It is August 23rd, 1997 and I am now a big brother, and soon I will learn what special needs is.

August 23, 1963 the Beatles “She Loves You” was released and decades later Brandan and I sing at the top of our lungs, out of tune, out of control, talented as fuck.

All stars Kobe Bryant, Rik Smits and NYC legends Jeremy Lin and Brandan Devanny were all born on August 23rd…the years vary as do the talent.

August 23rd, 1997 someday you’re going to learn that the two most complicated aspects of being Brandan’s brother are that there is no other child like him, and you are the other child.

From The Wanderers by Richard Price. “Richie, some day you’re gonna learn that the two greatest joys of being a man are beating the hell out of someone and getting the hell beaten out of you.”

“Move it!” huffed a grump.

A lady said I looked lost.

Foreigners stick out.

I wondered if anyone had seen me drop my purse onto the platform floor before I quickly stooped to pick it up and exited said train car.  I stumbled out onto the platform, rattled and paranoid. I’d always visited big cities for fun on a weekend or full week, but even after 3 months of living here and several trips on the subway, I still had feelings of paranoia- I wondered if people would follow me, or when I’d get mugged. Funny thing, I’m more likely to lose anything always.

“Move forward, please.” As I stood in line at the Post Office in South Huntsville, in Alabama, I was weirded out to realize that I, (a relatively fair-skinned Latina) was the darkest person there. Still, though I lived where Trump supporters would be boldly vocal about what language your phone calls should be in, there was a familiarity and comfort I would find that I did not think I would miss near the end of that year. From parking lots to late-night drives… hiking, to accessible farmer’s markets, my memory fades to black intentionally as I try to move forward.

“Move that to that box.” Moving days were always in the summer… every time. With Natalie, they were stressful but fun. I wasn’t in Florida when my mom and sister moved out of the house, I grew up in. I was in college at the time, but my sister tells me she cried when she saw the house empty. I’m sure the sun sizzled in through the window and nearly blinded her (as it usually did) as the light bounced off the white walls of the room we shared growing up. This time, I moved myself. Sure a few people popped by, but the heavy box duty was all me. I hate how when you get older, the heavy box duty is all for you.

One day, Nat said, “dude,

I do not know where I’m from.”

Do I even know?

They say home is where the heart is but when you hop from street to street and state to state, where does your heart stay? Does it come along every time? Can it keep up? How long does it take for a person to feel adjusted or acquainted with an area? For people with anxiety, many things can trigger episodes of paranoia and stressful situations. Whenever possible, try to think of when you felt most at home (internally). Was this a memory, place, or feeling? Lately, since I’m not too fond of my corner in the house in the dead-end, my home is starting to look more like a person. I’m learning to create a space where I am at home with myself. My home is becoming me.

My father and I met only once, at the North Cove boat slip on a summer afternoon. While I ran out the clock on my workday, I stared down at the water from the 12th floor. We hugged and exchanged gifts. I gave him a Norse compass, for the cross-country trip he was about to start. He gave me a wooden bowl. We sat on a bench and people watched, boat watched. What kind of boat is that? I asked. A 12-foot double masted schooner, he said. I lived on one just like it in my pirate years, he said. What were you pirating, I asked. Nothing. Just bumming around with my friends, he said. No one I knew, and certainly not the father who raised me, was in the habit of bumming around anywhere. 

I didn’t know she was my kid. At a certain point it becomes impossible to parse who lied to whom, who lied to themselves, and who just had the wrong information. I never wanted to be a dad and I ended up with five kids. My right eye droops from a old bar fight, my right ankle’s no good from a tractor accident. My liver’s no good from 35 years of drinking too much. But when I tell her my stories she opens up when everyone else shuts down. On my way through Florida I got lost for a bit, but righted myself just as the sun was going down, the Norse compass shining on the visor.

