Watering My Geraniums

Watering geraniums in my garden one September afternoon, tiger mosquitoes delving deep into exposed flesh, I look up to notice my two sons, through windows, sitting at their desks, doing homework. The younger is writing out his weekly spelling words, in the dining room, on a school desk with iron legs I’d found in the cellar upon moving in.  The older one is on the second floor, in his room, working at a rock maple desk from the ‘50s.  I had taken care to face both desks outwards, overlooking the garden, with its hanging geraniums, potted thyme, and pigeons, like feathered Rockettes, lined up on the rooftop of the apartment building behind our small yard.  

Bent over their desks in concentration, eager to finish up and earn time on the Kindle Fire, I turn the nozzle to jet and aim.  First the little one, straight on.  Startled, he opens his mouth in outrage as water hits glass, and taps his pencil forcefully to meet my stream.  Then I angle it upward and get the big one, then down again, then up. All three of us connect through this action, the surprise attack of mommy, the giggles of the younger, the smirk of the older. The water, an extension of my outstretched arm, hits the pane and splashes back at me. The boys, compartmentalized into two rooms separated by floorboards, and me outside, my sundress soaked and getting eating alive, we make three points of a triangle, held at a safe distance by glass, bricks and parquet.

It is a small, end-of-summer moment, but one in which I realize my connections and their limitations. The water cascades luxuriantly across the window.  My six-year-old delights in his drowning, just as he does on trips to the drive-through car wash. I angle the hose upwards once more.  At this moment, the nine-year-old—safe, cozy and dry—taunts me and I respond by opening the faucet full force to scare that tongue back in his mouth. I recognize the expression overtaking his face; I’ve seen it in the bathroom mirror.  It’s the joy of bathing in Mom’s expansive love and the reassurance of a barrier to deflect some of the full-on female force of motherhood.

The Great Consolidator

“Mary, You’re gonna go broke saving money!”  That’s what my grandfather used to say to my grandmother, ribbing her for that gallon jug of shampoo in the shower stall.  But he was the one responsible for the cases of undrinkable diet chocolate soda in the coat closet. And now this is what my own mother tells me, thrusting a jumbo jar of dried thyme in my face: “Maria, you’re gonna go broke saving money!  Spices lose their flavor when you hold onto them too long.”

She’s right. But it takes time to use up your thyme. Also, mustard powder. I bought a packet of mustard powder six years ago at the Awja Deli in Little Pakistan, the nickname for my Brooklyn neighborhood. Maybe it has lost some mustardy character, but it’s still eye-watering hot.

It’s Martin Luther King weekend and Mom has come to stay with me.

Three days alone together. I want to suggest we go get our nails done at the salon on Church Avenue, the good one, with the giant fish tank and goldfish the size of mangoes. But mom doesn’t have nails; she works too hard. Mom is the least vain person I know. We think about visiting the Brooklyn Museum, but with her arthritic spine, it’s hard for mom to get around. Besides it’s cold out. We stay close to home, and do home projects.

It’s good domestic policy to line up projects for mom’s visits. My household invites organizational aggression, and if I fail to pile up tasks like sandbags against the coming storm, mom will soon flood corners I’d like to keep off-limits.  She will plunder my catch-all drawer and toss medicine cups, twisty ties and duck sauce. Admittedly, I don’t need any of these, but in the process, a claim ticket from the cobbler, or a tea bag tag with an uplifting quote, will also be swept away. Mom will talk me into recycling my rusting tea kettle. But I love the way it whistles. Worst of all, my mother will bleach my coffee mug. I know it’s not rational, nor grateful, to resent a clean coffee cup, but the layered patina of the inside of my mug represents morning upon morning of my joyful lived experience of that first cup of coffee of the day. It makes the coffee taste better.

