Memories of Etan

How can I not not comment on the latest developments in the 33-year missing child case of Etan Patz. I didn’t know him. We lived four miles apart, separated by the Hudson River. But his disappearance was the first news story I followed.

There were certainly other major events of the 70s that I was vaguely aware of. My dad let me come with him to sit in his idling gold Buick LeSabre as we waited on gas lines. I also listened to him rail against the foolishness and folly of building an entire “city” on excavated rubble and trash landfill (the World Trade Center, the World Financial Center and surrounding Battery Park City).

So I knew there were “adult things” going on, but that doe-eyed, mop-headed kid on the Six O’Clock Evening News every night––he looked like someone I could know since we were approximately the same age.

The possibility of getting abducted scared me. When my parents went off to work they assured my well-being with strict admonishments such as “Not do anything stupid” and the evergreen “Stay out of trouble.”

But I was never, ever alone. I had my posse of cousins down the block and a broad network of neighborhood, school and church friends. Although my own biological parent set was not around to helicopter over me, there were the other watchful eyes of my aunt, uncle and friends’ parents. And because my parents worked in town, mailmen, cops and a wide array of town workers knew me.

I do not know what Etan Patz’s network of community members or extended family was like. I don’t know how many watchful eyes he had on him.

But that’s why it breaks my heart when I hear a (former) local bodega worker has confessed to the crime. (I’m not rushing to condemn this person. He is innocent until proven guilty and fully deserves due process. The burden of proof is on the state.)

But even if it’s not this confessor (who knows if he’s telling the truth), someone somewhere out there stole Etan’s life.

Kids trust adults––even strange adults––to look after them. Etan’s killer violated that sacred trust and an inherent social contract: protect the brood. Not only do I remember Etan Patz, but all these years later hearing his name mentioned on the evening news, I realize that I never forgot him.

All About Stickers

Boston is all about stickers. There are some non-profit organizations I’m afraid to join (e.g., a prominent beach reservation) because they’ll make me put a sticker on my car just to park there. I’m willing to financially support them and I certainly want to park at the beach, but I don’t want to put another sticker on my car.

I already have to tolerate the big, honking registration sticker that consumes the far right end of my windshield. When I first moved to Boston and the Inspection Garage guy slapped the sticker on, I was mortified. I thought for sure I’d get into accidents because the sticker was a visual distraction and its size obstructed my view of the road. He told me “I’d get used to it.” Three years on, I haven’t.

Buying my car in Southern California was a mistake in the sense that it set my expectations too high. Following the example of other West Coast car owners, I learned to treat my car very well. For instance, on Fridays I’d drop off my car while I played tennis, knowing she was in the skilled hands of multiple car washers (not just “manual labor”). In Boston, I’m lucky if I get two guys working on my car. And they rub it with the wrong purpose: to get the water off. They don’t treat her like the fine machine she is deserving of respect.

Needless to say, when I lived in California, there were no laws forcing stickers on my vehicle; just a couple of small, discreet stickers on my license plate. Why can’t it be like that here?

Parking stickers are the biggest scourge in Boston. I’ve fought the good fight. For the few residences where I really needed them, I simply “taped” the sticker on. Other times when I knew there really was no security and the sticker was joke, I simply threw the sticker away.

Right now, I won’t park on the street even though it’s free because it requires a huge Resident Parking Sticker to be prominently placed in the sight line of my windshield. What a ridiculous requirement. So I pay for off-the-street parking and I thank God I have the means to do so.

I promised my car when we left SoCal that I’d always take care of her. She was badly scratched in the blizzards of Colorado and I’ve sadly dented her with my lack of parallel parking skills here in narrow Boston. Still, I refuse to sticker up my car. Every time I donate money to a worthwhile organization, the first thing they do? Send me a member sticker for my car.

Shoplifters Scare Me

When I first started working at a store on Newbury Street, we had two amazing security guards who were not only nice guys and good at their jobs, but they made me feel safe. How safe, I wouldn’t know until the Recession hit and Corporate eliminated their contract with the security company.

