Patsy Moore

I shared my girlhood secrets with Patsy Moore. With my straight brown pigtails bent toward her blond curls, we whispered and giggled our way through childhood. Patsy’s family lived on the fourth floor of the apartment house next door. Before we had telephones, Patsy and I called to one another through the air shaft between the two buildings.

“Patsy. Patseeeee,” I bellowed.

“I’ll be right down,” she answered before slamming the window shut.

We met on the front stoop and walked arm in arm up Seventh Avenue to gaze in the shop windows and talk about “someday, I’m going to . . .”

“When I grow up, I’ll get married and have four children, two boys and two girls.” Patsy informed me.

“Me too,” I said. What Patsy wanted, I also wanted.

  We spent hazy summer afternoons on the roof, otherwise known as “tar beach.” In shorts and halter tops, we stretched out on blankets, drank Kool-Aid, munched chips and listened to Patsy’s portable radio.  Movie magazines supplied fodder for our star struck imaginations and we discussed the latest films at length. To our pre-pubescent longings, we fell in love with the pretty boys of celluloid, and plastered their pictures, torn from magazines, on our bedroom walls.

One summer day as we strolled the avenue, I spotted a woman with an enormous stomach. Otherwise, she looked slim and attractive. Poor lady I thought, she must have a terrible illness.

“Did you see that woman’s stomach?” I whispered to Patsy.

“She’s having a baby.”

“How do you know?”

“The baby’s inside her stomach. That’s why it’s so big,” Patsy informed me with a smug look of superiority.

My eyes got as big as the stomach we discussed. “How’d it get there?”

“You’re too young to know. I’ll tell you when you’re older.”

“I’m only 6 months younger than you.” I shot back....both of us just ten years old. Undaunted, I pestered her for days until she conspiratorially relayed that taboo information to me. She also told me boys will try to “do it” to all the pretty girls they know. I had a hard time believing her.

“You’re kidding,” I said 

“You’ll find out,” she flipped her curls with her hand in a dismissive gesture.

After that, I looked at boys differently.

By the age of thirteen, on the brink of womanhood, we looked forward to maturity. That meant getting breasts. Pulling our sweaters tight across our chests, we compared the size of our nubs and boasted about needing a bra.

Being a grade ahead of me, Patsy entered Manual High School, the September I entered eighth grade. She suddenly looked grown up. She dated boys, went to dances and wore lipstick and high heels. A new life had opened up to her, and I had no part in it.

When I entered high school, I didn’t go to Manual with Patsy. I went to Bishop McDonnell. I made new friends, had new teachers and went to parties different from Patsy’s. Our paths had diverged. We remained friends for a while but drifted apart as we progressed through high school, graduated, got married and moved away from the neighborhood.

That youthful closeness we shared now lives only in memory.

 Friends Jeanie Oscecola, Mary Fahey and Patsy Moore

 

I think I am still...

I joined a writing group recently. The leader gives us a prompt and we all write on it. This month’s prompt is…” I think I am still….”

This is what I wrote.

I think I am still blessed although I didn’t always believe it. When young, I felt full of fear when I entered a room full of strangers. Would they laugh at me or worse, completely ignore me? I’d frantically look for a familiar face and latch on to that person, never to venture into the unknown. I thought I must be cursed and not worthy of friends. How self-centered! I had friends. Why didn’t I see how blessed I truly was? I have an acronym for fear= false evidence appearing real.

As I grew older, I lost my fear of strangers and actually looked forward to meeting new people. I loved to find out about another’s interests, especially if they mirrored my own. Gradually I preferred to find another whose interests differed from mine. It led to more lively conversation, and I learned to appreciate another point of view. I felt blessed.

When I entered real estate sales, I became disheartened by the fact that I had no sales, no listings and no income. I decided to write a gratitude list. By the time I got to the end of the list, I felt better. I said a prayer. “God, You have always taken care of me and I trust You always will.”  I had two sales the following week and became the highest earner for that year. Another blessing.

My mature idea of blessings now includes heartaches. Going through the disappointments of life doesn’t feel like a blessing at the time but usually in hindsight, I recognize it. I went to a retreat in Santa Barbara some years ago. The facilitator gave each attendee a list of rules for life. What I remember clearly goes like this.

You are enrolled in a full-time school called life.

The purpose of this school is to learn lessons. 

You will repeat a lesson until learned.

Once you learn that lesson, you go on to the next lesson.

