1. Memory from age six or seven

Dad and I walk to Van Cortlandt Park after a big snowfall, under a white sky. Is anyone else with us? I can’t remember. (My sister, older than I am by two and a half years, told me recently that I do not appear in any of her memories, exactly if I did not exist while we were growing up.) Ican picture myself wearing a very beautiful winter jacket (from Alexander’s, I’m sure, although I wasn’t present when my mother bought it), navy blue with a complex Scandinavian-type design in red and white on the front, with a matching hat—apparel that hasn’t appeared in my consciousness for decades, perhaps not ever until this moment. My father and I are going to build a snowman—an extremely rare instance of any sort of project in which he and I engaged simultaneously and cooperatively. My father must be wearing his ancient leather jacket, which my bare legs remember from the time when I rode on his shoulders as we returned on our long walk home from the library on Sedgwick Avenue, when my whining about being tired triggered his sympathy, albeit very temporarily. Dad and I work together to fashion three large snowballs and then place the mid-sized sphere atop the largest one and the smallest one on top. This snowman is taller than I am. Somehow, despite the deep snow, we find sticks and stones or burrs to use as arms and eyes. And then, somehow, we find what in my mind’s eye looks like a tangled ball of weeds, or the remains of a bird’s nest, and my father sticks it on the snowman where its genitals should be. We laugh together delightedly as if no one has ever created anything so hilarious before.

2. I am about 31.

 

A major storm has dumped several feet of snow on New York City. Undeterred, I start walking from my building, just north of W. 239 th Street and the Henry Hudson Parkway side road, to my job at the V.A. Hospital on Kingsbridge Road, as I did five days a week, to save the 50-cent bus fare, and as I did on my return home as well. This walk, at a fast clip, generally takes me 35 minutes, down the long hill on Riverdale Avenue, the short downhill on 231 st Street, along the flat sidewalks on Broadway and Exterior Street, and then up the long hill of Kingsbridge Road. I viscerally remember the trek through the very deep snow on Broadway—no cars or trucks, as the street had not been plowed—consciously lifting each leg with much effort and setting it down step by step, using muscles seldom if ever called into action. My walk takes not 35 minutes but two hours. When I reach my destination, I feel exhausted but also exhilarated and very proud of myself. In my memory, the door to the Adrenal Research Lab is open, but nobody is there—neither the director nor the two permanent lab workers. I get to my desk—my job is secretary, but I am really only a glorified typist--and then the phone rings. “Hello, Dr. Ulick’s lab,” I say. It’s Dr. Ulick himself. He neither says hello nor asks how I got there. “Why didn’t you tell me you were coming to work?” he says to me in a horrible whine. “I would have come to work, too, if I had known you’d be there.” I am speechless. Dr. Ulick has never, ever chatted with me, and certainly has never given me his home phone number. And it would not have occurred to me to call him even if I had had it. Why would I have called him?

3. I am about 67.

 

My car is just barely visible, most of it hidden under many inches of snow. I’m tempted to leave it where it is and as it is, but I fear that the city will resume alternate-side parking any day now, and god forbid I have to pay a fine. If this happened today, I wouldn’t care about paying a fine for the privilege of avoiding the stress and strain of cleaning the snow off my car. I’m parked not parallel to the curb but diagonally, facing out, as one must park in front of the junior high school on Independence Avenue. There’s a massive pile of packed snow squashed against the front of my car, the residue of repeated passes of snow plows. I can barely get the tip of my heavy-duty snow shovel more than an inch or two into that snow, so I decide to attack the piles along each side of the car. Being out of shape, as always, I dig and throw the snow slowly and laboriously, but I force myself to keep at it for a long time, until most of the piles on the sides are gone. Suddenly a stranger appears, a man younger than I am but definitely middle-aged. “Need help?” he says. I nod. He reaches for the shovel and attacks the pile in front of the car. Is he Superman? He removes shovelful after shovelful, seemingly with no more effort than if he were digging at the walls of a sand castle. Almost before I can catch my breath, or so it seems, he’s done! I thank him profusely but don’t even have time to ask him his name before he turns and walks away. Have I dreamed this? No. I drive away and park the car on a “good” side of the street in a space that has already been cleared.

 

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The underlying theme that popped into my head is my lifelong aloneness but also the realization that there are folks out there who can help me and would help me, if I would only ask.