And then it became incumbent on us, the salespeople, to prevent shoplifting. I thought this would be a no-brainer. After all, we were an upscale store in an upscale neighborhood. No one would come in and shoplift there.

So you could imagine my surprise to discover that shoplifters infested the store like rodents. They came in waves: as singles, as couples, as teams. We would intercept and prevent one incident, only to have another pop up again.

Maybe word got out among the underbelly that we were without security staff. Or with the recession, maybe people were just more desperate. They weren’t stealing a belt or a pair of socks here and there; it was more like, they would enter the store and with a full swoop of their arm, they would brush all of the folded shirts on the table near the door into their shopping bag and then run out. Talk about a hit and run.

Then one day, a young girl I worked with, articulated the naiveté I felt. She told me a guy came in wearing a t-shirt picturing an attitude-y Tweety Bird holding fistfuls of cash. She said, “Yet I was surprised when he stole from us.”

My own experience was with the shoplifter with the lazy left eye, severe acne and trio of stars tattooed on the back of his neck. After stopping him from stealing a ski jacket (in a Victoria’s Secret bag) one winter, he returned in the spring with a female accomplice trying on cashmere sweaters. I recognized him and we stayed on them, closely following and repeatedly asking “Anything I can help you with?” until they eventually realized we were on to them, gave up and left.

They then went up the block to another store and tried to hit them up there.

Getting an eReader

I’m obsessed with getting an eReader because I ping-pong between desire and distaste.

On the one hand, I would love the luxury of not having to lug around books all day––especially because I’m a multi-reader. I typically have a novel, a history book, a writing book and several magazines in play all at once. (Not to mention my daily newspaper subscription and my love of crossword puzzles.)

It would be great if I could have access to all of these reading materials simultaneously. Right now in the mornings, I strategically select a piece of reading material. I place it in my bag like it’s a sacred object because I chose it above all others. But oh the horror! There have been so many times my mood changed throughout the day and I wished I had another book with me.

However, I’m turned off by eReaders when I think of their role in my life outdoors. That’s because my line of work centers on my computer. Like a carpenter with tools, I am 100% reliant on my laptop to help me craft my art and sustain a living.

I love my work and throw myself into it––but after hours of working, I very much like to step away from the computer, from its whirring fan, buzzing power cord and eye-piercing liquid crystal display. Therefore, for the same reason I do not write on my laptop outdoors, I like to step outside into nature, where none of it is manufactured and it is just raw and real.

Outside, my reading materials are a part of my experience. On a park bench, I like to curl back the cover and grip my paperback with two hands as the thriller plot grows intense. Relaxing on the beach, I use my magazine to shield the sun from my eyes, or I use it as an impromptu plate when a friend hands me a lobster roll. How can I bring along an eReader on a trek up a mountainside? When we camp at night and need kindling, I rip out the pages I’ve read and add them to the stone pit and the fire blazes and everyone cheers.

Indeed, when I am reading another’s words and am awash with my own inspiration, I whip out my pen and write in the pages of my books, newspapers and magazines––adding my own scribbled words to the printed words and sometimes right over them.

Stopping at McDonald's

Stopping at McDonald’s is my favorite part of a road trip. Yet if you said to me in the city, “Let’s go to McDonald’s,” I’d think that is the grossest proposition. McDonald’s “restaurants” in cities typically are dirty and unhappy. But on an outstretched lonely plane of highway, they are beacons of light and hope. They are rest havens of cleanliness, tranquility and homogeneity.

In Omnivore’s Dilemma, Michael Pollack describes it best when he says that fast food was not junk food when he was growing up. The same is true with me. It was actually considered a loving act, a wonderful treat when my parents gave me two bucks to go down to Burger King with my friends. We’d all pile in to the immovable booth with our burgers and fries, and in that sanctuary of hard plastic, we’d giggle our way through childhood. Therefore, fast food always holds a place in my heart; it reminds me of my youth.