There is no end to lessons. As long as you are alive, you will learn lessons.

Now, whenever I encounter a negative condition, I think “What do I need to learn from this?”

I trust that all personal situations occur for my emotional and/or spiritual growth

I believe the lyrics from the Kelly Clarkson song:

What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.

I know I am blessed.   

Christmas in Brooklyn

 

When I remember the Christmas of my youth, I conjure up the aroma of pine trees stacked outside grocery stores. The store owners built a stand with wooden stakes and rope. The trees arrived after Thanksgiving and stayed up until Christmas Eve, when my parents usually bought a tree. Prices came down when the store owners wanted to get rid of all trees before he has to dispose of them himself.

On Christmas morning we attended Mass at St. Francis Xavier Church, a cathedral-like parish church big enough to rival St. Patrick’s in Manhattan. The massive organ stood at the back in the choir loft. As the choir master played, the Christmas hymns vibrated through the church. I felt the sensations surge through my body as I sang out “O, Holy Night” and my favorite “Angels, we have heard on high” I especially liked the part that strung out Glor-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-or-ia.

 

When I reached teen years, I attended midnight High Mass on Christmas Eve. The aroma of incense wafted on currents of air to settle on the congregants who sat with heads bowed, and knuckled their chests “mea cuppa”

Every year, my parents bought a big jigsaw puzzle and after our Christmas dinner, we cleared the dining room table and set up the puzzle for the whole family to work on. It stayed up all week and we worked on it bit by bit until finished. Then it stayed up a little while longer so we could admire our handiwork.

So when I remember Christmas of my youth, it’s not the presents I got that stands out; it’s the activities that brought the whole world closer.

 

New York Christmas

I watched the lighting of the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree the other night on TV. It brought back memories of Christmas in New York where I lived the first 50 years of my life.

 

Every year I looked forward to our annual Christmas trip to Manhattan. As a teen I went with my school friends, then with my boyfriend and eventually with my husband. 

When my children got old enough to enjoy it, I took them every year. A week or two before Christmas, we took the train to 34^th St. From there we walked up 5^th Ave. and admired the displays in store windows. Some had animated toys, Santa and elves, electric trains passing through a miniature village with windows aglow. Tiny ice skaters twirled like ballerinas on a miniature mirrored lake. A Jack in the Box jumped out and sneered its clown face at the startled children peering through the glass. 

 

 

We made our way to Rockefeller Center to admire the giant tree festooned with thousands of lights. We strolled the Rockefeller Gardens and Promenade lined with pine trees and illuminated white angels blowing through long golden trumpets. Vendors, selling roasted chestnuts or big crusty pretzels sprinkled with crystals of kosher salt, kept their wares warm in portable ovens on pushcarts. We usually bought the pretzels and held them with paper napkins in our gloved hands. Easier to eat, they didn’t require peeling like the chestnuts. The steam from the warm pretzels mingled with our breath to smoke its way into the frigid New York air. We stopped to watch the ice skaters, on the rink below the bronze sculpture of Prometheus. They displayed their abilities for the blasé New Yorkers who showed their appreciation with hoots and hollers.  Applause by gloved hands would get lost into the muffled sounds of traffic.

 

We ended our tour with a visit to St. Patrick’s Cathedral.  Hundreds of poinsettia plants graced all the side altars as well as the main altar. We sat in a pew and drank in the peace and aromas of the church. A Nativity scene sat to the right of the main altar. Statues of the Holy Family along with shepherds, sheep, angels, camels and Wise Men spread out across the marble floor of the Cathedral.  When we warmed up enough to venture back out into the cold, we made our way to the train that took us home, full of Good Will toward all.

 

 

Life Lesson

 

Happy Thanksgiving

to all.




....next to Godliness

It has occurred to me that taking a shower requires more time than it used to. In my youth, I took a quick shower, toweled off, dressed and out the door in about fifteen minutes.

            First of all, nowadays I need more time to assemble the accoutrements necessary for a complete cleansing ceremony. That includes unscented body wash, and a face wash for delicate and dry skin, loufah mesh to scrub away dead skin cells, and a special purple shampoo for gray hair. It promises to be gentle on my aging locks.

            Next I place a rubber mat on the floor of the shower stall; even though it has a non-skid surface…I don’t trust it. Then I assemble two towels, one for body one for hair, face cloth and terry floor mat. I stand outside the stall, reach in and turn the water on, adjust the temperature back and forth until just right. Only then do I disrobe and enter the shower.

