Archives for October 2012

Not long after Hurricane Sandy came calling, this thought flew into my mind: If my mother were still alive, she’d be worrying about me now. That, of course, is what mothers do. First, they worry about us. Later, we remember how they used to worry about us, and miss them all the more.

My mother never quite managed to adjust to the fact that I lived in New York City. A year or so after I moved east, she turned on the evening news and heard that there’d been a subway shooting earlier in the day. She immediately called to make sure that I was all right. Needless to say, I was far from the scene of the crime, but I understood at once that her concern, if misplaced, was no less real for its absurdity, and I reassured her that all was well. Eventually she figured out that New York was a very big place, but she never stopped worrying about me. It happened that I was visiting her in Smalltown, U.S.A., on 9/11. I can’t imagine what agonies she would have endured had I been anywhere but there.

A few weeks ago I took reluctant note of the fact that my memories of my mother have been colored by the suffering that she endured in her last days:

Of course I miss my mother–I adored her–but when I think of her now, I usually think of the last couple of years of her life, which were happy only at odd and increasingly infrequent intervals. It requires a powerful act of will for me to summon up the countless good times that came before….Mostly, though, I don’t think of her all that often, save in brief flashes. The veil, it seems, has descended.

I long for the sweetness of those inaccessible memories, but I also know that no mere act of will can restore them to me. They’ll come when they come–or not at all. Perhaps, then, it’s an encouraging sign that I now find myself thinking of something as silly as the long-ago night when my anxious mother called me up after watching the news.

Mrs. T and I successfully weathered Hurricane Sandy at our place in rural Connecticut. The power went out at 5:45 on Monday afternoon, and we spent the evening reading by the light of a fluorescent lantern purchased over the weekend. Come Tuesday we relocated to an airport hotel–our neck of the woods is likely to be without electricity for several days–and we hope, transportation permitting, to make it back to Manhattan some time on Friday. We’ll see you around!

“Low Light and Blue Smoke: Big Bill Blues,” a 1956 short subject by Jean Delire starring Big Bill Broonzy. The film was shot at a performance in a Brussels nightclub:

(This is the latest in a series of arts-related videos that appear in this space each Monday and Wednesday.)

“The Westerly Wind asserting his sway from the south-west quarter is often like a monarch gone mad, driving forth with wild imprecations the most faithful of his courtiers to shipwreck, disaster, and death.”
Joseph Conrad, The Mirror of the Sea

From 2006:

Nobody walks anywhere in a small town, except maybe next door or across the street. When I told my mother I was going to walk downtown to buy a belt, she boggled. It took me a good ten minutes to persuade her that I wasn’t kidding, and another five to talk her out of driving downtown to pick me up after I’d made my purchase….

Read the whole thing here.

“Write as the wind blows and command all words like an army!”
Hilaire Belloc, The Road to Rome

I took a train to New York on Friday to see a show on Broadway, then returned to Connecticut and Mrs. T the next day. It was a tough call. Our New York apartment is a few blocks away from the highest point in Manhattan, while our place in Connecticut is tucked away in a wooded valley that is subject to power failures whenever the wind starts blowing branches off the trees. Still, it was my guess that Hurricane Irene might end up hitting New York harder, and come Sunday I was feeling increasingly sure that I’d done the right thing.
We got up first thing in the morning, drove to the nearest grocery store, and bought a trunkful of bottled water, staple foodstuffs, and spare batteries. The ants were already out in force, and we didn’t leave much on the shelves for the slugabed grasshoppers. That done, we spent the rest of the day watching The Weather Channel with mounting dismay. Late in the afternoon, my editors at The Wall Street Journal sent me an e-mail asking if I could file Friday’s drama column as quickly as possible, so I sat down, knocked out a review of the play I’d seen on Friday, and shipped it off via e-mail. Afterward Mrs. T and I watched an old movie, Tales of Manhattan, wondering as we did so what Monday would bring.
Now Monday has arrived, and we’re still wondering what to expect. I have two more shows to see in New York this weekend, and I hope I get to see them, but what matters now is that I’m with my beloved wife, waiting for the weather to catch up with us. Insofar as possible, we’ve made ourselves ready for life without electricity. No matter what horrors the next few days may hold in store, we’ll be together.

Jon Vickers and Norman Bailey perform the storm scene from Benjamin Britten’s Peter Grimes at Covent Garden. The conductor is Sir Colin Davis:

(This is the latest in a series of arts-related videos that appear in this space each Monday and Wednesday.)