So, in anticipation of mom’s visit, I’ve been collecting unmatched socks. I dump the basket on the dining room table before her.  In mom’s mind, people and socks should all find mates. Within ten minutes, the tangled mound is spread, sorted and paired. Matched socks cuddle two-by-two in tight balls, ready for the sock drawer. But there are several loners left, and this is not okay. Mom sighs and turns accusatory: “You must have a lot of money to waste Maria.” She waves a cashmere knee-hi.  “These are expensive socks. You better look under all the beds.” So she gets me looking under mattresses and emptying the hamper and spreading the dirty laundry out on the floor, and we do scare up some strays and make more matches. Yet many single socks remain. She assesses, then quickly balls together two similar but not exact socks. Good enough. She tosses the remaining to me “This isn’t funny Maria.” I wasn’t laughing. “You really have to do a better job of not losing socks.” And now the table is clear.

Pairing up argyles and tucking them deep into top drawers appeases mom’s sense of order, of setting things right in a world which displays so much wrong. But her satisfaction is short-lived. Mom’s real field of battle is the pantry. She is boots on the ground at my snack shelf:  she dumps out a half-full box of granola bars, tosses the box, then forces the bars into another half-full box of Fig Newton cookies. She does the same with graham crackers and Rye Krisps, nesting them side by side in an old Saltines crackers tin.  She dismantles my spice rack, and orders me to bring up baby food jars from the basement. She takes the mortar and pestle she gave me, which I rarely use, and mashes spices: cumin, Krazy Salt, paprika, cloves, and yes, the mustard powder. Voila: Mexican pork rub. She pours it into a baby food jar, and labels it with masking tape.

I was a teen when I dubbed my mother: “The Great Consolidator.” In the wee hours, before the garbage trucks even turned onto our block, she was in the pantry, consolidating cereal boxes: Total and Special K, Corn Flakes and frosted pillows of shredded wheat. And Muesli. You never knew what you were getting in your cereal bowl. It was always a Chex Party Mix at breakfast, minus the peanuts. There was nothing off-limits in the pantry. You’d reach for a handful of raisins and get mostly cranberries. You’d pour syrup on your pancakes thinking you’re getting pure Grade A maple, but instead you got mostly honey, with Karo dark corn syrup. 

 Nothing was as it appeared in the icebox either.  The true fat content of milk wasn’t reflected on the cartons.  Mom combined quarts of skim, low-fat and whole, which made creaming your coffee complicated, and .annoyed Dad who always watched his waist-line, and

Today, deployed in a corner of my kitchen, behind a fortress of Barilla pasta boxes, I wonder “What does she get out of this?”  To be of joyful service to her children has always been Mom’s aim. Her arthritic hands don’t open cans or peel potatoes anymore, but they can still shake out that last half cup of buttermilk biscuit mix from the bottom of a box of Bisquick and top off the box of Aunt Jemima (renamed rather unspectacularly, Pearl Milling pancake mix). With her strategic mind and commanding voice Mom makes up for physical limitations and still manages to reduce clutter and simplify my life, every time she visits—and that is something.

We’ve been at it for hours . Just when I thought it was quitting time, suddenly, Mom’s eyes shine. “Let’s make soup,” she says, putting on my apron. which I never use. The Great Consolidator, the Kandinski of the Kitchen, the Seurat of the Stovetop. Anyone who cooks understands it’s high art to cook from what’s on hand; to throw wide the cupboard doors and make a meal from what you find. Mom is a supremely creative person.  Cooking from the pantry is a game with only one rule: you’re not allowed to run out and buy an ingredient.  Substitutions are the name of the game. Not only a colossus of consolidation, Mom is the world’s best at making do: powdered milk for fresh, green onions for red, til everything shriveled and forgotten at the bottom of the refrigerator’s crisper drawer is dredged up. That’s how to win at this game: use it all up and make it taste great. “You’ve got a lot of black beans,” Mom says, pulling three cans from a lower shelf. Black bean soup it is!  Fifteen minutes later the stock pot bubbles, and mom adjusts the seasonings. Her caramel-colored eyes flash:  “Got an open jar of salsa in the fridge?” I rifle through the refrigerator door shelves. I do! A good one third of a jar. She dumps it in.  What else?”  I find a take-out clamshell of leftover basmati rice from the Gyro King. In it goes.

Tomorrow, after breakfast, I will set Mom up in front of her Sunday morning political shows and hop in the shower. She will grow restless with the roundtable on “Meet the Press” and when I return, I will find my kitchen sink full of brown leaves. She will have pruned my peace lily—all my houseplants in fact.

