Supermoon 1983 - 1984

 

     It's 1983, and my dad, and us kids are with Mom Mom Marge and Pop Pop Bill at their senior shantytown in Wildwood.  They have tons of friends and we get lots of attention from the ladies and men who drink cocktails and do not even make it to the beach.  We spend the day making sand castles and at night we eat, shower, and head to the boardwalk down the street.  We love it with its spinning lights and loud pop music.  Our favorite ride is the Gravitron.  When we enter the low flat cylinder, we get strapped to cushioned planks that slide up and down while the cylinder rotates and the centrifugal force makes us cling to the sides, like the laundry in the spin cycle.  We are dizzy and can barely walk afterwards.  My dad is dizzy and can barely walk even though he never goes on the Gravitron.  We walk on the beach which is dark, accept for the moon and the ambient light from the boardwalk. It's weird because we can hear the waves crashing, but can't them in the blackness of the ocean.

    It's 1983. We are latchkey kids. That's what John McNulty told us. When we ask him what that means, he says it's “a kid that lets themselves into the house, because their parents are not home”.  After the bus drops us off on the corner, we let ourselves into the house, change out of our uniforms, and run next door to see if John is standing by his front door, where he likes to smoke. He is a big man with a paunch that hangs over his waistband, which he insists is all muscle.  When he is there, he brings out his frisbee or we play monkey-in-the-middle with whatever projectile is lying around.  This is my favorite because I am exceptionally good at throwing and catching, even though I am very bad at keeping scores.  John tells us jokes and challenges us with riddles until his wife calls him in for dinner.  It never crosses our minds to ask him what he does for work, and it seems like his whole purpose is to play with us after school. 

            It’s 1983, and my stickers are all on the wall in the upstairs bathroom.  My brother had grown jealous of my sticker collection and destroyed them by peeling off the protective backs and putting them here on the wall next to the toilet.  They tear as I try to rescue them.  When I shriek with rage, my mom tells me to “stop being so dramatic”, but she concedes that my brother has a “nasty streak”.

    It’s 1983, and we have knocked over a porcelain tea set in the living room.  My mom cries over the broken pieces about how she can “never have nice things”.  Our house is full of Mom’s nice things.  There is crystal. Lennox, and porcelain galore. A collection of Royal Dalton dolls resides in a curio cabinet in the dining room.  These are ceramic ladies dressed in period costume who hold roses and wait for their great loves to return, or show up or whatever.  We are normally full of energy and Mom’s treasures often get reduced to shards as a result of our “roughhousing”.

    It's 1983 and as I get out of the shower and reach for a towel, I hear my mom screaming. I run out of the bathroom and look down the stairwell to see my dad pummeling her while she jerks away in pain. I run downstairs and the bath towel falls away and I am standing between the two of them naked, but my dad is so drunk that he does not know he is hitting me and not her, but I stand there and withstand the blows until the police show up and take my dad away.

    It’s 1983 and I have taught myself how to draw a perfect rose, which I draw incessantly during the breaks in class. It begins with a central swirl followed by overlapping crescents.  Missy Wilson has begun to draw a rose that looks just like mine, down to the last petal, on all of her textbooks.  When other people tell her how good it is, she just says thank you, and never gives me any credit.  This inflames me and when I confront her about it, I tell her that I want her to stop drawing my rose.  She laughs at me and tells me that it is not my rose, and continues using it to embellish her textbooks.

    It's 1983, and my Mom sits me down for a “talk”. She has just gotten her hair done and she looks just like princess Diana. She tells me that she and my dad are getting separated, and that dad is moving in with Mom Mom Marge, which is no real surprise, since he spends a great deal of his time there anyway.

    It's 1983 and we order pizza every Friday night from Johnny's Pizzeria. We squeeze around our tiny Panasonic TV set on the Formica and chrome table and watch Happy Days and Laverne and Shirley. We all fight over who sits next to Mom, but we all know that it is really about the better view of the TV, where Fonzi goes, “Ayyyye” and Laverne and Shirley dance to “Schlemiel! Schlimazel!”

    It’s 1983, and we look out the window when we hear the sound of a sputtering motor.  Mr. Bolinsky is mowing our lawn, which he does completely of his own volition.  My mom watches him and is overcome with some cocktail of emotions that renders her speechless.  When she goes out to thank him, he waves a hand and says, “Don’t worry about it.”

     It’s 1983.  Across the lot from the school building is Saint Peter Celestine Church, we arrange ourselves in pews across from the pulpit, like we do every first Tuesday of the month.  I am unable to pay attention to the homily, which is delivered by Monsignor Sharkey, who is as old as dirt, and drones on endlessly about Jesus and the Holy Spirit. The other kids listen observantly, but no matter how hard I try to focus, my mind wanders and I draw pictures in the leather-bound hymnal, which does not escape the notice of the nuns and causes them tremendous grief resulting in unholy and damning phone calls to my mother. 