Back when tourists had not touched the pristine waters of the Filipino shores, or at least this particular lesser known island, there sat a treehouse on a palm tree. Attached to the bark through planks of wood. Held together by leaves spun together into rope. It almost seemed haphazardly built, but climbing up there and sitting on the plastic tables and chairs left for the patrons, it was without a doubt that the treehouse was sturdy. It could take the weight of a family eating dinner.

I was 8 the last time I visited the island. Before the resort was finished, my uncles were contracted to build facilities there. Naturally, with us being out of school for the year, my cousins and I were to spend our precious vacation days in a place with no plumbing. 

I remember having to hop from a ferry onto the dinky little fishing boat that a friend of a friend of my uncle had to get to the island. If I had not jumped far enough, I would have fallen into the sea and presumably drowned. 

It only took 2 days before my cousins and I ran out of things to do on the island. Only so many places to climb or coves to discover. One too many times we found a snake in the brushes and screamed our heads off. So, to make us sit still, they built us a treehouse on the tallest palm tree by the beach and fastened a straw roof to protect us from the high noon sun. 

And with a deck of cards, it was easy to pass the time.

On the third day at my boyfriend’s wife’s apartment, I cannot solve the problem of my fiancé, so I become obsessed with hawks instead. I plow through local birder blogs and find a series of New York Post articles about Dora and Christo, two red-tailed hawks who lived in Tompkins Square Park. Hawks who remain in the same habitat are said to mate for life, and over five years, Dora and Christo raised dozens of fledglings among the park’s ginkgo trees. Until 2018, when Dora sustained a wing injury and was taken to a wildlife refuge in Long Island. Within days, Christo was spotted with another female hawk in their nest. Dora returned from the sanctuary weeks later to find Christo with the “nest-wrecker.” The new hawk attacked Dora, who was carted off to the nature preserve once more. This time, for good.

At the refuge, Dora learns to tolerate a “platonic life-partner” in a fellow injured hawk named Wingston. In this metaphor I cannot tell if my fiancé is Christo or Wingston, but either way, I am convinced this will be my fate.

—

Manhattan’s Tompkins Square Park is home to several celebrity hawks, the most infamous of whom are Dora and Christo, a male and female pair who kept separate nests among the park’s ginkgo trees. Hawks are said to be monogamous for life, and over the years, the two raised dozens of fledglings, until 2018, when Dora sustained a wing injury and was taken to a wildlife refuge in New Jersey. Within days, Christo was spotted with a new female hawk in Dora’s nest. Local birders named the hawk Nora. Weeks later, Dora returned from the refuge to find Nora still in her nest. Nora attacked Dora, who was returned to the sanctuary once more. This time, permanently.

1. It was winter 2013 at 11:45 at night. I was on the Long Island Railroad heading back to the Bronx when my body flew away. My heart was a bullet zipping around my chest, my head a balloon floating away losing oxygen. All my limbs were filled with quicksand NOT stuck in quicksand filled with it. Crackerjacks and butterflies were flapping in my ears. I had a layer of sweat that did not matter at that moment. My first one ever was fall 2013. I was running manically up the sticky beer soaked aisles trying to catch some sanity. “Sit the fuck down! You’re making me nervous!” Some warthog. “I’M making ME nervous!” I chirped at the hog. I had another panic attack.

2. He had another panic attack. This had evolved and had become all encompassing unlike the first one in the fall of 2013. It was winter now at 11:45 at night. He had walked onto the Long Island Railroad train to Penn Station, completely able and ready for a night ride home from a visit to Long Island. What happened next was unexpected, at least for anyone else. For a person who breathed anxiety it was another day, another internal hollar. He was “politely” told to sit the fuck down which only elevated the episode. And then the ride ended and I found my voice, my mind, my breath and my personality. Where does it all go when it’s all gone? I caught a dose of sanity, but it didn’t matter. 