For now though, I stand behind Mom’s chair at the kitchen table, invigorated by hot black bean soup. I rub her neck while she plays solitaire. “Put the cards down mom, and just enjoy this moment.” She lays down her hand and sighs softly under my fingertips. “We were very productive today, weren’t we?” she says.  “Yes Mom, we were.” “Good enough to keep the Board of Health away for another day anyway! We’ll hit that refrigerator again tomorrow.”

Discover the Great Consolidator's recipes for black bean soup and granola.

The Maternal Instinct

“Instinct,” per dictionary.com, is: “an inborn pattern of activity or tendency to action common to a given biological species.”

 “Maternal” from my son’s Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate, with the red burlap cover, because I still love the heft of a real dictionary, is: “characteristic of a mother, motherly.” Okay, but let’s dig deeper. Back online to merriam-webster.com, “maternal” Scroll down to related words: “…feminine, womanish, womanlike, womanly; matriarchal, matronly (ouch,) caring, giving, nurturing.”

Put it together. Maternal Instinct:  “feminine, caring, giving, nurturing pattern of activity common to a given species.”

True. Motherhood, when you fold back the cozy, pilled blanket of unconditional love, is defined by patterns of repeated, life-affirming activities common to all moms: shaking Cheerios into breakfast bowls, clipping tiny toenails, washing scalps and wasting Band-Aides on imagined boo-boos to stop the tears.

But what happens when the uncommon happens?  When nurture gives way to darker nature? When the maternal instinct is usurped by self -interest?

When my mother plants a goodbye kiss full-on my son’s mouth after Thanksgiving excess, she uses the same closer she’s always used with me: “Theodore, what does Nana always say?”  No reply.  The first cousin, standing by, pipes up: “I know, I know Nana: you would kill for us and you would die for us.” Way to go Nana.  Melding love and violence in a new generation of young minds. “That’s right!” she triumphs, “Nana would kill for you and she would die for you.”

My torso tingles with distant memory:  Mom, driving Sandy, our beige Volkswagen, stops short at an intersection and shoots her right arm across my chest so I don’t go through the windshield.  Never mind seat belts to do this job.  Or that head cold, so bad all food tastes like stale sugar cones, mom rubs my chest with Vicks Mentholated, covers it with a flannel rag and tucks the bedspread up under my chin.

Yes, put to the test, no doubt Nana would turn the dagger outward to pedophiles and peeping Toms, or inward, towards her apron-covered heart, but I can’t ever imagine Nana letting me win at Scrabble.  Maternal instinct has no place at the game table. My mom is an ace who makes words like “BEVEL” while I grasp at straws with “PINDER,” “WOOLIE” and “FUNGU.”  Thanksgiving night she is cunning as she sips Red Zinger and picks the first tile to see who goes first: “D.”  “All herbal tea taste the same,” she sighs.  I pick “L.” My eighteen-year-old nephew picks “R.”  Nana goes first.  “Nana is old, and tired, and didn’t sleep well last night.” Her strategy, referring to herself in the 3rd person, is to inspire pity, to disarm me, but I don’t fall for it. I play my hardest and refer to cheat sheets which offer “J” and “X” words, and solutions for what to do with the letter “Q” when you have no “U” to follow it. I pray for a spate of senior moments for Nana. Not tonight. Not ever. Her tiles click into place: “ADZE.” “S--,“ I think, “she’s played her Z.” I remember she did once give into a cheat sheet for a troublesome “Z” and came up with “ORZO,” 33 points. “What the hell is that?” I ask. “A kind of tool,” she replies. “My father taught me that one. He was a tool and die maker.”  ADZE, 34 points. Occasionally I hold my own, but not tonight, two hours later, drinking coffee that has sat too long on the warming coil. My nephew dropped out long ago. I make “HAIR,” only 7 points, but I’m hoping I’ve foiled her plans for the triple word square, 2 spaces beyond where hair ends. “Well, you just f—me up, “ she says, “but that’s what you’re supposed to do.” Indeed. But I didn’t. She tacks a “C” on the front end, which also happens to be a triple word square: “CHAIR,” 21 points. I stare at a rack of 1-point letters. I push myself: “NASAL,” 12 points, but I’ve made a fatal miscalculation and opened another path to a triple word. She draws the last tile from the velvet sack and capitalizes on my error, “PAGAN,” and pulls ahead to victory with this 24-point finale.  Final score: 267 to 158. “I’ve slaughtered you,” she says, rubbing her arthritic thumb, “and I don’t like to do that to my child.” Bullshit.  “I got some good letters towards the end.” She throws me this bone, trying to rekindle her correct maternal instinct. She’s prancing inside, no arthritis there. I watch her, animated, not-at-all tired, as she cleans up the board. “Just be thankful I’m functioning this well at 76.” I’m not. In our family, the winner cleans up. At least I’ve got that. It’s our best rule. The winner lingers and relives the mauling as she scoops up tiles, or slips playing cards back in their sleeve, while the losers skulk off to lick their lacerations…

