers with all the verses of  Joni Mitchell’s song written in his tiny, barely legible printing.

We were teenagers, about to fall in love. That dizzy dancing way you feel . . .

I don’t remember who said it first. I don’t remember how long it took before one of us noticed we were in pretty deep. These things happen when you’re not really paying attention. One day you’re goofing around with each other and the next thing you know you’re always looking for places to make out. The coincidental meetings become less coincidental. Friends begin to notice. And then you start doing the things that define you as a couple. You hold hands a certain way. You know all the lines from A Thousand Clowns, which you both have seen a million times.You start your tradition of in-jokes and secret meanings. It’s important that no one else understands these things. They belong to the two of you and no explanations are offered to anyone else. You begin building a world around yourselves, daring anyone to decipher your private code.

You flaunt your feelings then. As the song says, “. . .and feeling proud/ to say ‘I love you’ right out loud.” Who said it first? Does it matter? Not really.

We went our separate ways for the summer after graduation, and wondered if time and distance would make a difference in how we felt about each other. Letters, so many letters. Private thoughts, deep thoughts, longing, in-jokes: piles of letters written from great distances over a couple of months. Letters saved, but eventually lost in a fire. Letters you wouldn’t necessarily want your children to find one day, even though his handwriting was nearly illegible anyway.

He went away for his first year of college, but then he came back.

And after four and a half years of being a couple, we got married.

What was it that brought us together at 17? We came from different backgrounds, different religions. He had a clear idea of what he wanted to do with his life and who he wanted to spend it with. I had no idea about any of that. He was patient and focused. I was a moving target. And then. . . and then, we kissed in the rain and we held hands and it just felt right to be together. I loved his hands and the way he listened–really listened–to me, and the way he made me feel secure and cherished and loved. When I needed him most, there he was–with a shoulder to cry on, and all the time in the world. I baked him a cake for his 18th birthday, and have celebrated every birthday with him since.

Today, when he looks for me in a crowd, I think he’s still looking for that dark-haired teenage girl he fell in love with close to fifty years ago. I wonder if that’s why it takes him a while to find me sometimes. It’s true that we are grandparents now–but look closely: those teenagers in love are still here.

 

 

 

 

 

Every time I have seen the phrase “teenager in love” – starting with the first time this prompt appeared in Retrospect two years ago – I have read it as teen-A-ger, with the accent on the second syllable, rather than TEEN-ager, the usual pronunciation, with the accent on the first syllable. In contrast, if the word “teenager” appears and is not followed by “in love,” I of course accent the first syllable. The reason for this deviation in pronunciation is the unforgettable song by Dion and the Belmonts.

Wikipedia tells me the song was released in March 1959, which is very surprising to me. I was seven-and-a-half years old at that time, not even close to being a teenager and certainly not in love. I suppose I first heard it because my older sisters listened to popular music on the radio and sometimes bought 45s that they played at home. But this song must have had great staying power, because I’m sure I was still hearing it on the radio when I was in my teens.

As a teenager I was always in love with someone. First it was Karl, whom I wrote about in Sadie Hawkins Dance. The next year there was a boy with red hair named Steve. He was a senior when I was a sophomore, and we played bridge together but that was all, except in my fantasies. There were others whose names I can’t even remember any more. I would walk past the locker of the love object du jour, hoping to bump into him. I would doodle his name in the margins of my notebooks. Sometimes (oh horror of horrors) I would write Mrs. with his name, or even worse, Suzy with his last name. Seems crazy now, but I think that was commonplace back then.

As the lyrics of the song say, one day I felt happy and the next day I felt sad. It all depended on whether I managed to bump into him when I walked past his locker, and whether he smiled at me. Even in college, where there weren’t lockers any more, there was still the fine art of figuring out how to bump into the love object, in the dining hall, or outside a class, or just walking through the Yard. Or better yet, getting invited to the same parties, and hoping he would notice me there. And while suffering through all of this, I was indeed always asking the stars up above “why must I be-e a teen-A-ger in love?”

So glad those days are long past!

The last time I saw Kelly, he’d been dead for over a year. In yet another dream, he was sitting next to me on a bus.  “You have to let me go,” he said.

