Elizabeth Milligan
Writing Assignment
February 25, 2008
Prompt: “…it is the moment that lends significance to things.” - A.J. Heschel
A Park in Brighton
1987
When I was first married, I moved from an apartment in Houston to my husband’s apartment in Brighton. Human storage modules, that’s what my husband called the apartments there. The building was six stories high and all units had three levels, parquet floors, floor-to-ceiling sliding doors, and connecting balconies overlooking a small triangular-shaped park. Except for glass windows and metal railings on the porches, the entire building was water-stained gray concrete. In the cavernous lobby, a huge goose-in-flight was painted on the part of the dropped concrete ceiling that angled down and over visitors and tenants.
Cherry trees and a black wrought iron fence circled the entire perimeter of the park. Commonwealth Avenue ran along the outside. Once-elegant row houses and a synagogue, B’nai Moshe, faced Sutherland Street on the opposite side of the park. The Bluestone Bistro, a pizza house, Little Korea, a restaurant with displays of plastic food in the curtained front window, and Chiswick Arms, our 1960s-vintage apartment building, fronted the narrowest and shortest side, Chiswick Road.
Most of the park was grassy, dotted with saplings, and crisscrossed with gently rolling paths. Playground equipment was scattered over the sandy strip of the park nearest our apartment building. Peeling green benches, cultures, and generations mixed in the park.
1989
Every week day morning at ten, children and young teachers from B’nai Moshe’s new preschool would hold hands, form a line, and thread their way into the park. The few other park regulars tried to arrive early in order to have first dibs on the playground equipment.
Russian grandmothers would bring their grandchildren. If the grandmothers did not live nearby, they arrived by an early morning T-train; there was a stop a few yards away from the park. The children played in the sandbox and on the jungle gym - always keeping an eye out for an empty swing. The grandmothers would find nearby park benches facing the sun and sit there all day. Plastic bags of carrot sticks, tubs of whitefish and eel, crackers, knitting, and band-aids bulged their dress pockets and cloth bags.
It seemed that all Russian grandmothers produced at least one apple a day. They pared the apple in a single continuous and spiral motion, cut the pale globes into sections, and called out to grandchildren – all of whom came running. I would mime my desire to try to pare an apple like they did. Instead, the grandmothers just smiled and proceeded to teach me how to count in Russian and when to say “Dosvedanya” and “Spasiba”.
Before dinner, the young Russian mothers would arrive at the park from their jobs. All of them would be smartly dressed and coiffed. Unlike their mothers, the young women had learned to speak English well. Most had been professionals in Russia, doctors and engineers, and none had licenses to practice their expertise in the United States. Until they would, they worked as computer technicians or manicurists.
One late afternoon, after I crossed the park and headed for the gate nearest my apartment building, I stopped to greet the six or seven young Russian mothers sitting on the two most shaded park benches by the sandbox, talking animatedly. One of them invited me to join them. As soon as I smiled and replied “Da”, they all welcomed me - and slid into English.
In the early evening, the Russian fathers and the fathers of the most recent neighbors, the Brazilians, would return from their jobs and play with their children. On one particular evening, Boris felt that his son had been slighted by Bruno’s son and each man threatened to fight the other. I don’t recall that their confrontation was any more than raised fists and loud threats, but soon after that incident, the Russians moved away from the park.
The Brazilians lived across from the park in the old apartment buildings with ornate plaster trim on Sutherland Road. Except for preparing meals or orchestrating parties, the Brazilian mothers were in the park with their children almost all day. After dinner, the fathers and their children would return to the park to play until dark.
On spring evenings, the scent of cherry blossoms mingled with hot fragrant steam from red beans, rice, steak, and plantains which wafted across the park from the Brazilians' open kitchen windows. Twilight shadows embraced the park, the globes of light from street lamps, the cars parked bumper-to-bumper along both sides of the streets, and the chattering pedestrians. On such an evening, I joined Barbara, my good new friend from down the hall, on her balcony. Hanging over the railing, Barbara sighed: “Doesn’t it look just like a Hollywood movie set? … This is why Harold and I can never move from here. It is so beautiful.”
Marianne and her younger brother, Eduardo, adored my curly-haired one-year old daughter. Eduardo thought she was a doll. Often, he would clutch her in a bear hug and tote her about the park until she wriggled free.
Marianne and Eduardo’s parents invited our family to Marianne’s twelfth birthday party. On the evening of the party, my daughter wore a nice but not fancy dress. My husband and I dressed casually – jeans and a skirt. When Marianne’s mother answered the door, we smiled and handed her our birthday present. She ushered us into a living room packed with gifts, music, food, and their many, many friends and family from Brazil. Both adults and children were stylishly dressed for the birthday party. The guests scrutinized us with polite curiosity, smiled at us, and mingled with the others. The children moved into Marianne and Eduardo’s bedroom to jump on beds and scream with abandon.
