In the final months of her life I used to take my mother, Justine, driving in the countryside around their home in rural New Jersey. This would give my father a bit of respite from his duties as home health aide.

          They were both in their late eighties and I found myself sharing this part of their life with them. My small live-aboard sailboat was settled in a marina at the East End of Long Island and could be left unattended.

           I hoped that our driving around would allow us to get to talking about things we had never had the time or inclination to pursue or may have actually avoided over the years.

           Of course, as is usually the case, this opportunity comes too late and should have been taken when the two of us had had all of our marbles. Now, at times she would muster a bit of real garrulity over something that had been forgotten or, at least secreted away where it was seldom readily available. Other times she would sit staring through the windshield. Sometimes she would turn her head to me and slowly repeat what had been a mind occupying litany, and simultaneously a commentary on her condition, of which she was excruciatingly aware. “Damn nuisance,” was the phrase she would slowly and repeatedly convoke, as if by characterizing her condition she would somehow mitigate its effect.

            So I would make conversation by playing ‘twenty questions’ with the past.  

           “What ever happened to that woman you and Pop would go see in Brooklyn?   …she had the first automobile driver’s license for a woman?”

             “Harper,  … Miss Harper.”  Then, “…Damn nuisance,” if she wanted to elaborate but was unable to.  But, what I really wanted to ask; were questions about the life she’d lived, “life” in general; Or, even something specific:

             “Did you really think that when Pop went into the Army that was the last you’d see of him and you wanted to get pregnant before he went off to war?”  (Usually reticent,  my father had let slip this revelation during one of our Scrabble and Cocktail sessions.)  A question like this to Justine would tie her mind in a knot of frustration.

              This particular morning we were driving around in a day damp with a wet mist beyond the windshield. Neither of us had much to say and our thoughts were turned inward. I reached for the car radio to fill the empty air between the two of us. The radio was usually tuned to the classical music station and we caught a piano playing Claire de Lune (already, ‘in progress,’ as they say.) My mother immediately responded. Within a note or two or, she began to hum along. I thought her mind was just idling when she flatly affirmed, “The radio was playing Debussy in that room.” And just there—sitting in the car in this other time and place, my own memory was jogged.

           I knew exactly what she was referring to!  I recalled a  memory of my own  …of a long ago ride down Lexington Avenue. …Of me sitting in the back seat of that old ’37 Chevy and hearing her say to my father, with a secret smile in her voice that was not lost on the attentive ears of this five year old,  something about, “The room with the radio.” In that moment the car was slowed by traffic as it moved down Lexington Avenue and was just creeping past The Kenmore Hotel, to which both my parents gave  side-long and meaningful glances– those ‘looks’ as well, had not escaped me, either!

            I had known well that in 1940 both she and my father found romance while working as social workers in The City of New York Department of Welfare. She lived with her mother and two sisters in an Apartment on East 33^rd St. My father commuted from Putnam County, north of the City, where he lived with his mother and two sisters. The only quality time my parents had to themselves was a lunch hour canoodle at a co-worker’s available apartment or sometimes a hotel.

On Lake Waukewan going to their secret trysting spot– Pease’s Beach

             They had a marriage license. But, by their mid thirties, not previously married, and ambivalent to the last, they had dithered and dawdled without acting for so long that the license was due to expire in a day or two. It was in this room at The Kenmore they were trying to find the courage make a decision.

             In the car on that rainy New Jersey back road, my mother put it to me in a slow, articulate voice filled with a bit of emphatic wonder… “We knew damn well that if we didn’t get married then, we never would…Well… Anyway, …and Claire de Lune did it.” She cluck-clucked with satisfaction at the memory then closed her eyes as the sounds of the Debussy played out.  The last  note faded and the radio in the car went momentarily silent.  I looked at her sitting next to me and wondered for how much longer she would recognize the son sitting next to her as one of the many consequences stemming from the decision taken that afternoon a long time ago.

            Eventually, they did check out of the hotel later that afternoon, went to the nearby,  Little Church Around the Corner, and made the appointment to be married during lunch hour the following day before returning to work and their respective families that evening.

For my parents the myth about, ‘The Little Church Around the Corner’ turned out to be true.

                                                                                         The Honeymoon would have to wait

As the story goes, “The ‘Marble Collegiate” church needed more notice. “Try’ The Little Church Around the Corner,’ The Sexton intoned.”  Once there, it was a little different: “Come around tomorrow …around lunchtime. We’ll fix you up,” this Sexton said.

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