When I met him, in 1966, Kelly was a junior in high school. He was outrageous, audacious, charismatic, and sexy as hell.  I studied chemistry that year, my sophomore year, but I really learned about chemistry from him: a heart-stopping attraction that made my stomach flutter.

One night, Kelly and I and a group of kids went to a concert to see Cream and some other loud bands I forget. I made sure we sat next to each other. With the music and my heart pounding, I turned to look at him, my eyes begging for a kiss. He leaned in. We moved up a few rows, past the dope smokers in the balcony, and spent the rest of the concert engaging in the advance and retreat of passionate exploration.

Kelly pretended to be asleep on the way home. He didn’t acknowledge my presence the next time I saw him, or the time after that.

But then I saw him at a party and the electric-blue bellbottom outfit I was wearing caught his eye. He drove me home. We kissed in the car, and then he took off. I waited for the phone call that never came. Still, I was drawn to him, helpless. His exuberant laugh, his twinkly blue eyes, those strong hands, that husky voice. I looked for him everywhere, hoping for more of him. Didn’t get it. I moved on.

The next summer, after I’d broken up with a bad boyfriend, I wrote Kelly a plaintive letter in the form of a short story. It recalled a magic evening in the upper balcony during a Cream concert. A few days later, I got a reply—a poem illustrated in his unique style. He had a way of drawing letters that made them appear to ooze and flow into one another. A work of art, just for me.

We began seeing each other after that. We saw all there was to see, actually, spending sweet hours tangled up together. He told me that the graceful curves of the rolling hills where we lived reminded him of me. Then, one night, I went to his house, down to his room, and by the light of a candle blinking wax down a wine bottle, we ended up in his bed.  I wouldn’t call it making love, exactly—it was more frantic than romantic.

After that, we spent most of our time horizontal. I smoked his cigarettes and I thought we were a couple. But things changed. There were lies. Some awkward moments. I heard he was seeing another girl. And there was his drinking. So one night, over the phone, I told him it was over. I cried for an hour.

After he graduated, Kelly joined the Coast Guard and shipped out to Alaska. Since he wasn’t going to college, it was the best way to avoid getting drafted. In the meantime, I had started dating someone else—a guy who deftly caught me on the bounce and gave me a shoulder to cry on. He was a much more attentive boyfriend, and patiently waited for my heart to heal.

Kelly wrote me from aboard ship and his letters were wistful, beautiful, and poetic. I kept them all in a special box.

It was inevitable that we’d see each other when he came back to town. One night at a party he grabbed me by the arm (away from my boyfriend) and pulled me outside. “Tell me what I did wrong!” he howled. “Please—just kiss me one more time!” He was roaring drunk, but I did kiss him. And then I told him how he’d lost me. He turned around to pee and I just left him there.

A few years went by. I married the boy who rescued me and adored me. We heard Kelly had gotten particularly drunk on our wedding day.

I saw him at the local market a couple of years later. He saw me too, and ducked down another aisle. The Beatles’ “Norwegian Wood” wafted through the store, adding to the awkwardness of the situation.

Kelly died in a car accident in the spring of 1977. Seeing our old friends at the church, gazing at his flag-draped coffin, I got knocked over by a huge wave of grief.

The dreams started then, and they were pretty much the same every time until I had the dream where we were on the bus. Just like at the concert so many years ago, I turned to him–feeling the heat of longing–only this time it was me saying, “What did I do wrong? Kiss me one more time!”

That’s when he looked at me with sorrow and said, “You have to let me go.”

My time with Kelly was just a few short months, decades ago. I have only one picture of him: that dimpled smile, those lively blue eyes—basking in the sunshine of my love.

 

RIP RJMK

Is this retirement? I ask. Nah.
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Sammy was my first love (and my first heartbreak). I had just turned 14 and was in the ninth grade at a small coed school where I was not popular with boys. Sammy, the cousin of a classmate, went to a different (all boys) school. Our mutual infatuation was quick and intense. We were inseparable, at least as much as two kids in different schools could be. We talked on the phone nightly and saw each other every weekend. Sammy did not have an ID bracelet (the uniform code for “going steady” in 1965), so I wore his watch. Walking around school with that too-big watch on my wrist I felt special, and loved.