1990
In the spring, a Japanese mother and her child and some Korean families joined us in the park. The Japanese mother’s husband was interning at Beth Israel and the Korean families owned the nearby restaurant, Little Korea, and convenience store, The Huntington.
On Halloween, we – the Brazilians, the Koreans, the Japanese, and my daughter and I - met at Eduardo and Marianne’s apartment. My husband stayed at home, lowering an Easter basket of candy from our balcony to the few trick-or-treaters on the sidewalk below. The little Japanese boy – a baby, really - was dressed as a Japanese spirit in a white pillowcase with three slits for eyes. His mother told us that in Japan, the third eye was for good luck. My daughter wore a NASCAR mechanic’s jumpsuit from K-Mart. Everyone else was either a Disney-fairy tale character or an American Superhero.
The following July, on the afternoon of my daughter’s second birthday party, the Brazilian mothers helped me tie blue, green, and red balloons to branches of trees in the park, the Japanese mother helped me serve the cake and ice cream to anyone who asked for some, the Korean families from Little Korea presented my daughter with a large construction-theme set of Du Plo blocks, and the Bluestone Bistro owners brought over a tub of dry ice for the theatrical effect; they thought the children would get a kick out of it.
That fall, our Brazilian neighbors began moving to new homes away from that neighborhood in Brighton. Barbara died, and Harold asked me to sit shiva for her. We moved a year later.
Monday, February 25, 2008
Saturday, February 23, 2008
Manhattan Neighborhoods & Points of View
Elizabeth Milligan
Writing Assignment, Points of View
March 2, 2005
Manhattan Neighborhoods Host a Protest March
Saturday, 15 February 2003
In The Beginning, Maynard, Massachusetts
First Person, Present
Before the telephone conversation with my old friend Ashley, I had planned to buy a ticket for a ride in a bus full of strangers. Then, Ashley told me that she, Charlie, and their son, Harlan, planned to drive into Manhattan themselves for the protest march, I was amazed. Not that they shared a conviction that this was an important thing to do, but that they all agreed to do it. When Ashley offered me a ride with them, I was grateful and very pleased. I looked forward to spending time together with old friends and yes, to the luxury and comfort of a free ride. The Lieberman-Berg family and I shared a strong feeling that this protest march was very important. The Lieberman-Berg family went to NYC. I went with them.
Leaving Massachusetts, Manhattan-bound
Second Person, Present
It is Friday evening and you have decided to join old family friends the next morning for a day in Manhattan. Your own family is riveted to the TV screen in the darkened family room of your home. With ghostly TV images dancing across their upturned faces, your family lets you know that they are not in the least interested in sharing the experience.
The wintry weather is bitter cold and windy so you go to the local clothing store to buy extra thermal socks and multiple heat packets for hands and feet. The bedside alarm beeps at 4 AM and you depress it quickly before any family member is awakened. You dress hastily, but with care not to forget your medicine and your warm hat.
An hour later, you park on the street outside of your friend’s home, the passenger side tipped up on the snow heaped on the curb. They, mother, father, and pre-teenage son, are just about ready to leave – foraging for the misplaced shoe and checking supplies –water, snack, blankets, and pillows. The day’s first rays of light hug the horizon and bleed into the dark morning as you pile into the white SUV. You are going to a protest march.
Later in Manhattan, United Nations-bound
Third Person, Past
She had not intended to go, but so many of her friends were backing out because of the government’s code alert for the City that day. Although the weather was frigid, she believed people’s fear of terrorism was their main reason for staying at home. And although a shadow of a doubt about the safety of it all nagged at her too, she decided to join the march. It was a surreal day. From the dark of an early winter dawn to a ride in a lavishly equipped SUV from a home in Newton, Massachusetts to a private garage in Manhattan.
At the beginning point of the march, NYPD checked all banners and confiscated any poles which were not hollow cardboard tubes. The avenues were empty of vehicles and packed with masses of people. Sometimes people were scattered, sometimes the crowds of them were dense. Except for occasional bursts of chanting, the marchers were relatively quiet and orderly. They ambled along the route with a level of banter similar to a Saturday crowd at a shopping mall.
Surrounded always by police in full riot gear - many poised on shiny black police motorcycles, the marchers were funneled along the avenues and streets by way of many yellow barricades erected nine blocks at a time. The only airborne traffic was police helicopters. Looking around, she stood in awe of a Manhattan without the drones and squeals of air traffic, the incessant honking of cabs, busses and passenger cars, the blaring of police cars, ambulances, and fire engines.