    It's 1983, and my brother's best friend, Patrick Pryer is over for dinner. Their friendship has deepened due to their both being alter boys, so we see a fair amount of Patrick.  We are having ground steak and onions, with mashed potatoes and lima beans. It is still our least favorite meal, but it's always fun when Patrick is there. We open the door after the electronic doorbell chimes (ding dong ding dong, dong dong ding dong), and instead of saying “hello”, he jumps back and exclaims, “I’m sorry.  I’m sorry.”  We find this to be strange and hilarious because he has absolutely nothing to be sorry about.  His inborn proclivity toward self-flagellation and shame causes us to name him “Friar Pryer”.  While sitting at the table trying to withstand the troublesome onions and lima beans, He does an impersonation of a chipmunk that makes us all laugh until tears come from our eyes and our stomachs hurt.  Even my mom cannot stop herself from laughing. 

     It's 1983, and it's Saturday.  We are at my riding lesson, and today, I am hoping to work on my cantering, so that I can eventually gallop.  But when we get into the ring, I see that Happy has set up “cavalettes”.   These are so I can learn to jump, but when I trot Cochise over the short wooden x’s, it does not feel like a jump at all and I feel disappointed when I think about the Alec Ramsey jumping the Black Stallion over big piles of driftwood on the deserted island.  Happy says, “Great job!!” in a way that makes me really believe her.  

    It's 1983 and my sister's glasses are lost again. Mom notices them missing from her face when we come in from playing with John McNulty and my brother’s friends. When no one has any answers, she tells us, through clenched teeth, to get out, and DO NOT come back without them.  We search the front and the back of the house. They are nowhere in any of the usual yards.  Chris Bolinsky asks us what we were looking for and we said Sharon's glasses. “Again?” He joins the search and eventually finds them in a pile of leaves under the Willow tree in the backyard.

It's 1983, and my brother is white as a sheet.  “Lonnie’s son shot me,” he says.  I examine him for wounds.  “He missed,” he says. “He shot at me, and hit a tree instead.”  We go across the street where he shows me the bullet hole in the tree.  While we are standing there the son comes out the front door and yells at us to get lost.  Before we run off, he lifts his shirt a little and we see the gleaming gun in his pocket.  “And you may want to keep your mouths shut.” he adds.  We back away slowly and never breath a word of it to anyone until years later, when Lonnie and her son are distant memories.

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    It's 1984, and I am at Summer camp. I meet a girl named The Boof who also loves to draw, and we spend every bit of free time drawing under the trees while the others play volleyball or buy snacks from the little concession stand. We create a character that is a bull dressed as a matador and work to perfect the contours of its horns and the embroidered ruffles of the cape.  She calls herself The Boof because she is a quarter black, and has a pom-pom of light brown hair where her bangs would be, and she does n't care for her real name, which is Diane. The Boof has long strong nails extending from thin fingers and exudes an elegance that I find beguiling and alien in someone our age. Drawing is the only thing we have in common, but that is quite enough to keep us glued to each other whenever possible.

    It’s 1984, and my Mom’s 38th birthday is coming up.  We wander around the strip mall next to the Wawa and eventually go into a shoe store where we find a remarkable pair of feather plumed shoes that glitter spectacularly because of the rhinestone details.  When the Russian lady behind the counter sees us eying them, she says, "It's Egret" with a knowing look that totally sells us.  They are size 10, but Mom wears an 8.  We buy them anyway, because they are so beautiful and the lady behind the counter tells us we can return them if need be.  When Mom opens them up, she oohs and ahhhs and pretends they fit fine even though her feet are sliding all over the place and the feathers somehow got squashed.

    It's 1984 and my brother, sister, and I are with dad in a graveyard. He gives us paper and pencil and explains the entertainment value of grave-rubbings, which is when you pick up the texture of the crumbling gravestones by rubbing the pencil over the paper pressed against the stone.  but we were too young for it to hold our interest, so we pretend to have funerals for the unfortunate dead.

     It's 1984, and my mom has decided to “redo” all the bedrooms.  I am confused by this because there is nothing wrong with the curtains, furniture and bedspread that we already have, but my mom says they are old and need to be replaced.  We all pile into the car and follow her around the furniture showroom and bounce on the couches while mom pics out all new furniture.  She asks us if we like what she picks out, but these are more statements than questions, and she picks out the frilly curtains and flower-embroidered bedspread that she likes the best.

    It's 1984 and Little Dotty is babysitting us. She likes to stay on the phone with her friends and is forever filing her nails, but she plays with us if we hem and haw enough. I demand that we play a game where she is a villain who catches me and holds me hostage while my brother and sister try to rescue me with swords that are really sticks. When she asks how she is going to hold me captive, I produce a length of rope from the garage, and instruct her to tie me up. It is easy for my brother and sister to rescue me because Little Dotty is not good at tying knots and disappears to talk on the phone and file her nails.

     It's 1984 and I am extra forlorn at school.  I am sulking in the lavoratory where one of the Jennifers runs into me and asks what’s wrong.  I tell her my parents are separated, but that means nothing to her, so I explain it's the thing that happens before a divorce.  None of the kids I go to school with have divorced parents, so they do not know what to say when I am forlorn, which is most of the time.  

