“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...
You may remember that awhile ago I banged up my husband’s beloved T-bird. (See FENDER BENDER , Sept. 4, 2015) After that rather costly incident I knew it was time I honed my road skills, and so early one Sunday morning I found myself at a mid-town hotel for a day-long AAA defensive driving course. Our instructor was a very likable guy named Freddy who told some funny stories about cabbies and delivery guys on bikes that got lots of laughs from our roomful of New Yorkers. Then Freddy...
Years ago when our son was a toddler many of our friends began fleeing to the suburbs. They couldn’t imagine raising a child in Manhattan with all the dirt and crime. “But think of the culture!”, I would say. At the Met Museum five year-old Noah, wide-eyed at Arms & Armor, or perched spellbound on the grand staircase watching a stonecutter etch a donor’s name on the marble wall. And making Purim masks at the Jewish Museum, and model dinosaurs at the Natural...
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!
