When we got our friends’ invitation to their son’s Greenwich, Connecticut wedding on New Year’s Eve, I sensed it would be a gala affair. And sure enough at the bottom of the elegently engraved card were the words BLACK TIE OPTIONAL. My husband hadn’t worn his tuxedo for a few years so I urged him to try it on and thankfully it still fit. Then I checked the wedding registry and ordered a gift, called the hotel to reserve a room, and booked the cat-sitter. After deciding which of...
When we moved to the Upper Eastside many years ago, we never imagined how much time we’d spend at the 92nd St Y. My husband joined the gym and swam several times a week in the Olympic-size pool; I became a Poetry Center member and 2 or 3 Monday nights a month I heard the most acclaimed writers of the day read from their latest works; and we enrolled our toddler in a wonderful children’s art class called Red, Yellow, Blue and Glue. One year at the Y I learned to use a...
“One is never too old to learn.”, Hannah told us when she announced she was starting college in her 80s. My husband’s aunt Hannah was the sweetest, gentlest soul I’ve ever known. Not one of us in the family can remember her saying an unkind or a harsh word. Hannah and her siblings fled Hitler’s German in the late 1930’s for Switzerland, Palestine and South America, and some of them, including 24 year-old Hannah, eventually came to New York. Here she made a new life for...
A few months ago on this blog I urged you to seize the day. (See Time and the Taxi Man Jan 5, 2017) I thought of those words recently at a memorial service my husband and I attended for our neighbor David who had died suddenly a week before. For decades we and David shared the same East End Avenue address. By Manhattan standards our building – with 16 floors and 200 apartments – is relatively small and the happy consequence is that we know a great many of our neighbors...
My parents’ first house was on a shady street in the Bronx bought after World War II on the GI bill. My dad set up his medical office on the first floor and we lived on the floor above. (See THE CORPSE IN THE OFFICE, June 6, 2016) A few years later my folks were able to plan an addition to the house to enlarge my father’s office and our living quarters, and also finish the third floor attic where my sister and I would have new bedrooms. My mother was an artist and drew up...
Welcome to my blog World Thru Brown Eyes! Enjoy the read and please leave a comment and tell me how this old world looks thru YOUR eyes!