    It's 1984 and it’s Saturday.  My dad brings us to Dorney Park. I see caricature artists at work, with their arabesque brushstrokes that somehow come together into a likeness of the gleefully smiling customer.  It is like magic to me.  My dad tells me we cannot afford one, and I tell him I just want to watch, which I do, until I am dragged away. 

    It’s 1984, and Heather Gallagher and me pretend to build our own castle, which is made out of “real pretend bricks” which we stack into an invisible fortress next to the tire playground.  The partnership devolves into a foreman and laborer arrangement as I dictate the layout of the kingdom, and Heather willingly submits to my commands. 

    It's 1984 and I come home from school and climb the evergreen tree to the right of our house, which is on the John McNulty side.  If I climb up about 12 feet, there are three branches which hold me like a cradle. I love climbing trees as much as I love drawing and spend long hours in the tree cradle, until the middle branch digs into my tailbone, and I have to come down.

     It’s 1984, and we accidentally knock over a Lennox vase while running around the house.  We stare in terror at the cream-colored fragments.  We find some household glue in the garage and spend hours praying to Saint Jude, the patron saint of lost causes.  When my mom comes home, she notices nothing, so we know the prayer works.

      It's 1984 and we are having dinner at the kitchen table.  My brother tells my mom that we are latchkey kids, and she wants to know where we heard that.  My brother says everyone knows latchkey kids whose parents are not home.  My mom is incensed by this and says that we are kids whose parent is at work, which is different from being not-at-home, and that we shouldn’t use that word to describe  ourselves.  

     It's 1984 and I am wearing a hot pink angora sweater instead of the prescribed dark blue vest, because I think it will slip under the radar of the nuns.  When Sister Valerie sees my sweater, she tells me that I have had too many warnings, and now I have to go home for the day and do not come in tomorrow without the correct uniform. I feel gleeful exaltation as I leave the school grounds. When my mom finds out, she is more angry at Sister Valerie than she is at me.

    It's 1984 and I come home from school to see that the evergreen tree is gone. When I confront my mom about the tree's disappearance, she tells me the trees roots were upheaving the house.  I search around the foundation, finding no sign of upheaval, just the stump with its rings and rings of age.

     It's 1984 and we are visiting my dad like we always do on Saturdays.  He has brought us to Penny Packer Park, which we love because there are hiking trails and lots of challenging trees to climb.  There is a swing set that goes really high and shiny silver slide.  A massive green field stretches out in front of acres of hilly brambles where the hiking trail begins and we always spin around and pretend that we are Julie Andrews in the Sound of Music.  We sing, “The hills are alive with the sound of music…”

     It’s 1984 and my dad is collecting TV Guides for some reason.  I am entertaining myself by thumbing through the pages, to see what people in 1982 were watching during prime time.  At the back of the TV guide, I find three appealing cartoon characters with instructions for entering a contest.  There is turtle, a pig, and a bear.  If you draw the three heads and send it in, if yours is the best, you win $2000. Soon, every piece of paper in our house is covered in turtle, pig, and bear heads.  I enter the contest 2 or 3 times, but never hear back about the $2000.

     It's 1984.  It is snowing heavily outside, so we are home from school.  We are home alone, and my sister and I build a snowman while my brother sleeps late.  We roll the three balls like John McNulty showed us, and give it rocks for eyes and find a withered carrot in the fridge for a nose, which gives it lots of character.  We are incredibly proud of the snowman which looks almost perfect and go back to sleep in our bedroom buzzing for the joy of it.  When we wake up again, there is an axe through the snowman’s head, and the carrot is on the ground.  My sister and I are terrified and angry and we suspect my brother who refuses to admit that he destroyed our snowman, but we know it must have been him and his nasty streak.  

    It's 1984 and my mom has flown into a rage because the house is a mess. To motivate ourselves into cleaning mode, my brother, sister, and I form a close circle with our hands in the center, and chant “Puppy...Power...CHARGE!!”  We got this from Scoopy-Doo’s nephew, Scrappy-Doo.  We throw our hands into the air in unison and explode into action picking up clothing and vacuuming the rug. We clean for hours until mom simmers down and the tables smell like lemon pledge.

    It's 1984 and there is a new girl in school named Megan McCloskey. She is deathly thin and pale with saucer-like blue eyes and wispy hair. She joins me and Heather, but it is soon clear that Megan and I have our own chemistry, and Heather is lost.  Megan tells us the reason she is so skinny is because she is anemic. She begins her time at Saint Peter Celestine in special education, even though she is whip smart. So we figure it’s because of the anemia.

     It's 1984, and we have just come home from school.  We come in the back door and walk through the dining room, but we are stomping heavily and the top floor bounces with our footfalls.  We are shouting and flinging around our book bags when we hear a heart-stopping crash and shattering of glass.  My mom’s curio cabinet with her treasured collection of Royal Dalton dolls has tipped over and there is an impossible pile of mirrored shards and porcelain body parts where it had just stood.  We all turn white and and try to steady our hearts as we sift through the rubble, and woefully speculate about the levels of hell in our future. It is me who picks the phone up off the cradle and stalwartly dial Mom’s work number. She can tell I am terrified, so she sips her breaths quietly and says that she’ll be home soon.  When she arrives, she looks at the mess, is silent for a moment while we hold our breath, and tells us that it's ok.  She’s very sad, but it's ok.  Remarkably, the most delicate of the dolls remained intact with its porcelain lace petticoat and kerchief.

