Happy Mother’s Day!

In honor of my 85 year old mother… I reflect back to a time when she was so young and happy to be a first-time mother – a time when she had her whole life ahead of her. Being her first child, it was just her and I for a while. When I was a baby we lived on Constitution Island as the caretakers of the Warner House while my father was in the army, shortly after we moved into a charming two bedroom apartment in the picturesque West Village. We lived there for 13 years. There was always something interesting to do in the Village. Just taking a stroll was exciting. Mom loved dressing me up like a doll, even hand making a few of my outfits. Some days I was dressed for play and we hung out in a little park with our friends. I went to the June Taylor School of Dance. I also went to Greenwich House for music lessons, I even took a few piano lessons at Carnegie Hall. Some days mom would take me on long walks all over the city up to Central Park or St. Patrick’s Cathedral; we’d often wind up at my grandmothers apartment in Chelsea on our way back home. We spent many of our days with my grandmother and aunt; the four of us were inseparable. On the weekends we’d all pack into the car and go someplace special like the beach, a petting zoo, a carnival or an amusement park. Life was so simple and peaceful. We were far from rich, but I thought I was the richest kid in the city back then. I wouldn’t trade those days for anything; it was the best decade in all of history. All that was missing were siblings, mid-way through that first decade one arrived, the next decade brought three more – and more memories. HAPPY MOTHER’S DAY MOM!