1)
When we arrived at the massage parlor, I knew I’d made a mistake, though I couldn’t quite put my finger on what was wrong, exactly. I just knew that my muscles were tense upon entering the door, and that they would still be tense when we left. I knew that in a certain number of hours it would be over. I had practice in moving my body through spaces it didn’t want to be in. I had practice in not prolonging things that I didn’t want to be prolonged. There is a skill that many young women acquire, which is a combination of disassociation and alertness – it’s an acquired tool of self-preservation.
I was 21 years old and had been in the city for only a few months. Everything had been hard work and proving myself, and I was ready for fun. At the end of the staff holiday dinner, when our boss Joe said, “who wants a massage?” I didn’t think that I’d be the only one saying yes, looking for adventure on my full belly of Sangria.
We were meant to take showers before getting our massages. In the communal shower room, as I held my robe off to the side, so as not to get it wet – this is what one is supposed to do, yes, follow the rules, take a shower? – Joe walked over, his tattoos all visible, and said, “Let me hold that for you.”

2)
I like a massage that digs into my muscles. I don’t want to lie there and just get moisturized with lotion. I want to tell you what I want and still be able to trust you. I want a glass of water.
Make me feel something, make it worth my time and money. Don’t make me question why I came there in the first place, don’t make me think of barely lit rooms on mysterious streets that I was brought to but didn’t catch the address of. Don’t make me think of a man being in control and whether or not I am still supposed to tip you when the session is over. I want to leave relaxed and calm, not looking in the mirror embarrassed at smeared mascara and raccoon eyes that didn’t know what to do.

“Did you hear about the trees in Texas?”

February 2022. Andy presents me with a bouquet of strange facts: Texas. A historical cold. Frozen sap. Pressure. Kaboom! A thundering in the chest. Tree shrapnel. “Thanks to Climate Change,” writes Lizzy. “Thank you, oil barons!” I say.

October 2012. Long Beach. Hurricane Sandy. Ocean waters mixing into bay waters flood and kill the Sycamores. 2,700 trees dead, according to the arborists. 2,700 trees replanted. Once a historical Sycamore. Once a symbol of an innocence the natives revealed in — a tree-lined childhood riding bikes in bathing suits. Our two Juniper bushes planted as symbol of our beginning in 2005. Our two Junipers — straggly contortions of indigenous greenery. A symbol of the brute strength of Long Beachers. Two of the few things we had that survived Sandy.

“Did you hear about the trees in Texas?”

“They are exploding,” Andy says.

I frown. “Exploding?”

“Yeah, it is so cold there that the sap is freezing. The frozen sap expands, causes pressure, and breaks the branches with such a force it sounds like gunshots.”

Andy knows I like strange facts like this, so he chooses each one carefully and presents them to me like a bouquet of flowers.

I find the story between boredom and frenzy at work on a website called Greenmatters. The title of the article is “Thanks to Climate Change, Trees in Texas are Legitimately Exploding,” by Lizzy Rosenberg, Feb, 8^th 2022. I appreciate her sarcasm in the piece, but I wonder if it is misplaced. I would thank the oil barons.

There aren’t many trees here, on our end of Long Beach, but there were Sycamores in the middle of town before Hurricane Sandy destroyed them in 2012. Before the strong winds and high tides caused the ocean waters to meet the bay waters in the middle of Park Avenue. The salt water infiltrated their root system and killed them. Native Long Beachers remember them fondly for their shade and beauty as they lined the streets. The city had to replace 2,700 trees. When we first moved here in 2005, we planted two Juniper bushes in wine barrels and put them on our deck. When Sandy toppled the barrels and soaked their roots with sea water, they didn’t die. Of everything we had, they are one of the few things that survived.

As if to disabuse Freud of the idea that adults are too ashamed to play, the TED Radio Hour just ran an on “reconnecting” with play–with a lot about plays relation to making art. (There’s also one about rest and one about work.)

https://podtail.com/podcast/ted-radio-hour/work-play-rest-part-2/