 

Supermoon One.2 (1981-1982)

    

 It's 1981 and my dad is a Formica salesman.  Formica is a type of composite material that is all the rage among counter top enthusiasts. My  brother, sister, and I find a suitcase full of playing card-sized Formica samples in the garage.  We delight in the assortment of pebbled, marbled, and metallic finishes and decide that we will use them as currency, with the textures being more valuable that the solids.  We also find a half empty pint of Vodka, and a copy of Mein Kampf, by Hitler.

    It's 1981 and I am in special education because of the not-talking.   I am in a class of 6, even though the entire class has only 35 students.  Damien has down syndrome.  He is sweet as pie and has a body like Arnold Schwarzenegger even though he is in second grade. Donald Berry and Elena Bolling are the only two black kids in our class, but they are there too. Missy Wilson laughs a lot and likes to draw, like me. Also, there is Heather Gallagher, who is so docile, that she seems to have no will of her own. No one in special ed calls me Booger Snots. I am in here for a short time; although my speech and listening skills are poor, my writing and reading skills are very advanced.

   It’s 1981 and we are all having dinner at Pop Pop and Mom Mom Marge’s house.  Mom Mom Marge is my dad’s mom and she lives only one mile away, near the Wawa where my mom buys her cigarettes. Pop Pop is sitting on the porch when we get there, and he points to the the top of a big tree where we see his Blue Jay.  Pop pop’s Blue Jay visits him every day, he tells us, and waves us inside, as he is not one for talking.  With loud smoochy noises, Mom Mom Marge says “Come to Mom Mom!” and covers our faces with wet kisses, and crushes our heads against her cubic zirconia necklaces.   Mom Mom Marge is always in motion, and keeps the furniture in her living room covered in plastic, but that is ok because her downstairs has a triple-wide leather lounger and mirrored bar, so we can pretend to be bartenders and drunks.  We sit at the big round card table gamble with our Formica samples.  Mom Mom Marge makes chicken wings and she picks up our discarded bones from our plates and sucks the last of the meat off.  My mom tells us later that this is “disgusting”, but I identify with Mom Mom Marge’s disdain for waste. 

    It’s 1981 and Lonnie across the steet comes out in her nightgown with her two dogs, a Poodle and a German Shepherd.  She has them on leashes as she gets into her car and shuts the door.  The dogs are still outside the car as she holds their leashes out her driver’s window and slowly pulls out of her driveway.  She drives around the block at the same speed, stopping when the Poodle or Shepherd needs to relieve themselves.  In hopes of getting more of Lonnie’s dollars, we offer to walk the dogs.  She declines because its good for her to “get out”.

    It’s 1981.  Donald Berry and I have lost interest in each other, and the running dies down.  I turn my attention to the mortar between the bricks of my school building, where gypsy moth caterpillars rest in the sun.  They are big, black, and furry.  I pet them, and they respond by raising their front part and waving their little legs around, like they have been waiting for that all day. The caterpillars are endlessly fascinating to me, and sometimes, I bring them home in my lunchbox and free them in our backyard.  Sometimes, I put them in my jewelry box.  My mom finds out about this, and is barely able to retrain her ire while she tells me not to bring caterpillars home anymore, and especially not to put them in the jewelry box. 

   It's 1981, and my dad has given me four hermit crabs.  They are meant to pacify my desire for small living things, so that I will stop bringing caterpillars home.   I name them Shelly, Sunny, Blacky, and Star. I put them in an aquarium tank, along with odds and ends that seem suitable for a hermit crab diorama, including sand, horse statues and the heads from my sister's abandoned baby dolls. They become my main priority, and I go to visit them down in the recreation room as soon as I get home from school. I arrive one day to notice that Shelly’s shell is empty, and I search the downstairs looking for a hermit crab, completely nonplussed as to her means of escape and fearing for her vulnerability.  After giving up my search I look inside the tank to see the doll head moving slowly across the sand, and a small set of antennae quivering by its opening.

    It's 1981. I watch “Big” with Tom Hanks who plays a kid that magically turns into an adult because of a wish he made. He establishes a dream life in a dream apartment with his best friend in New York City and they make money doing what they love.   Adult life looks like a hilarious game. This is one of the first events that makes me think it would be a good idea to live in New York City, a thought that would get buried and resurface later. 

    It's 1981 and my dad names a star after my brother, sister, and me. It’s called Marjimsha, and we have a plaque from the National Star Registry to prove it, which we hang in the recreation room.  When the sun is far gone, he stands with us on the front lawn pointing to the constellation where Marjimsha can be found, while we ooh and ah and squint into the darkness.

    It's 1981, and I am at lunch in the St. Peter Celestine cafeteria.  There is hot lunch for sale each day, but I never have money for the delicious meat and cheese sandwiches that tantalize me with their smell.  Mr. Vince, who is our school janitor, gives me $3.50 to buy lunch and an extra quarter so that I can get ice cream afterwards.  Mr. Vince is my best friend at school.  I seek him out when I get too lonely and we talk about bugs and animals while he sweeps the cafeteria floor when the kids have left for the yard.