Having lived in Manhattan, she was both surprised and heartened to see businessmen welcome marchers all along the route through Midtown and the Upper East Side to rest and warm themselves in their shops.
Well bundled and healthy, tired and freezing, marchers huddled in storefronts along the way. Through the double glass doors to a deli, she noticed a father kneeling in a corner to change his child’s dirty diaper while his wife tied her daughter’s shoe.
Although the tall buildings cut down on the reception of her portable radio, she still heard announcements contradicting what she saw and underestimating the size of the march. Unseen loudspeakers, sporadically positioned along the route, amplified the guest speakers and entertainers broadcasting from a stage near the United Nations. Save for a handful of children, she noticed that most of the marchers were older.
Rivulets of red stage makeup dripped down the faces of two women who appeared to be mother and daughter. With fake blood and strips of white linen wrapped around their heads, the women held high a sign that read, “No Blood for Oil”. Several other marchers displayed a large sheet with “Not in My Name” scrawled on it in red paint.
Obviously, they knew about the hollow-cardboard-tube rule.
Later, on 71st Street between 1st and 2nd
Third Person, Past
Even though the weather today was horrible, I was glad to have finished a lot of errands. Collette squeezed me in for a cut and touch up and Renee found time for both a pedicure and manicure. On the way back to the garage, I stopped at Saks and bought a stunning Chanel. Then, the day fell apart.
I parked the Benz by the curb in front of our place just long enough to run inside and hang my new suit in the foyer, and was back at the wheel of my car when a solid mass of scruffy looking people with banners spilled over and around a police barricade at the end of the block on Second. It was hopeless. There was no way I was going to be on time for the consult with my interior designer. So, I just sat there. The sun’s rays set off our brownstone to advantage. My car window was open on the driver’s side. They kept gawking at me; so, I told them that I lived on this street, that I was rich, and that I was not happy. They didn’t care. Just walked around my parked car and on to First Avenue – like lemmings. Good thing they didn’t scratch the Benz, or Jonathan would have had a fit.
Still later, ending at 57th Street and Central Park West
Third person, present
She looks at Charlie, Ashley, and Harlan; her two old friends and their child. All bundled for the cold weather, all tired, all miserable, and all together, they call it quits for the day. The four of them stroll westward to the garage where the SUV is parked, planning to meet midway at Charlie’s friend’s apartment. She and Ashley buy trinkets along Central Park East. Charlie and Harlan cut through the Park. They all meet at a glistening hi-rise apartment building near some new construction on Central Park West. Charlie’s friend, Tom, lives on the 21st floor.
Tom ushers them into his spacious, sun drenched, and very white apartment and immediately, she is overwhelmed by a fedora-adorned Michael Jackson dancing jerkily across an oversized flat screen TV to his musical hit, “Thriller”.
As Charlie and Tom pull out their laptops and serve up volleys of technical jargon, the others gaze impatiently through windows at vistas dominated by more tall buildings. Eyes always riveted on his laptop, Tom asks her what brought them to NYC for the day.
When she tells him about the march, he responds absentmindedly, “Oh? I think I heard something about that. I didn’t know it was today.”
Writing Assignment, Points of View
March 2, 2005
Manhattan Neighborhoods Host a Protest March
Saturday, 15 February 2003
In The Beginning, Maynard, Massachusetts
First Person, Present
Before the telephone conversation with my old friend Ashley, I had planned to buy a ticket for a ride in a bus full of strangers. Then, Ashley told me that she, Charlie, and their son, Harlan, planned to drive into Manhattan themselves for the protest march, I was amazed. Not that they shared a conviction that this was an important thing to do, but that they all agreed to do it. When Ashley offered me a ride with them, I was grateful and very pleased. I looked forward to spending time together with old friends and yes, to the luxury and comfort of a free ride. The Lieberman-Berg family and I shared a strong feeling that this protest march was very important. The Lieberman-Berg family went to NYC. I went with them.
Leaving Massachusetts, Manhattan-bound
Second Person, Present
It is Friday evening and you have decided to join old family friends the next morning for a day in Manhattan. Your own family is riveted to the TV screen in the darkened family room of your home. With ghostly TV images dancing across their upturned faces, your family lets you know that they are not in the least interested in sharing the experience.
The wintry weather is bitter cold and windy so you go to the local clothing store to buy extra thermal socks and multiple heat packets for hands and feet. The bedside alarm beeps at 4 AM and you depress it quickly before any family member is awakened. You dress hastily, but with care not to forget your medicine and your warm hat.
