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Child as Parent

by 11/17/2019
Neighborhood: Park Slope

Isn’t it fitting to think of Wordsworth when raising a baby? “Surprised by joy—impatient as the Wind”—best to cut the poem there. He authored so many other polished pieces about childhood and how the mind changes when growing up and old, crowned by the great koan-like first line of The Immortality Ode, “The child is […]

You Go

by 08/30/2012
Neighborhood: Upper West Side

I have two photos of my daughter Lili on my desk, one taken in front of the the Brownstone School on West 80th Street in New York City in September 1996, the other taken at Ithaca College just a few days ago. I also have one of those acrylic, etched pieces she gave me for […]

Donald

by 08/24/2012
Neighborhood: Sunnyside

Daniel and Donald were the boys who lived next door to me when we were growing up. Well, they weren’t boys, really, but it was before the expression “teenager” was popular for those past childhood. By the time I was old enough to notice them – and their mother, a widow, Grace Grant – they […]

Baby Fever

by 07/07/2012
Neighborhood: Cobble Hill

My wife and I live on the ground floor of a brownstone in Brooklyn’s Cobble Hill. Freak luck. I’d never last the brutal NYC housing quest, let alone land in such a choice spot. But just when we resolved to move out of my brother’s spare matchbox bedroom years back, a friend with connections gave […]

The Immigrants’ Daughter Learns A Lesson

by 12/01/2011
Neighborhood: Brooklyn

I learned about sex when I was twelve. My mother called me over while she was watching a rerun of The Honeymooners on the 13” black and white TV in my bedroom. She often watched there, because my father couldn’t stand her smoking in their room. My parents are Holocaust refugees. My mother had lived […]

Baby Through the Looking Glass

by 04/11/2011
Neighborhood: Lower East Side, Uncategorized

On a brisk bright February afternoon, father and baby daughter entered the Sunshine Theater on Houston Street. A planned Cobble Hill Cinemas screening of Duck Soup the month before had been canceled due to a single-digit temperature (sorry Groucho, Daddy really wanted it), so this was to be the four-month-old infant’s maiden moviegoing voyage. The […]