We both had curfews, but Sammy’s parents were stricter than mine. After a date (a parent must have driven us, at least at the beginning before Sammy turned 15 and could drive), Sammy would drop me off, go home, sneak out and come back. (We lived only a few blocks apart.) We would make out on the living room couch for hours–in a chaste 14-year-old over-the-clothes (mostly) and above-the-waist kind of way.

We never got caught, but Sammy’s parents began to think we were too serious, and they started to put limits on how much he could see me. We suddenly could only have contact over the weekend. During the week I would write down everything I wanted to tell him. And, experienced sneakers that we were, we also managed to see each other at other than the allowed times, at such exotic and forbidden places as the public library.

Our romance lasted through tenth grade. Then in the summer Sammy broke my heart. I was caught completely by surprise. I had what I’d describe through my adult eyes as an acute grief reaction. I felt punched in the stomach; I would wake up happy in the morning and then remember that my world no longer included Sammy, and I’d feel broken.

Luckily, even then I had close and supportive female friends. One of them was a friend from summer camp who lived in a different city. She invited me to visit her to recover. While there, she set me up with one of her brother’s friends. Though I had a bit of a crush on her brother (which resulted in a make-out session a couple of years later), I didn’t particularly like his friend. But I did begin to recover.

Then wonder of wonders—Sammy had second thoughts and wanted to get back together. I was thrilled, so we did. But—the spell was broken. Though we stayed together a few more months, it just wasn’t the same. So we parted ways again—mutually this time.

I haven’t seen Sammy since high school. I suppose today, with Facebook and such, I could manage to track him down and see what he’s up to now, but I’d rather not. Some memories should just be left alone.

I loved being a lawyer. I can't think of any other career I would have rather had. Except for being a rock 'n' roll singer - that would have been the best.
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We had a “retirement” prompt in early February, 2018, so the dates in this story are old, as you can ascertain by looking at the date stamps in the comments section. Also, since writing this story, there has been a “nanny” prompt, which I will link to within the body of the story at the appropriate spot.
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I had already told the “powers-that-be” that I was pregnant, would work several more months, but not return after I had my baby, when the rumors of lay-offs began swirling in October, 1988. I sauntered into Barry’s office. I had worked for him some years earlier at a great sales job (he had fought to hire me), then he recruited me into this crazy company in 1987. Though it was more than 10 years old, it had just gotten an infusion of cash and acted like a start-up. I found it very disorganized. At first I didn’t report directly to him, but with the latest reorganization, I, again, was in his chain of command.

“You can lay me off, Barry. I won’t sue you”, said this pregnant employee. “Oh, thanks, Betsy! Now we can save someone we really need!” And we hugged it out.

I was more than content to stay home with my three year old and collect unemployment benefits. As my cleaning lady reminded me, my withholding had paid for that. It was a little awkward to go to the State Office with my child in hand every other week and claim to be looking for a job, particularly as I grew larger and larger, but I did it. I never worked “outside the home” again. I was officially retired.

After the birth of my first child, I went back to work when David was 18 months old, and I had to hire a live-in nanny, since I, also traveled. (Nanny tales would make a good essay; we think the first, a beautiful woman from Barbados, was a high-end call girl, who left abruptly, only to show up up five weeks later working in Cambridge. The second was a college kid I hired in a pinch. She needed a lot of supervision, started dating a guy from my office, was angry at her divorced parents and stole quite a bit from me when she left for her Junior year in Paris. The third was from Medellin, Columbia, but I was laid off two weeks after her hire…rich story fodder. ) I found it very difficult when my husband and I had to travel at the same time, I still ran the household and David would get upset if I was gone overnight. Doing this with two little ones would have been too much. My husband traveled several days a week. I was done.