An hour later, you park on the street outside of your friend’s home, the passenger side tipped up on the snow heaped on the curb. They, mother, father, and pre-teenage son, are just about ready to leave – foraging for the misplaced shoe and checking supplies –water, snack, blankets, and pillows. The day’s first rays of light hug the horizon and bleed into the dark morning as you pile into the white SUV. You are going to a protest march.
Later in Manhattan, United Nations-bound
Third Person, Past
She had not intended to go, but so many of her friends were backing out because of the government’s code alert for the City that day. Although the weather was frigid, she believed people’s fear of terrorism was their main reason for staying at home. And although a shadow of a doubt about the safety of it all nagged at her too, she decided to join the march. It was a surreal day. From the dark of an early winter dawn to a ride in a lavishly equipped SUV from a home in Newton, Massachusetts to a private garage in Manhattan.
At the beginning point of the march, NYPD checked all banners and confiscated any poles which were not hollow cardboard tubes. The avenues were empty of vehicles and packed with masses of people. Sometimes people were scattered, sometimes the crowds of them were dense. Except for occasional bursts of chanting, the marchers were relatively quiet and orderly. They ambled along the route with a level of banter similar to a Saturday crowd at a shopping mall.
Surrounded always by police in full riot gear - many poised on shiny black police motorcycles, the marchers were funneled along the avenues and streets by way of many yellow barricades erected nine blocks at a time. The only airborne traffic was police helicopters. Looking around, she stood in awe of a Manhattan without the drones and squeals of air traffic, the incessant honking of cabs, busses and passenger cars, the blaring of police cars, ambulances, and fire engines.
Having lived in Manhattan, she was both surprised and heartened to see businessmen welcome marchers all along the route through Midtown and the Upper East Side to rest and warm themselves in their shops.
Well bundled and healthy, tired and freezing, marchers huddled in storefronts along the way. Through the double glass doors to a deli, she noticed a father kneeling in a corner to change his child’s dirty diaper while his wife tied her daughter’s shoe.
Although the tall buildings cut down on the reception of her portable radio, she still heard announcements contradicting what she saw and underestimating the size of the march. Unseen loudspeakers, sporadically positioned along the route, amplified the guest speakers and entertainers broadcasting from a stage near the United Nations. Save for a handful of children, she noticed that most of the marchers were older.
Rivulets of red stage makeup dripped down the faces of two women who appeared to be mother and daughter. With fake blood and strips of white linen wrapped around their heads, the women held high a sign that read, “No Blood for Oil”. Several other marchers displayed a large sheet with “Not in My Name” scrawled on it in red paint.
Obviously, they knew about the hollow-cardboard-tube rule.
Later, on 71st Street between 1st and 2nd
Third Person, Past
Even though the weather today was horrible, I was glad to have finished a lot of errands. Collette squeezed me in for a cut and touch up and Renee found time for both a pedicure and manicure. On the way back to the garage, I stopped at Saks and bought a stunning Chanel. Then, the day fell apart.
I parked the Benz by the curb in front of our place just long enough to run inside and hang my new suit in the foyer, and was back at the wheel of my car when a solid mass of scruffy looking people with banners spilled over and around a police barricade at the end of the block on Second. It was hopeless. There was no way I was going to be on time for the consult with my interior designer. So, I just sat there. The sun’s rays set off our brownstone to advantage. My car window was open on the driver’s side. They kept gawking at me; so, I told them that I lived on this street, that I was rich, and that I was not happy. They didn’t care. Just walked around my parked car and on to First Avenue – like lemmings. Good thing they didn’t scratch the Benz, or Jonathan would have had a fit.
Still later, ending at 57th Street and Central Park West
Third person, present
She looks at Charlie, Ashley, and Harlan; her two old friends and their child. All bundled for the cold weather, all tired, all miserable, and all together, they call it quits for the day. The four of them stroll westward to the garage where the SUV is parked, planning to meet midway at Charlie’s friend’s apartment. She and Ashley buy trinkets along Central Park East. Charlie and Harlan cut through the Park. They all meet at a glistening hi-rise apartment building near some new construction on Central Park West. Charlie’s friend, Tom, lives on the 21st floor.
Tom ushers them into his spacious, sun drenched, and very white apartment and immediately, she is overwhelmed by a fedora-adorned Michael Jackson dancing jerkily across an oversized flat screen TV to his musical hit, “Thriller”.
As Charlie and Tom pull out their laptops and serve up volleys of technical jargon, the others gaze impatiently through windows at vistas dominated by more tall buildings. Eyes always riveted on his laptop, Tom asks her what brought them to NYC for the day.
When she tells him about the march, he responds absentmindedly, “Oh? I think I heard something about that. I didn’t know it was today.”
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