     It's 1981.  My dad drives us to Vorhees where there is a horseback riding stable.  Today is the first day of my lessons.  My instructor’s name is “Happy” and my horse is an Appaloosa named “Cochise”, named after a famous Apache chief.  We spend over half the hour grooming Cochise with special brushes and cleaning her hooves.  The soft underside of the hoof is called the “frog” and I use a hoof pick to remove all the dirt that is lodged inside of it.  The soil smells like manure, which smells like life itself. 

            It’s 1982 and Lonnie has a son living with her.  He is a full-grown man, but loiters around the front of the house with his dog, Magic.  Magic is a skittish mutt who has boundless energy and no bounds in general as she bounds from yard to yard jumping fences and “shitting all over place”, my mom observes.  Magic gets into piles of trash, ripping open bags and leaving their contents strewn around the street.  Nobody likes Lonnie’s son, including us, because we are displaced from our job of carrying in the groceries.

     It's 1982, and we are at Wildwood Beach.  Mom Mom and Pop Pop  come here every year and, have brought us to stay with them in a small compound of shantytown-style apartments they share with a big happy group of seniors who barbeque and hang laundry on clotheslines all day long.  We go to the beach every day and eat fruit in the sun until the umbrellas throw long skinny shadows.  When I sit on the sand, I stare at the heaving belly of the ocean, and pretend I am Mother Nature commanding its movements. I dive into the ocean so far that I feel fear.  I am a good swimmer, but when I get beyond the crowds, I like to hold my breath, squeeze my eyes shut and let my body go as limp as seaweed, to see what the water does with my limbs.  I go deep into a place where I am one with the ocean, and the sharks and jellyfish let me be. It looks an awful lot like I am dead when I do this, and I do not hear the lifeguard whistles until men are flexing their muscles preparing to jump in after me.

    It’s 1982 and Cabbage Patch Kids have become wildly popular. The girls in my class bring their weird-looking dolls to school with them, and it's a big deal for them. My mom tries to get me interested in the Cabbage patch kids, but I am unremitting in my antipathy. Plus, I am still more interested in the black furry gypsy moth caterpillars who sun themselves on the brick wall of my school.

     It's 1982, and the boys in our class have started playing “Wall-Ball”, which is a game played against the brick wall where I routinely hunt for caterpillars.  I get there first one day, to stake my claim on the wall.  I am aware that the boys have more power, but am compelled to make a stand. When the boys show up, they say, “move, Booger Snots, or we are going to peg you with the ball!”  I stand my ground and let them throw the rock-hard racquetball at my stomach, and pretend it doesn’t hurt.  One of the boys says, “She has balls of steel”.  I let them think I am allowing them to have the wall as I walk away and nurse my abdomen in the citadel of the tire playground.  

    It’s 1982, and Heather Gallagher, who is my only friend by default, has brought a Cabbage Patch kid to school.  I look at her weird doll with consternation and am unsupportive of her bringing it with us to the tire playground.  She makes a half-hearted attempt to show it off to the Jennifers, but they are not impressed, so Heather stops bringing her doll to school. 

    It's 1982 I have just learned from television about the “time of the month”. I have a can of v8 in my lunch and I pour it all over the toilets in the lavatory. I am shocked that they know it's me, and I have to have a “chat” and Sr. Valerie. I have grown to fear these chats where she leans in close to my face with her white-colored eyes and freckles and big gaps between her teeth. She finishes our chat, which is not a chat at all because it is only her talking, by recommending Redkin products for my hair, which looks like it can use a washing.

       It's 1982 and I wake up to my mom’s voice saying the wedding is about to start.  It's 3 AM and the wedding between Princess Diana and Prince Charles is being televised.   I rub the sleep out of my eyes and join her down in the rec room. The wedding is a very big deal for my mom, and she granted me permission when I asked to watch it with her.  I am never up this early and it feels like a special treat to be sitting there with my mom as she weeps over the beauty of it all.  I am mostly impressed by her dress which stretches endlessly behind her.  Mom says that is called a “train”, but she is mostly focused on the veil, which hides Diana’s face like a curtain.

    It’s 1982, and Mom Mom Irene has been staying with us, and we are driving her home to her mansion in Short Hills. It is a two-hour drive, and my mom plays Easy 101, her favorite station. My brother and I always make my sister sit in the middle and we torture her by singing the love songs into her ears, and holding her hands, like we are truly in love with her. The angrier she gets, the more lovingly we sing, and my grandmother hisses at us to be quiet. “Your mother is trying to drive.” When we ignore her, she reaches back and her hand darts around in search of a knee, but we dodge the disembodied claw, this way and that, until it hovers defeatedly, disappears.

    It’s 1982, and I am done with all the Walter Farley books in the library.  I find a book called the Ghost of Opalina, which is about a cat who has had 9 lives, and the kids who discover her ghost.  She is a friendly ghost who tells her story while the kids listen, and I am transported through her heroic journey and thrilling stories. The author, Peggy Bacon, not only wrote the book, but illustrated it as well with fantastic drawings that show off the glowing mystique of Opalina.