Taking care of young children is a full-time job, but I began volunteering in David’s nursery school the first year I was home full-time. I became “the challah coordinator”. Both my kids went to our temple nursery school where they celebrated Shabbat every Friday. The mothers took turns bringing in challah, that sweet, braided ceremonial bread. I was in charge of calling the next mother on the list to remind her how many to bring on Friday morning. I also came in once during the school year to help the teachers make matzah, the unleavened bread eaten during Passover. The kids would roll out the dough, take forks and stick it in the dough. I took it up to the temple kitchen and baked it, then we all ate it for snack that day (we also learned to add a tiny bit of salt. Otherwise, it tasted like cardboard).

Thus began my life as a volunteer. I joined the Brandeis University National Women’s Committee, the women’s group, founded shortly after the founding of the university. These energetic women across the country sold used books to raise money for my school library. There were local chapters everywhere. The president of the Detroit chapter interviewed me for Brandeis. So when solicited, I decided I could give a little money to help my school library. I didn’t know they also had study groups. One was a choir of ladies who met Monday mornings near my house. I auditioned and joined. On the day I showed up, the others sucked in the their breath. I was young enough to be their daughter. They couldn’t have been nicer to me…and I love being nurtured. We sang classics from their era and Jewish folk songs in three part harmony. It felt wonderful to be singing again. We rarely performed and that was fine with me. I panicked on snow days…what to do with my kids? I learned that the choir director was happy to have them at her home. I brought along a video to entertain them, or they sat with us with books and puzzles. What could be better than a room full of Jewish grandmothers to dote on my kids? The group broke up after the conductor’s death, but I remained friendly with two of the women for the rest of their lives. They even came to David’s bar mitzvah.

As Jeffrey grew older, it became clear his behavior was problematic. His kindergarten teacher asked for a lot of volunteer time, which I was happy to provide. It gave me a chance to keep an eye on him, while providing support. I was in his class three days a week, every other week. I helped with reading, journal writing, and in the library. It gave me up-close insights into what was going on with him. He had that teacher for two school years, so the pattern continued. Even after those years, I picked him up from school every day and frequently consulted with his teacher about how his day had gone. I took him to his various therapy sessions, testing, to play with friends. David is four years older, so they were only at the same school for two years. I had two schedules to coordinate.

When the kids were still quite young, I took on more real volunteer activities. I was invited onto the National Alumni Board of the Interlochen Center for the Arts in Interlochen, MI. I attended summer camp there for six summers in the 60s, but the place also has an excellent boarding school, and NPR station, and all sorts of other arts-related programs, run when the campus isn’t used for formal training. We had three meetings a year. During my last four years on the Board, I served as Corresponding Secretary. We made many lasting contributions, including instituting Senior Dinner at the Academy, the giving of an Alumni Achievement Award, which was voted on by our Board. I was not on the sub-committee that made that decision, but one year, they decided the award should go to famous 60 Minutes broadcaster Mike Wallace, who had known our founder, Joe Maddy, at University of Michigan and come to work at our radio station right out of college. The head of the committee turned to me (as Corresponding Secretary) and said, “OK, Betsy, you let him know and set it up.” That had never happened before. Once the decision was made, it was always up to the administration to make the arrangements for the award to be presented.

Wow, how was I going to pull that one off?! I went home from the meeting, thought about it and did some research. I wrote him a letter in care of CBS, explaining our many connections (I live in Chestnut Hill, which could be part of Brookline, which he was proudly from, my in-laws went to Brookline High, as did he, we were actively looking to buy a house on Martha’s Vineyard at that moment; he had summered there for years…I commented on some other things as well, then got to the Interlochen part). I sent the letter with my phone number and waited. On a Monday night in September, I had just returned from dropping David at soccer practice when my phone rang. I heard a familiar voice, “Is this Betsy Sarason Pfau?” (Holy shit…I broke into a flop sweat, but tried to steady my voice.) He was very nice on the phone, said he’d be happy to accept the award, but not at camp, or even in Detroit…only in New York or Boston (this is why Interlochen’s administration needed to do this, I was now in the middle). I thanked him, told him I’d get back to him. It took Interlochen an embarrassingly long time to figure this out, but we did have a lovely ceremony the following May at a fancy townhouse in New York City. He, kindly, said he wouldn’t come if I wasn’t there, so of course, I was!

I did all sorts of fundraising and hosting of alumni for Interlochen though the years. My involvement decreased, but I will visit again this coming summer, as we pay tribute to our beloved Dude Stephenson, Operetta director extraordinaire, who passed away December 30.

