They were still singing the opening hymn when I arrived for church last Sunday. People were still standing and it made my march toward the second row a little less conspicuous than it might have been a few moments later. As it was, I was too late to find my usual seat - usual as far the last month or two are concerned - and I had to occupy the ( Read more... )

I had wanted to be "more visible" during yesterday's service, but hadn't counted on being part of an impromptu dance performance. Almost immediately after it was over, the congregation's "talented tenth" rushed up to give me hugs. And that included Bing who is an accomplished Gilbert and Sullivan interpreter, Colette a published author, and Hallie' ( Read more... )

This has been a difficult summer. So far, at least three close relationships have spent time in hospital, with one facing insurmountable odds against leaving while of this planet. They are Bing, one of my best friends; my brother and my lone surviving parental sibling, my Aunt Nannie ( Read more... )

For the second time since the pandemic began, my mother's nieces and nephews put together a zoom get-together, this time to celebrate Kelvin's retirement. Not sure why my dad's side of the family is so different; I can barely name more than two or three of his surviving nieces and nephews. We lost track of them after the last of his Baltimore ( Read more... )

I'm getting ready to leave Middletown for Brooklyn. It's been three weeks of really lovely, sunny weather; the kind I probably would have been unable to take full advantage of back home. The nearly empty sidewalks; my private balcony; the empty liberal arts college up the hill - have combined to give me the kind of access to the outdoors that would ( Read more... )

Took a quick trip Down Home this weekend. Supposedly, it was to attend a funeral, but the relationshi was so distant and so obscure that even my first-cousin Kelvin who grew up there couldn't ecplain the relationship. Suffice it to say that everyone is relatad to everyone else doen there and that eery death diminishes the community in tangible ways ( Read more... )

The weekend actually started as soon as I got off the train in Richmond. Unbeknownst to me, my North Carolina cousins had been texting me about my Cousin Reva's birthday which was that very day. Unfortunately, I was too zonked out by the endless hypnotic effect of scenery passing before my eyes to bother checking my smartphone. Travel has a narco ( Read more... )

Things have been pretty topsy-turvy since The Wedding. Could not drag myself out of bed Sunday morning even though I had very little to drink the night before. Saturday had roared in like a lion only to end in the most desultory of hand waves exchanged from across the room with Mattie, and the rest of the California relatives, after being joined at ( Read more... )

If there's one thing that has kept our family together these last fifteen years or so, it has been our common experience of the ravages of Alzheimer's disease and dementia. The latest victim is our oldest cousin, Reva's, husband, "R.D.". They were married for over fifty years and I can remember them as newlyweds, stopping by to visit us in Queens. ( Read more... )

This morning felt like the last good day of summer before it careens into thousands of children returning to school. So, I wore my boldest t-shirt to Mass, a bright, day-glow canary yellow. Even one-half of the gay couple from "Down Home" felt the involuntary pull to look in my direction a few times during service. Where his better half was, I'm ( Read more... )