But I am really no different playing Monopoly with my own boys.  I turn down opportunities to buy utilities or railroads. I hold out for Boardwalk. The blue-bannered card in hand, my son soon lands on Park Place. I flash a gold $500 bill, plus two hundreds and a blue fifty. $750. Double the asking price. He accepts my offer and by my next move I’ve put hotels up on both properties.  My nephew, in this game too, is pissed. Hey, I admit it. I’m no different from mothers around the animal kingdom— a mama rat or polar bear, a hamster or wattled jacana – just another mom, who devours her young.

Face It. I fantasize about filial infanticide in the bright morning hours. In that briefest of weekday windows between breakfast’s end and out the door, my immovable six-year-old wears me down with “Mommy, you are so mean, so mean, sooooo mean!!!”  I’m getting absolutely nowhere cooing “Use your words honey, would you like mommy to put on your socks, or would you like to do that yourself?”  “GO AWAY MOMMY! YOU ARE SOOOO MEAN!!!!”  Forgetting to breathe, I surrender decorum and throw self-esteem out that same window: “THAT’S RIGHT, MOMMY’S MEAN, SHE’S SOOOO MEAN, IN FACT, SHE’S A BITCH, MOMMY’S A REAL BITCH! BUT YOU STILL HAVE TO GET DRESSED!!”   Hitting is never an option. Cursing is not really an option either (but it is better than hitting.) My revenge? Gaming.

“Snowball fight, Brooklyn style! Moms against kids!” Three moms hurl ice balls over dumpsters. Three kids return fire from behind wet mattresses, sitting curbside for days.  I take full advantage of my superior height. I know it won’t last.  The heat of the day approaches and the snow is packing well now. Show no mercy. In the end, moms rule and kids retreat, red, raw and squealing for mercy.

In my daily patterns of activity—of sharpening pencils, squeezing Sparkle Fun toothpaste, and soothing nightmares where spiders descend from ceilings along invisible threads—it’s freeing to break with habit, to refrain from putting my children’s needs before mine, to do something, some little thing, counter-instinctual, non-nurturing, and yes, even violent.

Try it.  Allow yourself to forget their feelings for an hour and play to win.  Your pleasure in winning will come at a cost. You will have to wipe a few tears and pick up pieces of formative ego along with the knights and pawns. But you will notch up your own self-esteem enough to face another day boldly.  You will wake reenergized to dress your six-year-old for school. Isn’t that worth it?

“I would kill for you and I would die for you.”  Yes, Nana, you would. I would too, but let’s hope it never comes to that. 

Game on!

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Ice Capades

You are connected.  Your kids’ former sitter, now a beauty editor at People, gifts you with swag bags of Product—capital P intentional—Chanel, Clarins, Clinique. Your old boss at the hospital still remembers you with all-day passes to the Presbyterian Parking Garage. Those have come in handy when birthing babies and repairing broken ankles.  And today, a neighbor who chairs the Environment Committee at Community Board 14, snags tickets for you and the boys to test the ice at the 26-Acre LeFrak Center at Lakeside, one evening before it opens to the unwashed masses.  