Little by little, the foods of my yesteryear are being chipped away from my daily existence: white bread is bad for me, sugar is bad for me, drinking water from the tap without some sort of filtration is bad for me. Now even whole wheat and rye (gluten) are being phased out of my diet by nutrition experts. But I stand my ground on white rice. I won’t convert to brown rice, no matter how good it is for me. White rice reminds me of my mother’s cooking and the Cuban restaurants I grew up with, and I won’t be stripped of the last vestiges of my youth.

I know McDonald’s is bad for me. (Like I said, I read Pollack’s book.) And I know that despite their fancy and horribly misguided “All Natural” packaging, I’m eating highly, highly processed beef from poorly, poorly treated cows.

But still, the saltiness of the crisp fries, the softness of the bun, the cold sugar rush from the soda––I find all of it so comforting; and when I’m spiritually lost and physically burned out on the road, the golden arches signify home.

Liberate the Tree

Returning from Taos and with the fire of the Rio Grande in my heart, I was determined to liberate the tree in my back yard.

My “yard” is actually an asphalt driveway with a trash shed. Off to the side stands a thin, malnourished tree of no distinct leaf variety I can determine. When the owners of this property had the idea to tar over this entire 100-s.f. plot of land, they also decided to tar in the base of the tree. Adding insult to injury, they then positioned the apartment building’s garbage cans beneath the tree.

As a result of careless neighbors and strong winds, the garbage doesn’t always end up in the bins, but instead gets littered at the base of the tree. When I moved here in winter, the sight of the garbage-filled tree immediately irked me, but it was too cold and inhospitable to go outside and work in the yard to clean it up. And it would indeed be work. That garbage had been accumulating there for months, if not years.

On the first warm day of spring, I moved those garbage cans into the trash shed––which is where they belong, not at the base of a tree. Then I got to work on reviving the tree. Short of renting a jackhammer to break up the asphalt surrounding it, I swept the area free of litter and tried my best to aerate its dirt-covered roots (with a spade).

I pulled up fresh and rotting weeds, and handpicked every minute piece of garbage that codified itself in my outdoor living space. After spreading red cedar mulch around the chain-link fence perimeter, I turned my attention to giving the tree a new lease on life. I padded its base with a fluffy, healthy padding of mulch and on its naked branches, I hung a bird feeder.

Sparrows now flutter and peck in the tree’s branches, and the other day, a cardinal stopped by for a perch. Meager and perhaps ill-fated, the tree is budding leaves today. What a wild life.

Boston Public Library

When I first moved to Boston, I couldn’t stop comparing the city to New York. I was unconscious of doing it; the way obsessed Red Sox fans continuously wear their team’s jersey even when it’s not baseball season.

Of course in my mind, Boston didn’t measure up. But how could it? New York is “home” to me, not just a city. I didn’t grow up in Manhattan as a child, but I did as an adult. And while many see filthy, crowded, noisy streets, I see sacred spaces in which I learned some very hard life lessons that made me who I am today.

Over time, however, I came to see that no city could ever compare to New York because of my emotional connection. Therefore, like a switch turning on a light bulb, I started to see Boston in a new light. And one thing that shines so brightly for me is the Boston Public Library.

When I took the free tour, the docent wouldn’t stop comparing the BPL to the New York Public Library. This made me chuckle. But I found it absurd when he kept denigrating the NYPL. Clearly, he didn’t know much about the New York institution and how much value it contributes––not only to New York City residents, but to the world.

Nevertheless, I have grown to love the BPL for something so much more than its history, art and architecture: I love the “public” aspect of its reading room.

In the room gathers the power of the brain; strangers sit together in one room to read, write, calculate, research, think––whatever everyone is doing in silence. In the reading room, it’s like a giant think tank with no outside distraction and we are all in this one space free of charge.