like a torture technique meant to wear me down.
At my stop at 125th Street in Harlem, I get off the train and the smell of urine in the subway station assaults me. I want to get home as quickly as possible, change out of my clothes, take a shower, and have a drink.
Coming up the subway steps, though, a group of neighborhood kids block the exit. They are hanging there, unaware of anyone else around them as most kids are unaware.
I stare at them for a long minute but they don’t see me.
In that tired, exhausted, sweaty moment a vile thought enters my consciousness and roles through my brain. It creeps down into my throat and too quickly rolls onto my tongue. It tries desperately to make its way out of my mouth, but I clinch my lips and refuse for it to exit.
I clear my throat to catch the kids’ attention, and slip past them in the narrowest passageway that they open up for me.
On the sidewalk, however, I can no longer keep the voice of my father locked behind gritted teeth. I let it drop down onto the sidewalk in a whisper: “Damn welfare babies!”
I feel ashamed. I want to get out of there, to jump into the car, tear up the Taconic to the house upstate, run into the garden and check on the measly crop of corn that makes no more sense, in context, than my presence in the city where I think I’ll never be able to leave behind that voice that ties me so intimately to the past and to him.
July 13th
We bought our upstate house seven years ago. It’s a small 1976 gambrel roof house that sits on 7 acres of wooded land. I’ve clear-cut an acre around the house to get sun onto the property, and in order to build the garden. We bought the house because it’s isolated and after living in the city for a few decades we needed someplace to get away from the chaos that surrounds us during the week. On the weekends, my spouse and I barely talk to each other and instead go about our business in silence as