    It’s 1982 and I have bought my first CD.  It is the Footlose soundtrack, and I play the energetic music while we clean the house because my mom has gone on one of her cleaning tirades, and she cleans along with us.  When the title track plays, my mom shakes her hips and dances around the living room.  My brother and sister and me are thrilled and we dance along with her on the green carpet, then on chairs, and then on the tables, but then the song ends and my mom tells us to get off the furniture and finish cleaning.

      It’s 1982, and sticker-collecting has become popular.  Although I have eschewed any sort of trends emerging among my peers, I firmly embrace the collection of stickers, and have amassed a photo album worth which I have lovingly separated into sections.  There are Puffies, which are dimensional and rise up off the surface. There are Scratch-and-Sniff, which I only scratch on special occasions, and my favorite smell is Strawberry Shortcake.  There are plain stickers which have no special qualities, and my favorite of all, the Irridescents, which sparkle prismatically, and give me the special Little Princess feeling when I open up to them.  Of the Irridescents, my favorites are the pegasuses and unicorns that look like they are going to fly off the page.  I cherish this collection and keep it hidden after I find my brother and sister thumbing through it.  

     It’s 1982. I come home from school crying almost everyday.  I spend my days at school lonely and confused because I am not good at anything and fit in with nobody except the deferential Heather Gallagher who would be fine hanging out with a ham sandwich.  My mom never has any luck settling me down and tells me “It’s not the end of the world.” 

    It's 1982 and Sister Regina, the principal, tells my mom that my teachers are concerned. They all feel that I spend too much time looking out the window, “staring at clouds”. My mom asks if they can move me away from the window, but they say it’s bigger than that. At their behest, my mom takes me to a neurologist who thinks I may be having petite mal seizures, and that I should get an EEG. I stay awake and eat nothing for 24 hours before they can do the testing in the morning and my mom keeps me entertained through the dark hours with coloring books and paint-by-numbers, which I relish. When I color, I spend lots of time shading and try as hard as I can to not go outside the lines.  If my hand slips, I consider the page ruined, and start another one.  During the test, electrodes are attached to my scalp with gummy material that sticks in my hair, and I pull it out in little pieces while my mom has a long private meeting with the doctors. I ask her about the results when we are in the car. “They said you just like to stare at clouds,” she says without taking her eyes off the road.

     It’s 1982.  I am at my riding lesson and I have become very good at posting, which is when you stand and sit while the horse trots.  My dad has bought me a new velvet hat, which has a satiny green and gold cover with a pom-pom at the top, like a jockey.  At the end of the lesson I ask Happy when she thinks I will be ready to gallop.  She laughs and tells me I have to learn to canter first, which is the step in between trotting and galloping.  When I get home and tell my mom about my lesson, she says, “your father did not buy you the hat.  Marge did.”  Dad never has money because he cannot hold down a job.

       It's 1982, and my brother, sister, and I join my mom to watch Somewhere in Time, a movie with Chris Reeves who falls in love with a woman in a photograph who lived in a different era.  We know Chris Reeves already from his role in Superman, and he is firmly established as the embodiment of the perfect man.  In this movie, he is enabled to travel back in time to meet the beautiful Jane Seymour and he falls deeper in love with her until they must part.  The movie is full of romantic phantasmagorical Victorian scenes and my mom weeps for the beauty of it all, and we weep along, partially because the movie has a sad ending and its crushing to see Superman so vulnerable and fallible, but also because we are always sad when mom is sad, and we tease her about being in love with Superman, but she tells us she is committed to Tom Selleck. “He can put his slippers under my bed any day,” she says wistfully.  

Picture Plane

 

    Driving for long stretches is a chance to contemplate the horizon line.  I watch I-80 narrow as it snakes into the distance, but never to a perfect vanishing point because I am changing direction, and the road is hilly and winding.   The dashed lines between lanes diminish in size at a geometric rate, and they are mostly lost to the sheen of the asphalt. When I draw the highway from memory, it is easy to forget that only two or three of the dashes appear discretely before they blur into one line.  I think about where I am in relationship to the things I am seeing.  The Surrealists are known for placing the horizon line high in the picture plane, therefore contributing to a slightly off-kilter optical effect which suits their investigation of the psyche.  When we watch a movie on a screen, that screen becomes the picture plane, and we are watching through the camera's eyes, and everything is much smaller than it is in real life.  When I first created storyboards, the most difficult adjustment was how small everybody is compared to the rest of the window.  Years of working as a caricature artist has handicapped me in such a way that now I am forever erasing heads to make them smaller.  So I am trying to break many habits, and my New Year’s resolution is to make smaller heads.

Supermoon One.1 (1975-1980)

                                                                            

   It's 1975, and I am in Clearwater, Florida.  It's a sunny day with a bright blue sky.  Ted Rockford throws me up and down in the air.  We both laugh while we play in a big crowded pool. He has an afro and a mustache, and is my dad's friend. I have no further recollection of him, because we move back to New Jersey, where I was born. This is my first memory.