Brandeis and the Rose Art Museum (at Brandeis) are the other places that I have given countless amounts of time and treasure through the years. I have worked on every one of my reunions since my 15th (though I had just delivered Jeffrey, so didn’t actually make it to that one). I’ve co-chaired my 25th, 30th and 40th (as recently described in Chair For Life).  

I always loved going to art museums and bought my first real work of art with inherited money in 1976. Dan and I loved going to the Boston galleries, even with our young children. When Jeffrey was born, my mother-in-law came to help us. Her best friend (since they were 15) was one of the top art collectors in Boston, the head of the Friends group at the Rose and its leading patron at the time. She came to visit Gladie, looked at what we were collecting and said, “I’ve got to get you involved at the Rose”. One doesn’t say no to Lois Foster. And thus began my 28 year love-affair with that institution. I attended my first lecture-lunch with a nursing 7-month old (I promised I’d take him out if he fussed, but he was an angel that day). Lois also advised us about artists to look at and consider bringing into our collection. We bought two of the four she suggested that first week of Jeffrey’s life.

Within a few years, I was a regular at the Rose and had caught the attention of the late, great Carl Belz, the director at the time. He and I formed a close friendship and I owe my art knowledge to him. I came to love and work closely with his staff, and the Chairman of the Board of Overseers. A Young Patrons of the Rose group was formed. I was a founding member. We went on to many successful years and events, including a fantastic fundraiser. The following year, I was invited onto the Board of Overseers, where I have remained for 19 years, through all its ups and downs. I am now serving under my 5th director. Carl taught me to be loyal to the institution, not the director, and so I have tried to be.

During the market crash, the then-president of Brandeis thought a way out of their financial crisis was to close the Rose and sell some of its best artwork (we have the finest collection of post-WWII modern and contemporary art north of Manhattan). A tremendous cry went up from the art world. Some members of the Board sued the university. The provost put together a “Future of the Rose” committee comprised of various stake-holders across campus to make recommendations about how to proceed. I was asked to be the Rose Board representative to the committee. It was a no-win situation. The Chairman of the Rose Board thought I wouldn’t represent the Board well, as I am an alum of the college and would be too soft on my alma mater. I received pressure from the art world that the committee wasn’t valid because there was no museum professional on it. And there was a member of the committee who routinely yelled at me as I brought my findings to the group (as I should and did). “DID I WANT OUR SCHOOL TO GO BANKRUPT??!, he’d scream at me in our meetings. I couldn’t win. I continued to talk to my stakeholders…those who would speak to me. One, a former Rose curator, made such a difference in my thinking, that I quit the committee, as I agreed with her comments. The provost was frantic. Without me, the committee lost its validity. They got a museum professional (who is a Brandeis alum) to participate, though she withdrew before the final report was presented and her name does not appear, but her thinking helped our committee enormously. I came back, but held meetings with the head at Starbucks, so I didn’t have to be abused in our group setting. The final report was a group effort, pleasing no one, but parts of it actually were implemented, pleasing many on campus. The Rose stayed open and not a single piece of our collection was sold.

I have served on many, many committees at the Rose, from Education, to Collections to Exhibition. Since our near-death experience, the Board hasn’t been as active. I am currently only involved on a collections committee that seeks out emerging artists. We teleconference once a month, make recommendations and purchase one piece for the collection at the end of the calendar year. It keeps my hand in the game. (In addition, I am now the chair of the Development Committee and back on the Collections Committee.)

I was a founding member of the Arts Council at Brandeis (as well as the two prior councils that led to the formation of the Office of the Arts). This is a wonderful group. We each put in a sum of money which goes to grants to fulfill needs throughout the School of Creative Arts. Like everywhere, the arts have been cut back at Brandeis, and this council helps to fund defined needs. We funded a photography class one semester, brought in an artist-in-residence from a foreign country and other interesting projects. But my Rose Board dues became so extravagant, that I couldn’t afford to do both.