You are unprepared for the elegant, open air plan, flowing into a frozen lake. Two connecting rinks, one covered lightly, like a carport, the other exposed to the stars. Your teenage memory of the Wollman Rink is a painful one: a splinter working its way under your watch plaid skate skirt and lodging in your behind. That memorable piece of pine, requiring mom, tweezers and humiliation to remove.  Yes, the old Robert Moses-era rink—wooden benches chopped up into splinters by kids balancing their blades to lace up.  The simple cement ring, like a drained city pool, and a towering loudspeaker piping in Olivia Newton-John.

You are cheered by innovations in ice skates, 3 clicks and you’re in.  It’s been forever, and actually, you spent much more time on pavement than ice, but you dismiss misgivings as both boys step on the ice and promptly reach for your hand. Each tugging you outward in opposite directions, surprisingly, you remain upright as you complete your first lap.   It’s slow going and your arms ache so you nudge them out of the nest.  “Let go!” you shout to the elder. He shuffle steps straight to the wall like a castaway reaching for driftwood. That’s something else you remember from Wollman, repeated here: kids clinging to the rink walls like cat hairs on cashmere; that, and the watery, commercial cocoa. 

“The wall only gives you a false sense of security,” you scold.  “You’ll never learn that way.”  He pushes off cautiously. “Stop taking choppy, baby steps. You’re not walking anymore. “ He isn’t, and neither are you. You take off, pointing out the long strides of patrolling teens in red polos.  There are no visible loud speakers, still, the high notes of Mary J. Blige sparkle the night air. You swivel your hips and suddenly, you’re moving in reverse. I’m searching for the real love.. someone to set my heart free…  Your son smiles: “Do a figure eight.” You oblige. It’s coming back. The roller skates with the lightning bolts on the ankles, and the English muffins on your ears pumping in The Gap Band and Rick James. 

Ice skating suits you – maybe not your trick knee – but certainly your character.  Human connection is made easy on ice. Gliding into and out of personal space, you clock fifty new encounters in under an hour.  A wallflower in a tiger hat with ear flaps reaching down to her knees, a photographer on the sidelines, a father leading his daughter over the ice in her Christmas coat.  And your sons, off the wall now, taking short strides, but strides nonetheless.

Shop Rite

Just how many unwashed grapes can you pick off the bagged bunch in the produce aisle before the pangs of conscience turn them sour to your tongue?  Five. You can safely eat five. Then it’s time to move onto the deli counter, where you can ask for samples of shaved havarti, in differing degrees of fat levels, and salt content, before deciding to go with the store muenster on sale.

You have to make this fun, because food shopping has become your life.  You do it daily, picking up a carton of blackberries from a fruit cart, or a gallon of milk at the corner deli.  But the real party comes with the big haul when you tuck the boys in bed, letting each add one item to the shopping list first. Nothing is off-limits. One of anything is not going to kill them.  Besides, giving them free rein has the surprising effect of encouraging better choices.  You dab on a little lip gloss, throw the canvas bags in the back of the KIA, crank WBLS, and tear off.  You take up two spaces in the basement lot because you can.  You test three carts before settling on one that steers straight and you roll through the magic doors.  The horn section on Prince’s track Glamorous Life heralds your entrance as a fine mist sprays the flat parsley and butter lettuce.  It’s a glittery ‘80s dance party on satellite radio this evening.  Not just the Material Girl, and Michael Jackson, but New Order, The Cure and Missing Persons too. Nobody walks in LA When did you last hear that one?

Fortunately, the Shop Rite is not a club with a cover and a bouncer to whisk the beautiful people past the velvet rope, leaving the rest to shiver in our party frocks.   It is everyone’s 24-hour discotheque, and taking a line from Slick Rick: “The freaks come out at night.” Lately, this includes one middle-aged mafioso with a relaxed middle in unclean running pants belting, and you mean belting, “Let’s Get Physical, Physical, I wanna get physical..” with a box of Life in one hand and Corn Chex in the other.  And it is a good Life isn’t it?  After exerting extreme self-control in riding the wave of hysterical laughter welling up inside you,—you don’t want to hurt his feelings—you realize you admire this dude.   He gets it.  He doesn’t give a damn what you or anyone else thinks.   He is having an unapologetic blast amidst the Corn Flakes and Cocoa Krispies.  He is one bad fruit loop against the tower of Fruit Loops at the end of the aisle. 