         It's 1977 and we are sitting at the kitchen table in Cherry Hill, New Jersey, eating dinner. My mom has made ground steak and onions with mashed potatoes and lima beans. This is our least favorite dish and we hem and haw about the onions that look like ribbed worms and the bland green lima beans and focus on the mashed potatoes.   My dad stirs all the food on our plates together into a greenish brown stew, which does not make the meal look more appetizing.  My mom tells us we “do not know how to show appreciation.”

        It's 1978. Our neighbors to the left are the Bolinskys. My mom and Mrs. Bolinsky smoke cigarettes and gossip through the chain link fence. My mom calls her Dotty, but she is Mrs. Bolinsky to us and her husband, Hank, is Mr. Bolinsky.  He is a truck-driver and we only see him when he mows the lawn or is yelling at his son. “CHRISTOPHER!!” we hear him roaring across the yards. Mrs. Bolinsky calls him “Chrissy”.  Chrissy’s big sister is Little Dotty. Mrs. Bolinsky also feels that her children do not know how to show appreciation, so there is much to discuss.

    It's 1978, and Chris Bolinsky loves dogs as much as I do.  The Bolinskys have a Great Dane who is as big as a pony, and we have a Collie, named Sheba, who is like a black version of Lassie.  I have a subscription to a magazine called Dog Fancy and I when I get my issues in the mail, I show them to Chris through the chain link fence, and we both pore over the pages and pages of purebred dogs, standing on platforms to show off their beauty.  

    It's 1978, and I wake up to the sound of my mom typing.  She is a great typist, and works for a court reporter who delivers tapes to our house.  My mom listens to the tapes with a headset that covers her ears.  She has a small desk set up in her bedroom and begins typing at 5 AM and types all day and sometimes into the evening.  She types on a Selectric typewriter, and has pieces of carbon paper between the pages so that there are multiple copies which she then collates into piles. The more copies, the fainter the last copy becomes until it's almost invisible, like a ghost. 

      Its 1978, and my mom and dad are arguing in the kitchen down the hall from our rooms where we try to sleep. The arguing gets louder until it stops and there are dull thuds and whimpering.  As always, we go running out to protect her, but by they both shoo us back to our bedrooms and tell us to go to sleep. 

    It's 1978 and it's the Summer before I start Kindergarten. I am on my front lawn wearing a white veil and carrying a bouquet of flowers. There is a line of kids and stuffed animals before me on the lawn and Chris Bolinsky is next to me wearing a sailor suit. My mom and Mrs. Bolinsky are amused by my and Chrissy's
 friendship, and decide it would be “so cute” (cigarettes dangling fom their fingers) if we got married, and so they have staged a marriage on our front lawn. My brother gives me away, and my sister is the ring bearer.  Little Dotty, chewing gum, is a bridesmaid even though I never talk to her, but her mother makes her stand there until vows are exchanged and pictures are taken.  

    It's 1979 and I am not talking. I am in Kindergarten at Saint Peter Celestine, and when the teachers or other kids talk to me, I say nothing in return.  I have developed a tick of picking my nose, which I do uncontrollably. The other kids notice and name me Booger Snots. Even then, I cannot stop. Sometimes, I eat the booger. 

    It's 1979, and we are going on a field trip to the zoo. We are instructed to pair up, and each pair has its own chaperone. No one wants to be my partner, but eventually one of the chaperones takes my hand and I am partnered up with a girl who has $20 for spending money. In the zoo gift shop, she gives me a dollar to buy a postcard, and the chaperone says, “Isn't that nice?” But I have my finger pointing to the glass behind which stands a small crystal horse, glistening kaleidoscopically.  The chaperone explains that the crystal horse is $15 and it's not nice to ask for money, which makes me feel thick with shame.

    Its Christmas, 1979, and we are at our Aunt and Uncle's highrise apartment in Philadelphia. The adults sit on pastel colored furniture and clink glasses while we watch a black and white movie from 1939 called, “The Little Princess” with Shirley Temple, who plays a poor city girl living in squalor who walks into her drab room to find it has been mysteriously filled with colorful blankets, (the film switches from black and white to technicolor) a princess bed, and a closet full of dresses.  The little princess's cherubic gaze drifts around the room in consternation. I empathize profoundly with Shirley Temple's thunderstruck joy in a way that is palpable to me for the rest of my life.

     It's 1979. and we have drive up to Short Hills to visit Mom Mom Irene, my mom’s mom.  She lives in a “mansion” that has 8 bedrooms and an impossibly big living room that seems like an acre of whitish-silver lawn. Her bedroom upstairs is unthinkably off limits, but we know about the bathroom that is as big as the bedrooms and a has a tub that is more like a small pool. She is super strict and we are only allowed to play down in a dark damp basement or outside, so we always go outside.   She has a backyard which is as big and level as a baseball field, but at the far end, it drops precipitously, like the end of the world.  We call it “the end of the world” and it never fails to scare us with its promise of danger.  

