I never did sing to you, Leo, not really. And with every note I sang to Alan Ferko I thought: Someday I’m going to sing to that boy with the terrified eyes. But I felt your eyes on me the whole time, Leo. You quick looked away, and I breezed on by and didn’t stop until I found Alan Ferko and sang “Happy Birthday” to him. You knew I was going to sing to someone, and you were terrified it might be you. I think it wasn’t just the sight of me-long frontier dress, ukulele sticking out of my sunflower shoulder sack-it was something else too. Your eyes-that’s what almost stopped me in my tracks. Remember the first time I saw you? In the lunchroom? I was walking toward your table. Now I cry for me.Īnd now I’m smiling through my tears. Funny thing-I was so busy crying for everything else, I never cried for myself.
If I stepped on a bug I’d burst into tears. As I headed for my bike, I knew I had found an enchanted place. I closed my eyes again and let the gold wash over me. It was setting over the treetops in the west. The next thing I noticed was a golden tinge beyond my eyelids. I closed my eyes and dissolved out of myself. I held my hands on my thighs, palms up to the world. Until then I had done my daily meditation in many different places in and around town, but never here. How can I explain it? Alone, on the top of that hill, in the middle of that “empty” field (Ha!-write this down, Leo: nothing is empty), I felt as if the universe radiated from me, as if I were standing on the X that marked the center of the cosmos. I walked to the center and just stood there. The frozen ground was cloddy and rock-hard. The winter weeds were scraggly and matted down, like my hair in the morning. I’ve biked past this field a hundred times, but for some reason today I stopped. The field is on the other side of Route 113, which is where my street (Rapps Dam Road) dead-ends. It used to be a pick-your-own-strawberries patch, but now it grows only weeds and rocks. It’s on a hill-the flat top of a hill shaped like an upside-down frying pan. It’s a mile out of town, a one-minute bike ride from my house. No house in view except a little white stucco bungalow off to the right. The thing is, it’s been right in front of me ever since we moved here last year, but today is the first time I really saw it. If I were in charge of calendars, every day would be January 1.Īnd what better way to celebrate this New Year’s Day than to begin writing a letter to my once (and future?) boyfriend. My heartfelt thanks to Donna Jo Napoli Will Marinell Jim Nechas Patty Gauch Kathleen Lindop Rosemary Cappello Molly Thompson Ellyn Martin Anthony Cappello Pat Strawn Tom Reeves Kathy James Katie Carmichael Joan Donaldson Sean James my cousin Patty Maud for her medical counsel Alvina Ling for lending me her name my editor, Joan Slattery, who lent me time away from Anna and Grace and my wife, Eileen, for lending me her life. As of this writing we have sixteen grandchildren.
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