You have to make fun happen wherever you happen to be…

“Let me hear your body talk, your body talk…”

The Dip

“You’ve got something to prove,” her husband says.  She opens her mouth to object, then shuts it. He’s right. When a 48-year-old mama decides to join the crazies and jump in the waves at Coney Island on January 1— when up until now, she wouldn’t even touch her toe in the ocean before July 1—there’s something going on below the surface.

When she chooses a bikini with tassels over a classic black maillot, oils her body and drops and does 15 push-ups on the sand before hitting the water, she’s out to prove something, but what?  That she’s still young?  That’s stupid. She knows she’s not. That she feels young?  That’s closer to it, but she can’t do a full split anymore, or sit in the lotus position.  She can’t read recipes, or garment care labels, or the back of shampoo bottles without help from one of three pairs of glasses knocking about the house.

She doesn’t have a “bucket list” either – that would seem presumptuous to her– to tell the universe what adventures she expects it to sprinkle, like stardust, before she kicks, well, that bucket.

She just wants to take advantage of untasted opportunities that roll her way and won’t compromise her trick knee (skiing is out; ice-skating is approached cautiously.)  So when a friend, over a recent pork roast dinner, warm from red wine, boasts that he’s going for a swim at Coney on New Year’s Day, she offers to join him.  Besides, she has been hankering for a winter beach holiday and this one fits her budget.

There’s another reason too. She fears she’s making too traditional an impression on her nine-year-old son—because she does rock her domestic side.  She is the cookie-baking mom that Hillary Clinton once derided, the mom who throws end-of-school year ice-cream socials and hosts piñata parties.   When she tosses out the idea that she’s thinking of joining the polar bears for regular Sunday afternoon dunks, he replies: “Why would you want to go to the beach in the winter? The rides aren’t even open. I want you to stay home Mom.”  Now she knows she really has to do this. That rigid, rational mindset must be challenged. 

So mother and son head for the Q-train on New Year’s morning, with the pork roast friend and his nine-year-old son too. The uneven sand, even through snow boots, offers welcome softness after asphalt. She peels off the layers, throws her towel at him and takes the plunge. Happy New Year!  The water is as packed with bathers as on the Fourth of July. The whiff of seawater brings back the summer of her youth, before it is quickly overtaken by the stench of second-hand smoke.  She skitters out of the surf and her son is there to wrap her up, shivering and triumphant.  She has no idea what he thinks.

On the subway home she can’t feel her extremities and she’s nodding off like an ‘80s junkie on Avenue D. It’s been a shock to the system.  “Get ready,” she tells herself, “there are more to come.”

You Win Some, You Lose Some

Read my homage to the Brooklyn Dodgers, a team I never knew...

When the Dodgers broke their bat on Brooklyn’s heart and deserted New York for better weather, prettier people and oranges in the backyard, I wasn’t even born, but I ache.  And I’m not alone.  Robert Moses wanted to move the team to Queens, but owner Walter O’Malley had an even more dastardly plan: move them out entirely.  Sports columnist Jack Newfield was right when he fingered the three most evil men of the 20th century:  “Hitler, Stalin, and Walter O’Malley”.  Looping around a Los Angeles freeway once, I passed a turnoff for Dodgers Stadium.  A sign framed by Pasadena palms  rubbed it in: Dodgers’ Stadium, the Home of the Los Angeles Dodgers.