     It's 1979, and some adult has given me a stuffed lamb, which I name Snowflake.  I carry Snowflake with me everywhere, and even put her in my backpack when I go to school. I have decided that Snowflake is my best friend, and can keep me company while the other kids are playing.  During recess, I am the only kid who wears a backpack, which attracts attention, and I steal around to the side of the building and remove Snowflake from my backpack, and pretend to explain to her what my day is like when I go to school.  I show her the building, and the tire playground, with its bridges, moats, and its central citadel, where we sit for the rest of lunch, carefully placing her back in my pack before getting in line to enter the building.  The girls give each other Frontsies Backsies in line so that best-friends are in line together. 

     It's 1979 and I am in the coatroom, in the back of class, checking on Snowflake.  It gives me comfort to touch her curly fur and to just know she is there.  Donald Berry has also come back to the coatroom and asks me what I am doing.  I ask him if he can keep a secret, and he says that he can.  I show him Snowflake, and instead of saying anything about the stuffed animal, he kisses me on the cheek.  This enrages me, and my exasperation manifests itself into me chasing him around the schoolyard during recess.  I stop bringing Snowflake to school, because my recesses are now full of me chasing Donald Berry who is a much faster runner than me, and I know I will never catch him, and do not have any clue what I would do if I did catch him, but the running feels great and we cover the outer limits of the school yard while the other kids stand in civilized clusters talking about who-knows-what.  

      Its 1980, and I have dreams about Wonder Woman often.  Sometimes the dreams start out with me and Wonder Woman hiding under my brother’s brown bed on the brown rug. We hear a crashing noise because someone has broken into our house.  Wonder Woman tells me that she will distract the intruder while I run next door to the Bolinskys and get help.  She hop jumps out of my brother’s room and down the hallway and I crawl out after her and run out the front door toward the Bolinskys’ but as I begin to cross the lawn, I wake up and enjoy the feelings of excitement and relief.  

      It's 1980 and I have to wear a uniform now because I am in first grade. The black plaid jumper and white shirt are stiff and starchy, and my socks are not the right color blue.  Sister Suzy tells me to make sure I wear the correct color from now on.  I ask my mom what the purpose is of the uniform, and she says, “Its so you are all the same.”  It does seem like we are all the same now, especially since 1/3 of the girls in my class are named “Jennifer”.

    It's 1980 and I have discovered The Black Stallion books by Walter Farley in our little school library, on the second floor of Saint Peter Celestine, between the music room and the lavatory. There are 17 of the books, which I recognized from the movie, and reading these keeps me thinking about horses day and night.  Alec Ramsey is the protagonist, and I envision myself, in his place, getting stranded on a deserted island wandering around lonely and lost.  One day I peer through the beach brush to find I am not alone on this island.  A wild black Arabian stallion prances around in the surf coquettishly and eventually befriends me after I woo him with an apple that somehow grew on the beach.  We are both rescued from the island  and I become a jockey and race my stallion over the finish line.  I am not dissuaded by the fact that in first grade, I am already almost too tall to be a race horses professionally.  

        It's 1980, and my mom has given me a Barbie doll for my birthday.  I have a hard time showing appreciation, like I am supposed to.  I think it’s pretty clear that I only like the Barbie horses who are from one universe, and My Pretty Ponies, who are from a different universe, but my pretend universes have no people.  My mom eventually relents and buys only horses for me, and I pretend the green carpet in our living room is a dark pasture at night.  I play by the fireplace that doesn’t work and my brother plays by the stairs with his Matchbox cars.  We agree that his universe never collides with either of mine, even though my two can sometimes collide.   

    It's 1980 And my dad wants to start taking me for horseback riding lessons.  My mom says that I can start after I learn to ride a bike.  I begin to practice every day and I fall repeatedly. Chris Bolinsky tries to show me, but I still can’t balance.  My sister gets a bike for her birthday and effortlessly peddles the wheels into motion and flies down the street.  Watching her sail out of sight,  I get on my bike and begin to pedal furiously and am finally able to balance until I lose control and run into a Holly tree in front of the Nevin’s house.  My mom does not like the Nevins because they park their cars on the front lawn, which “brings down property values”.  But when I sit there pulling holly leaves out of my knee, Danny Nevin pulls me off the ground and helps me and my bike home. 

    It’s 1980 and we have a neighbor across the street named Lonnie.  She is an old and sickly woman with a cottony puff of white hair that is so thin, you can clearly see her scalp through her hair.   Lonnie  always wears nightgowns, even when she goes to the grocery store.  When she pulls into her driveway, and opens the trunk with all the brown grocery bags, we always run over to help her because she gives us a dollar each.  We help her put her groceries away, and occasionally something needs to go up in her bedroom.  There, we see a double-decker lazy Susan filled to the limit with orange bottles of prescription pills because Lonnie is old and sickly.

      It's 1980, and my mom has decided she is going to retile the fireplace in the Livingroom.  She packs us into her red Pontiac Grand Prix and we go to the hardware store where we follow her around as she consults with the hardware store salesmen about tile, glue, and grout.  She talks to them for a long time and laughs a lot at the things they say as we wander through the aisle playing with plungers and machetes.  She chooses ceramic tiles shaped like hearts, clubs, spades, and diamonds.  They are different shades of brown and beige, but are shiny and make pleasant clinking sounds when removed from the box.   She puts us to work on retiling the fireplace and I scrutinize my seams to make them perfect.