In Reading My Mind, former broadcaster and communication professor Roberta Cole shares provocative observations on the ever-changing landscape of our innermost thoughts. In this collection of narratives, she explores both the breathtaking and he
READING MY MIND
A Collection of EssaysBy Roberta ColeiUniverse, Inc.
Copyright © 2012 Roberta Cole
All right reserved.ISBN: 978-1-4620-5580-7Contents
PEOPLE..........................................................1Riverside Drive.................................................3The Doctor Will See You Now.....................................9The Conversation................................................15Lessons of a Christmas Cactus...................................19Mother's Day....................................................23Lady in Red.....................................................27Aunt Miriam and Uncle Max.......................................31When Ninety Becomes the New One Hundred.........................35Once Upon a Time................................................41Cloud Nine......................................................45PLACES..........................................................49Ode to a Weekend House..........................................51In Praise of Florida............................................55The Last Time I Saw Paris.......................................59See You Now and Again...........................................63EAST MEETS WEST.................................................67A Touch of Zen for the World Weary..............................69Eastern Block...................................................73New York, New York..............................................77Nature and Nurture..............................................79A Place of the Heart............................................83Jury Duty: The Wright Way.......................................87Capri Close to Home.............................................89Capri Far from Home.............................................91Sampling Paradise in a Cup in Kauai, Hawaii.....................93THINGS..........................................................95Radio Days......................................................97Nobody Sends Letters Anymore....................................101Hair............................................................105Picking Up Signals..............................................109Teachable Moments...............................................113A Certain Necessary Thing.......................................117The Rule of Cool................................................121The Short List..................................................125Pancakes on Monday..............................................127
Chapter One
Riverside Drive
"There goes another Pontiac, Daddy. Is it black or dark blue?"
"I call it blue," he said.
"What color car would you get, Daddy? Could we get one?"
"We don't need a car in the city. But why don't we rent one and go for a drive in the country next weekend?"
I looked back with glee as he gently ushered me away from the curb, back to the safety of the bench.
It was late spring that night we sat on the drive. I was seven, maybe eight. We'd gone there many times before. Riverside Drive stretches along the perimeter of Manhattan's western urban oasis, Riverside Park. My childhood was spent on the fourteenth floor of one of the prewar fortresses lining the other side of the park.
With one small hand clasped in my dad's, keeping the other free to manage a tower of strawberry icicles dripping onto a cone of sugar, we cataloged the traffic as it went by. Those evenings usually ended with the promise of a day outside the city. I knew just how it would go. We would glide along the West Side Highway, slowly and deliberately heading nowhere. My mother would be there too, but my guess was that this was not her idea of recreation. Upon arriving in some town far enough north of Westchester to be considered "the country," we'd disembark and walk slowly through the village streets, our arms twisted around each other to enclose us from the rest of the world. Before leaving, I was always able to coax them into buying some trinket to commemorate the day. It rarely lasted through the trip home, but the thought of it lasted much longer and continues to play a sweet refrain in my reverie of all that has been lost. On the ride home, with the sweet orange overhead pouring its juice into the twilight air and my thighs clinging to the moist vinyl upholstery, I would lay my head against a crevice of the car and let the rocking motion seduce me to sleep.
My childhood was mostly uneventful: a repetition of tender mercies and bewildering challenges. It was filled with the agonies of figuring out just how much like real life my life was, while keeping current with pop tunes, skirt length, and, whenever possible, my homework. My parents captivated me. My father had Clark Gable looks but seemed to negate the macho stereotype of his generation. There was a complexity about him at the same time that he appeared relaxed and serene. He had no patience for artifice. He screamed at injustice, cried at songs, and seemed not to say much at all to those he considered "strangers"—that is, anyone who was not part of his inner circle. From time to time, his passion caught fire. When he hugged me, it was with a gusto seen only in Italian opera—"Mack, you'll hurt her," my mother would say. She was right. He spoiled it for me; I have never been hugged that way again.
Sometimes I had trouble making sense of his behavior. On Saturday mornings, I would observe a curious ritual: he would stand by the window of our large living room, busily arranging the draperies to allow a peek of golden light to cast a shadow on an otherwise somber interior. Outside, the craggy gray facade of the building across the courtyard would become visible. When he did this, it was with the kind of determination that suggested that he had no choice. It drove my mother crazy. "How will you get them back in place?" She would ask with concern. Every Monday morning they were back in place.
It seemed as simple as his needing to let some light in. As I grew older, I understood that need and wondered how different it would have been had music or literature been his chosen work rather than becoming a physician. Suppose his hands had waved wildly to Beethoven instead of neatly adjudicating medical claims at the Veterans Administration after he left private practice? My mother, on the other hand, had none of his intensity. She was governed by good common sense and was well adjusted to a fault. Her only excess was a boundless capacity for kindness. Unlike my father, my mother did not have flamboyant good looks, and I certainly didn't get the impression that she thought so. The only awareness of her ability to attract that I ever observed was her trip on board a ship to the Panama Canal. In a photograph proudly displayed in her bedroom, she was outfitted in shorts and a halter. She surely had been told that the costume flattered her, even made her look beautiful. But I never really saw her as beautiful—that is, until I learned something about life.
I was just shy of fourteen when a virulent cancer took hold of my father's body. My father the physician became my father the patient. I remember when my mother told me the news, straight and direct at a back table in Schrafft's with only a butterscotch almond sundae to cushion the blow. I kept looking for signs, for something to tell me where we really stood. There were none—just one crumpled tissue in my mother's clenched fist. I had been watching my father. In the past, he would approach me with his black bag at the sign of any minor symptom....
