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Checkers
I want tell you about a summer pasttime that remains as clear and as sharp as a Kodak moment. If I had a picture of George Korasi sitting opposite me at the checkerboard, the image would tell the story of friendship and competition. You would see a lanky boy wearing leather sandals and lederhosen with a white tee shirt. I would be wearing shorts, some kind of jersey, and sneakers. We sat on my porch with our feet on the last of seven steps above the sidewalk. George and I lived in side-by-side, 3-family houses on W. Runyon Street in Newark.
From the end of June until the day after Labor Day when the new school year began, I had to fill endless hours with something. The coolness of an early summer morning was the best time to play checkers. Most mornings had a calm, just awakened, starting to stretch kind of feel. The kids on the block slept late, but 13-year-old year George, a Hungarian refugee, was up early and always came looking for me.
I heard George open the door in the back and start down the narrow, one-car wide driveway that separated our houses. His boney legs lurched side to side. His arms stretched out like airplane wings trying to balance a body ready to crash. He exhaled a gurgle of happiness when he reached the sidewalk.
— Hi, Georgie. I have the checkers and the board. You ready to play?
I yelled down from the space we called a porch. My mother had a wooden Adironack chair in the corner aside from the vestibule doors. The space wasn’t a real porch, not like my grandmother’s in Scranton with a long railing, a gilder, and a pull-down awning that kept out the sun. We called it a porch anyway and just pretended.
George gripped the bannister with his left hand and lifted one leg at a time over the concrete slab cemented into the sidewalk. The next six steps took a while, and I’ll not ask for a Kodak snapshot of the struggle. George was born with cerebral palsy and a joyful spirit. He kept his eyes on me waiting at the top. One foot dropped on to the first step, and he torqued his body upward a step at a time. As he climbed, he laughed a honking sound. He grinned when he reached the top step and saliva slipped from both sides of his mouth. High off the ground, George folded his legs as if he were a giraffe and dropped on to the landing.
Every checkers morning, George climbed those steps, and I waited for him to reach the checkerboard. As he climbed what seemed to be Everest in Newark, I wondered. I wondered if George was unhappy with his body. Did he know why Peter, his brother, had a regular one? How did George ask questions without using words? I understood his sounds, but we were only playing checkers. When he dreamed, did he have legs that ran with a horse’s gait? Did he want to kiss a girl? I did not know, I only wondered.
— Your move, Georgie, and I’m gonna beat you this time.
George let out a laugh and extended the shakey pointer finger of his right hand. He moved a black checker diagonally to an empty space.
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Maine – Wrap Up Without a Theme
Abstractions on a Window
Moisture fogged the windows of Room 19, White Anchor Inn (Boothbay, Maine).
Other Images
Boothbay, Maine
Boothbay Farmers’ Market
Maine – Beauty Surrounds
On June 11, 2013, a Bangor Daily News headline told a story in eight easy words: “Lobsterman, 90, swims to safety after boat sinks.” The story of Phillip Tuttle and his 26-foot-lobster boat, Queen Tut, took my breath away. My travels along the Maine coast began in Bangor with a story I will never forget.
Rocks and Ocean Roll
Clothes – To the Heart
My walk-in closet holds a trust fund in clothing I cannot toss into the rag bag or give away. I mix old clothes with new ones, and they get along fine. As I reflect on why I have kept some pieces, I realize that clothing stores memory. If I were to give away particular items, which I will tell you about, I would lose tactile reminders of experiences, adventures, and even relationships. I would lose reminders of aromas, weather, and other sensual tags linked to life’s adventures. Thankfully, I don’t have the nighty I wore at age sixteen when Steve and I . . . well, nevermind. I would light a match to that piece of cotton because Steve turned out to be a jerk messing with a high school kid. Yet, the memory of that relationship, more than the nightgown, has hung in my mental closet these many years.
I have a long-sleeve, silk blouse with green stripes. I haven’t worn it in years, but somehow I cannot give it away. That blouse reminds me of the night after work when Gail and I took an express train to Fordham Road in the Bronx. Loehmann’s was a wonderland of bargains for the working girl, and we were giddy to have spent so little for so much. I loved wearing the blouse with cuff links I bought in Florence. Would I forget about Florence or Loehmann’s if I donated the blouse and the cuff links? I want to keep that experience alive, and I’m not taking the chance of a memory lapse. 
The teeshirt from the M/V Santa Cruz with its blue-footed boobies and the word Galapagos, will rot from old age. I will never cut the fabric into dust rags. I feel the same about the tee shirts I bought in Nazca. After dizzying swoops in a prop plane with scratched plastic windows, I realized I saw the fabled lines more clearly at the Ica museum’s mockup. After we landed, I staggered into the gift shop, almost but not quite air sick. I rewarded myself by buying a red and a turquoise tee shirt. Just seeing them in the closet brings a smile as I recall that crazy flight and those crazy lines in the desert. I also think about the Japanese tourist with the telephoto lens who sat behind the pilot. I did not see him buy a tee shirt.
In the way-back space of my closet hangs the why-did-I-spend-$400 on that skirt and matching top at Maya Palace. I bought a green outfit with shiny trim, fabric flowers, and red ribbons at the skirt hem for my now-divorced son’s wedding atop Squaw Valley. When I see that outfit suffocating under a plastic bag, I burn over Kate’s impatience to marry Greg. I ask myself if I could have pressured them to wait another year. I did not interrupt the flow of their love, and we all suffered from the pain of their divorce. I realize that outfit, as lovely as it is, is a candidate for Craigslist or something worse. 
A few years ago, I slipped another plastic bag over Talbot’s little black dress and put that in the way-back, too. Long sleeves, short skirt – that was my power dress for important dates, a job interview, and funerals. Under the same dust cover, hangs the funky beaded, crazy-patterned short jacket I bought at Jasmine on 4th Avenue. The piece has become vintage – so old and yet so beautiful. I fall in love with fabric and design, and with the memory of how I chose the purchase. For my ordinary clothes, those items that lack an investment in passion or memory, off to the Goodwill store they will eventually go.
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Palm Tree Images – St. Anthony’s Monastery
Confession: The palm tree images have been cropped and manipulated. Lou Bernal, one of my b&w photography instructors had, for excellent reasons, two rules: No Sniveling and No Cropping. Students were to be purists dedicated to through-the-lens observations. Digital imagery arrived, and some of us abandoned the darkroom for the computer.
Consider Writing 