On hot July nights in South Brooklyn, the not-so-pretty old timers sit on their stoops in wife beaters and tune in the Mets—their team by default—on transistors.   “Ahhhcch…” Babe Ballirano, my old landlord would complain,  “They shud neva  have left!”  “We all loved Duke Snyder. He was sooo handsome!” his sister Nancy would add, grinning so her Dentyne showed. Babe hasn’t set foot in a ballpark since 1957.  1957—the year they left us, and one decade after Jackie Robinson, “the Pride of Brooklyn,” broke the color line as the first black ballplayer in the major leagues. (Well, since the 1800s anyway).  Once Babe even showed me his cup of sod, labeled like a tombstone:

Ebbets Field
1913-1957

Four years ago though, professional baseball returned to the City of Churches. After forty-four years of silence, the crack of a bat was once again as much a Brooklyn reality as Junior’s strawberry cheesecake.  Keyspan Park spans three beach blocks along Surf Avenue in Coney Island. The Brooklyn Cyclones, a single-A franchise for the New York Mets, cinched the minor league championship in their first season, and have played to a sold-out stadium ever since.  The box office reserves 200 bleacher seats to sell the day of the game, and I was banking on this when I strode up to the ticket booth one muggy June morning in the second season.  Only sixty tickets remained to the match up between the Cyclones and the Mahoning Valley Scrappers from Cleveland.   I paid fifteen bucks for me, my husband and sister-in-law  then we killed the afternoon on the Cyclone, the seventy-eight-year-old roller coaster  with the familiar first drop that relocates your stomach to the space between your shoulder blades.  

In the bleachers  for the first pitch,  I wrapped  myself in a beach blanket  against the breeze coming off the ocean.  To our left loomed the parachute jump— parachute-free since the seventies — now repainted in primary colors and landmarked, but  the Thunderbolt roller coaster, which had stood just north of the new stadium, was gone.  It had ceased to thrill in the early eighties and was covered in creeping vine until 2000, when it was demolished overnight  in a stealth maneuver by the city.   If only it could have held on like the parachute jump.  There it would be now: in sherbet colors, minor league pennants flying from its rails.

The Cyclones were playing lousy ball that night, three up three down, again and again.   Between each inning, a fuzzy mutant Muppet with obscene appendages ran onto the field and stirred up the crowd not unlike , I imagined, how  the Sym-phony orchestra  entertained Dodgers’ fans by striking up Three Blind Mice when the umps walked on the field. In the fourth there was a race between Ketchup, Mustard and Relish, three condiment heroes sponsored by Nathan’s, but the between inning diversion that scored extra bases in my heart happened when one fan’s jalopy flashed on the giant video screen: Congratulations, the owner of this Oldsmobile Delta 88 has been selected the dirtiest car in the parking lot.  Please report to the courtesy desk after the game to claim your prize: a gift certificate to Oakley’s Car Wash, the official car wash of the Brooklyn Cyclones!

After the fourth inning we moved down to the first base line in time to see a batter finally make contact and wind up on second with a standing double.  For this feat—the best Cyclones hit of the night—we were treated to a video clip of the seagull mascot having his gizzard relocated to his wing tips on the Cyclone roller coaster.    The sun finally fizzled about nine.  Floodlights, sitting atop high poles, and circled in colored neon clicked on like heavenly lollipops.  Merengue music floated up from the pier.  A real seagull flew overhead.   Nostalgia, I realized, plays a major role in this minor league seaside stadium.   The nostalgia has even worked its way into the Cyclones’ logo: a big B with a small C hooked into the design. If you look at a Cyclone’s cap from, say, about the distance of home plate to first base, all you really see is the B —  B for ‘dem Bums’ that is.

We lost, but fans filed out overjoyed, as if they’d just witnessed a walk off home run instead of what really happened--the bottom of the order was retired one, two, three.   It wasn’t about winning. Winning has never gotten Brooklyn fans anywhere.  The Dodgers finally beat the Bombers in that unforgettable subway series of 1955 and look what it it got us: The Ebbets Field Apartments.  Cyclones fans don’t hate the Staten Island Yankees the way Dodgers’ fans hated the Bronx Bombers, or even the way Mets fans hate pinstripes.  What matters to us is that a professional baseball team is home, in the bottom of Brooklyn this time. I rode the elevated F train home thinking about my team, fumbling on that field of dreams.  I thought about Carl Furillo, Jackie Robinson, Pee Wee Reese, Duke Snyder and all the Boys of Summer.  I even thought about my mother as a teenager on the parachute jump, her sundress blowing up over her face.  We’re grateful, too grateful to really care who wins or loses—it’s where you play the game that counts.