Quiet Mountain Essays

Copyright © 2009

Passage
by
Ona Gritz

…the children
we were
rock in the arms of the children
we have become
- Linda Pastan, from Dreams

It was my three year old son who showed me how to see the top of the Empire State Building from our
living room window. I stood beside him, tilting my head so that my body formed a lowercase 'r'. There it
was, behind the squat familiar buildings on Hudson Street. The needle in its dome and the beginning edges
of concrete.

"Unique View of Manhattan Sky", I could advertise if I wanted to sell our Hoboken apartment to very short
people. But I love this town. Tree lined blocks of brownstones. Old factory buildings converted to artist
lofts. Outdoor concerts on summer evenings. The wide main street where grocers and bank tellers fuss over
my son, their accents comfortingly similar to the New Yorkese I worked so hard to lose when I left for
college from Queens.

Set a novel here and the place would be just as much a character as the people. Sinatra's music pours from
the open doors of bakeries in summer to prove its unrequited love for the prodigal son. Once a year,
parishioners carry a statue of Anne, the patron saint of women and expectant mothers, while a marching
band plays Yankee Doodle on fifes.

Hoboken has me with its quirks and coziness, but what really keeps me here and keeps me sane is our
neighbor, Manhattan. My old love.

Studying the skyline with a child, what you notice is that the Empire State Building resembles a thin tiered
cake with a single candle; that the Chrysler building wears tiaras, one on top of another. My son and I
point these things out to each other whenever we walk the pier so that I no longer know which of us
conjured the images first.

What I don't tell him is that this backdrop is where I lived through my twenties. The decade before him.
That the river—gray and wrinkled—is a mocking reminder that it's time and age, more than geography,
that separates me from that girl who wandered the winding streets of Greenwich Village adding a trail of
Patchouli to the already fragrant air.

Back then I listened to blues in dank, smoky underground clubs, not so much for the music as for the
grownup feel of being there.  Befriended bag ladies for the long reading lists and advice they gave me. And I
fell in love constantly. With street musicians, bookstore clerks, and with thick lyrical novels.

Now, on nights my son sleeps in his father’s basement apartment, I return to the pier. The lit windows of
the skyscrapers form constellations to make up for the starry sky the city robs from us. It's beautiful,
bejeweled. But the darkness makes me think of that slim shouldered girl again. How ready I was to give of
myself. How lost I was in that dingy sprawl. I try to remember how I got here from that place. But the
transition, like the river under the dark sky, is inky. A passage emphatically crossed out.

Still, if I look hard enough, can I see the ghosted phrases, explain the choices I made? There is the fact of
marrying a man who disliked the city; who in truth disliked much of what I loved. What comes before that
is the word fear, and a feeling of being adrift. What I wanted was to belong to someone. Clearly it didn’t
work out. But we have a child, so now someone belongs to me.

It’s anchoring, the rituals of mothering. Hot chocolate and thick socks on winter mornings. Summer
afternoons spent pushing swings and singing made up songs about the ice cream man. Rhythm creates a
sense of safety. I didn’t understand that in the days I floundered on Bleeker Street. To find out, I had to
leave the waif I was behind.

Tonight I imagine she's still out there, searching and hopeful. Unaware of how vulnerable she seems. Of
course I’m the only one who can offer her refuge, take her with me to this side of the Hudson, to this place
where I finally moored.

I'd put her to bed on the pullout couch in the living room, where she could see the tip of the Empire State
Building by holding her head just right. Tell her she can slip back into her Queens-girl accent here as
though it’s her old comfortable robe. The one I brought with me and wear when there's no one around I
need to impress. When I’m simply at home.

Contributor's Notes...

Ona Gritz's essays have been published widely. She is a columnist for the online journal, Literary Mama as well
as a poet and the author of two children’s books. In 2007, she received two Pushcart nominations, and in 2008,
placed second for The Bellingham Review’s Annie Dillard Award for Creative Nonfiction.

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