Through the years, Dan and I have done many other things around campus. The largest was setting up a Charitable Remainder Unit Trust. When Dan retired, almost 16 years ago now, he was able to do so because he was with Andersen Consulting when they became Accenture and had an Initial Public Offering. As an officer, he held a large quantity of stock and all officers over the age of 50 were incented to retire. One thing he did, to minimize the sting of the capital gains tax, was give Brandeis a large quantity of stock. We set up the trust with Brandeis as the beneficiary, though we control the investment decisions, and we get income for the remainder of our lives. So we are members of the Sacher Legacy Society (we’ve left Brandeis assests in our estate). With all that in mind, Dan approached the head of Institutional Advancement a few years ago. He said he thought she should make me a Fellow of Brandeis. A Fellow is an honor given to someone who has given lots of time and money to the institution. Nancy thought that was a good idea, but needed a list of my accomplishments, as this honor is voted on by the Board of Trustees. My list was long. Dan and I both became Fellows in 2015, but only I showed up for the hooding ceremony, as seen in the Featured photo, where I am with the then-president of the university, the VP of Institutional Advancement, and the head of the Fellows program.

When Dan retired and was finally home evenings, I was able to join my local chorus and really sing again. We do two concerts a year. We just did Mendelssohn’s ELIJAH last week…a stirring performance. And 5 1/2 years ago, I decided it was time to take care of my body, so, when not traveling, I am in the gym six days a week. I also write a weekly story for Retrospect. So I have kept busy in my retirement.

 

For the first and only time, I saw humans flying, literally levitating around the room, so graceful that their bare feet never made a sound when they landed.
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Family legend has it that my dad fully expected me, his second daughter, to be a son.  I imagine him pacing in the waiting room in the maternity ward, punching his fist in a glove, thinking about the times he’d play catch in the backyard and discuss the finer points of the game with a willing child. If he was, in fact, disappointed at having two girls, he never let on. And he went ahead and played catch with us and taught us (two lefties, no less) how to swing a bat. Or a branch. Why he never actually bought a bat for us, I’ll never know. Even with our limited equipment (branch and tennis ball), my sister and I still managed to break a neighbor’s window with a hard-hit shot to right, which sailed over the fence and smashed the glass next door.

As a teacher himself, he took an interest in our schoolwork–but as a life-long baseball fan, he also quizzed us about our performance on the playground diamond. Instead of “How was school today?” he would greet us with “Did you get any hits?” We learned statistics by following batting averages. He took us to see the San Francisco Giants play at Candlestick Park, where we bravely hunkered down in the wind and cold to root, root, root for the home team.

I had a serious swing even during fun games in high school.

In college, a group of friends used to get together for friendly games of softball. Despite all logic, I mostly played second base–a position that lefties do not usually play. But I liked being in the middle of things, and that’s where I usually ended up. My then boyfriend (now husband) gave me a wonderful blue left-hander’s glove, which carried the signature of Oakland A’s pitcher Vida Blue. That glove was my pride and joy, and I only wish I had a color picture of it.

During the years when I was a young mother, I found a group of women who played softball at the local schoolyard during the summer months. Our teams consisted of moms and kids, and we had a blast. We rarely let men play in our games because they told us where to stand and to “choke up” when it was our turn at bat. I loved playing so much, I timed the birth of my second child for the off season so I’d be ready to rejoin the team in June.

As my dad got older, my husband and I took him to see the local team play. We paid some attention to what was happening on the field, but used the time together to talk about other things. To sit in the sun, have a beer, and enjoy each other’s company–those were precious hours.

Several years ago when I worked at a high school, the faculty and staff challenged the seniors to a game near their graduation. One of the teachers, a friend, offered to give me some coaching before the game. He checked my stance, watched how I held the bat, and told me how to position my right foot. Following his advice,  I shocked everyone when I hit a double up the middle. My dad would’ve been proud.

At the end of my MFA program, tradition called for a game between the graduates and the first year students, but there wasn’t much of a turnout. (I was the only woman, and I had a couple of decades on most of the other students.) Plenty of beer, but not many participants. We played anyway, and, as I recall, I got caught in a rundown and was tagged out rather emphatically by a poet.

And that was the last time I played baseball.

The stakes were sky high: the corner single.
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