A FOUND LETTER, AGAIN

a letter from my grandmother to my mother, 

probably written in Lakewood NJ, probably in 1928

© Marjorie J. Levine

FOUND AGAIN

I found this story I wrote in 1956. It could be my Pulitzer!

THE LOST POEMS OF 1991

FROZEN IN TIME

 

AND HERE SHE IS

twitter link

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from THE ATTIC 57

me, NYC, 1976

photo courtesy of Frederick Piccarello

 

from THE ATTIC 56

me, NYC, 1976

photo courtesy of Frederick Piccarello

 

from THE ATTIC 55

me, NYC, 1976

photo courtesy of Frederick Piccarello

 

 

from THE ATTIC 54

me, NYC, 1976

photo courtesy of Frederick Piccarello

 

from THE ATTIC 53

me, NYC, 1976

photo courtesy of Frederick Piccarello

 

 

from the ATTIC 52

 

me, NYC, 1976

photo courtesy of Frederick Piccarello

 

from THE ATTIC 51

me, NYC, 1976

“my Hurrell”

photo courtesy of Frederick Piccarello

 

from THE ATTIC 47

my parents wedding, Brooklyn NY, 1941

a note to readers

Dear readers:

There are about 107 "chapters" in this humorous partial memoir. In order to read the complete "book" you will need to open up "Older Posts" until you reach the epilogue.

I hope the pieces of my life in these short vignettes in the blog make you laugh. Please enjoy this (ongoing and very unfinished) project.

All my best,
Marjorie

AND ANOTHER ONE BITES THE DUST

portraits from 1976

photo credit: Frederick Piccarello

entering the school yard:

THE GANG THAT COULDN'T CRACK THE SAFE

It was always something at Columbia Silver Company...

MY UNCLE ROBERT

There are many sad sagas that often go untold and as the many decades pass, lives that were lived fade away. 

This is a tragic story and I never knew this until probably 1992, when my older cousin Eileen told me about it and she said it was in the newspapers. 

So shortly after I found out, I went to a branch of the NYC library on West 43rd Street, filled out a slip of paper and requested some back issues of old Brooklyn newspapers about the time that it happened that were on rolls of microfilm. As I scrolled through, I found what I was looking for. I printed a few articles and decades later posted them at my blog.

In about 2015, I went to Mt. Lebanon cemetery and Robert was buried right there with his parents. It said "son."

Robert's sister, my aunt Ruth (Eileen's mother) lived to be 100. When I would visit her at her assisted living home on West End Avenue, The Esplanade, she would often talk of Robert and she said the reporters were "kind." She said it was no accident. She claimed he had many problems and back then his parents did not know how to handle his issues. He fell into great despondency. This must have been a terrible time for the family. It became a secret and there was not one time my mother ever indicated she lost a brother. But an old letter my grandmother wrote in about 1928 spoke of Robert. 

The house in Brooklyn on 82nd Street in which it happened is still there. As a child, I was in that house many times. I have written poems about some of my memories there. It is the house with the light brown door.

This was my uncle Robert. 

sex, lies, and 50 years later... the internet

This was a "Happy Valentine's Day!" card from "Lou" in 1971. Who was "Lou?" The story will follow.

This was another of "Lou's" romantic cards. The mystery and the plot thickens, indeed.

This romantic card contained no signature because it had a note attached...

These greeting cards are pieces of a bittersweet memory from 1970 to 1973, and the messages are quite romantic. I saved the cards to always remember a man I loved named: Lou. But, this was a dark and layered and mysterious "love" because Lou was not just a man... he was my therapist.

Lou looked like Al Pacino in "Serpico." And he was married with several children. I'll be brief...

I began seeing a therapist in about 1970. His office was in Greenwich Village and after just a few sessions I came under the seductive spell of "erotic transference." I grew attached and I was dependent. I fell in love, or thought I had fallen in love. 

The feelings were not yet mutual. There arrived the day when Lou told me he was moving his practice to Staten Island. I was not ready at all for the separation and I was emotionally devastated. So, I followed him to Staten Island and became a twice a week ferry regular.

I had fallen deeply in love with my therapist. He sent me greeting cards for Valentine's Day and my birthday... copies hang at this blog (configured with folds to fit). The saga continued for several years and well.. as it goes with time, the hypnotic spell eventually broke and I ended the "therapy." One day, just like that.

About eight years later, in 1981... I tried Lou's old number and I called. I needed closure. Lou was very excited and happy to hear from me. He was now divorced. He started calling me twice a day. I had to tell him to calm down. So, we had dinner at a Manhattan restaurant. He sat there all pompous and smoking a nasty cigar. We went back to my apartment and well... anyway. He had not changed. He had told me over dinner his experience with me took him to a place where he made a decision to never allow physical contact with a patient in a session ever again. The man was a fast and quick study!

I look back on this episode of my life now and it is totally meaningless. I am not angry. I feel nothing. I know this goes on. I watched "In Treatment." 

Lou was verbally unprofessional, unethical, and his behavior was inconsistent. He did not know what to do about me and he could not handle and come to terms with his own feelings. It is easy to fall under the hypnotic and seductive spell of transference.

I am happy I saved all of Lou's cards because I am reminded of what I believed to be what Diane Keaton has called "the sweet anguish of love..." in my specific situation in all it's full-blown and enabled delusional glory.

Lou passed away in 2014.

The tree

 This tree... is no longer. 

life: a risky ride

 

The Recordings of A Soldier in the Army During WWII

Winner

Citizenship Papers

The pieces of this document were falling apart, so I pieced it together the best I could and scanned it. It is my grandfather Max Levine's citizenship papers of 1906:

the grands

Tonight, I met a cousin I have not seen since 1964. Here are our grandparents.

I used to live here as a kid...

"This street is where it all happened, not much now. Why do we always expect home to stay the same? Nothing else does. It's funny how when you're a kid a day can last forever. Now, all these years seem just like a blank." --- Bobby in Hearts in Atlantis

I took that ride today, back to the street and house where I grew up. I parked my car and walked up the same driveway I had walked up thousands of times so many years ago. I climbed the three front porch steps and I peeked in through the glass front door, but the interior was barely visible: all dark and muted. It was a different house, not my house. I rang the bell and nobody answered. I gathered nobody was home because the mailbox was still stuffed and full.

So, I turned around and walked down the three front porch steps and then turned around and looked back. It was almost dusk and chilly under a cloudy grey sky, and the wind rustled some long tall plants in front of the living room's bay window. They swayed back and forth, back and forth. I was overwhelmed with great and almost unbearable sadness. Nobody was home and nobody would ever be back home there for me. The street was bleak, depressing, and almost unrecognizable.... the houses seemed forlorn and like shadows of their former selves.

I used to live there as a kid but going back today was personally like visiting a cemetery. There was so much emptiness, such a great feeling of loss. The wind kept rustling the front shrubbery, rustling the shrubbery and I stood all alone on that sidewalk and for a minute it felt like nobody even lived on that street. Everybody was gone. The street was a gloomy ghost town.

I got back into my car and drove away, consumed with strange heavy emotions. And as Bobby said: "I lived on that street during the last of of my childhood." I will always think of that street. Always. I knew I would never go back there again... but as the view of that street disappeared in the rear view mirror, I remembered the time so many years ago when I drove away from that street into my future.