            After I use the face and body washes, I shampoo twice and rinse well. Next I use a conditioner that smells like lemon, wait five minutes while the lemony mixture softens my hair and rinse again. Then I turn the water off.

I open the curtain, reach for the first towel and wrap it around my head turban style. Then shawl the second towel over my shoulders. Before I leave the stall, I wipe down the walls with the squeegee I keep for that purpose.

            After toweling off, I sit on a third towel placed over the closed toilet seat. I raise each foot to carefully dry between toes. When did I start to pay such close attention to my toes? Then I use a pumice stone to rub across callouses on my feet. Now comes the various creams; moisturizing cream for the face, dry skin lotion for the arms, legs, and feet and 1% hydrocortisone cream for scaly elbows and multiple itchy spots. Finally I cut and apply moleskin pads to corns and tender places on my hammer toes.

            All this takes time. In winter it becomes more time consuming. Because I hate feeling cold, I take my portable electric heater to the bathroom ten minutes before I plan to shower. I keep the door closed to warm the room. I tend to stay in the hot shower longer, loathe to step out into chilly air.

            When I worked in a nursing home years ago, I didn’t understand why the elderly patients hated the bath. Ah….the ignorance of youth.

What's in a Name

1935 Andy, mom holding Mary and Dottie

 

I’m not sure if it snowed the day of my birth. I know that it held the typical cold of a February night in Brooklyn, the kind that pulls tears from the eyes and chaps cheeks into red flags. My mother, Anna, labored for three days to bring me, her third and last child, into the world. The labor took so long because of my birth weight of nine pounds, or so I’ve been told. I wonder about the truthfulness of this, since my older siblings weighed twelve and ten pounds at birth. How could a mere nine pounds give Mom such a hard time?

            My siblings’ births took place at home without benefit of accurate scales so I doubt the veracity of their weights. I have to believe my birth weight because I see it recorded on the very official looking birth certificate from Park Slope’s biggest and best hospital, Methodist Hospital, on the corner of 7^th Ave. and 6^th St. This momentous event in my life occurred without fanfare on February 9, 1935 at 3:45 AM.

            The matter of naming the new baby girl created another conflict for my parents. My grandmother had been called Mary Ann. When my sister arrived nine years before me, Mama wanted to name her Mary Ann after her mother. But Daddy like the actress Dorothy Gish, hence my sisters name...Dorothy.

            A year after Dorothy’s birth and eight years before mine, my brother entered the world. They named him Andrew Jr. after my father. I wonder why they didn’t call him Douglas or Gilbert after the hottest male stars of 1927.

            When I came along, Mama again wanted to name her daughter Mary Ann. By this time Daddy liked Loretta Young. Mama insisted on Mary Ann and Daddy insisted on Loretta. They finally reached a compromise. I became Mary Loretta. Mama didn’t really give in that easily. It didn’t matter what name my birth certificate said, she called me Mary Ann throughout my childhood, and so did the rest of the family. I attended school before I knew my correct name.

              The great depression had crushed my family’s standard of living and depleted their finances. Franklin Roosevelt, in the white house, put his “New Deal” into operation. He promised a turnaround in the economy with a glut of alphabet letters, NRA, WPA, CCC, TVA. My father, Andrew, had been out of work for months and the family received “relief”...welfare in those days. When the WPA (I believe the letters stand for Works Progress Administration) came to New York, my father, an iron worker, finally got work building bridges, parks and offices in the City of New York. The work, although sporadic, at least brought some money into the household.

During her pregnancy, Mama received medical care from the hospital clinic. The cost for pre natal care and delivery totaled $60, but even this amount, Daddy couldn’t pay. He ignored the hospital bill in favor of the grocer, landlord, and I must confess, for Daddy, the local bar & grill. For years, when my parents got into an argument, Mama flung an accusation at Daddy.

            “You never paid for Mary Ann. You spent it at the bar instead.”

            Hearing this, reinforced my belief that parents bought babies at the hospital like candy in the corner store. I thought they went to the nursery and chose a baby like I chose licorice or chocolate. Since I wasn’t paid for, was I stolen? Or bought on the installment plan and Daddy didn’t make payments? Would the hospital come and repossess me? I never voiced these fears to my parents, and in time came to understand what “not being paid for” really meant. It had nothing to do with me. Parents seldom realize how much what they say affects a listening child. I often wonder if I’ve committed the same insensitive sin. Probably.