The Red Bench

I've never been one for marveling at anything.
I could count on my hand how many times I visited the city before I moved here.
I never thought a place that looked so gritty and hard could change a person, or that there was anything here worth discovering beyond the museums and the plastic people.

Somehow though I have managed to find myself in Brooklyn of all places.
The things that I've discovered here are larger then the buildings we try to fit everything in, and bigger than the people that think they are too big for this town.
The things you can discover here aren't written about anywhere for anyone to understand.
You would have to live here to know what can be discovered.
Mostly though
you discover a lot about yourself.



I'm staring at a picture of my mother sitting on a red bench at a train station.I can't say if she was coming or going. She isn't even looking at the camera. Shes staring down reading the newspaper and in her lap is a big grey sweater resting on her light washed denim jeans. Her peasant shirt's sleeves are folded up around her elbows and her bright yellow hair is pulled back neatly from her skinny little neck. I wonder where she is exactly and who took the picture of her. She must have still been very young, she looks very focused and clear. As the pictures I have of her progress with time you can see her clear blue eyes crease with uncertainty and sometimes there's a brief hint of panic.

I like to think she was headed back to the city from somewhere. I'd also like to think that whoever took the picture was a lover. Who saw her beautiful and pale and perfect as she was then. I imagine her looking up to realize her Polaroid was being taken and running over to snatch the camera from his hands. They would tease and argue playfully and he would come sit down beside her on the red bench and read over her shoulder. They would finish the crossword, and then the train would roll into the open station to take them to where they were headed.

I like to remember her and see her in ways that I never knew. This picture reminds me that I came from somewhere beautiful.

I don't know what her experience was like here. I just know she came to the city to pursue a dream. I try to imagine where she might have lived. What salon she worked for and what adventures she may have had. The city in the seventies must have been a different world. How soon before she had me was she living here? How did she meet my father? Was it fleet week? Was she out on the town? Back in Long Island in the sleepy little grove of Port Jefferson? I don't have many pictures to try and piece together her life's story but this one is my favorite. Time is standing still in this snapshot. Like she is still sitting there now, where ever it is, reading the paper like not a day has gone by in time.