Letter From Elba

I was taking a bath the other day when he walked right in and sat on the edge of the tub.  I was naked but I didn’t mind.  We’re longtime pals.  And he died in 1992.

But that didn’t stop us from having a great old gossip.

We talked about friends and family.  Who got divorced, who died, who had grandchildren, who had moved to Sun Valley and Santa Fe.   We reminisced about the now-shuttered Cafe des Artistes.  He caught me up with the New York hipster art scene.  I brought him up to speed on my love life.

And then, smiling, he was gone.

Funny, I always remember him smiling.  That wry, shy, ironic grin.  It went well with his impish sense of humor and sweet personality.

Remember where you were when you heard that President Kennedy had been shot?  Or when the Challenger space shuttle exploded?  Or when the Twin Towers went down?

Sure you do.  Now remember how you felt?

That’s how I felt when I first heard that he had AIDS.

Back then it was a death sentence.  With no reprieve from The Governor.

Today, thank God, people who contract HIV infections can take drugs- most still undiscovered when my friend got sick- and lead long, pretty normal lives.

Look at Magic Johnson.  Or better yet, don’t look at Magic Johnson.  I think he has done more harm, unwittingly and ironically as that may be, to the cause of curing AIDS than many a loathsome bigot or indifferent bureaucrat.

He’s the “face” of HIV, and he’s still okay, right?  Still smiling, right?  He’s a grandfather now.  You can live a great life with HIV, right?  You don’t have to worry anymore, right? You don’t have to fundraise anymore, right?  Didn’t we whip this with AZT and other wonder drugs?  I mean who dies from AIDS, nowadays, right?

Wrong.

The scourge is still out there.  Hungry for more.  It’s no chauvinist.  AIDS kills men, women and children with equal opportunity.  But people just don’t seem too concerned anymore.  It’s not an “in” disease anymore.

I didn’t want to tell my old friend that.

I’m sure that he knows.  He was just too polite to rebuke me.

He was an artist here on earth.  He made paintings, videos, collages.

The collage he did for me was a star on a dark red painted canvas.  There were hundreds of tiny movie star faces that he had painstakingly cut out of magazines and meticulously pasted into the star itself.

He made it for me because he knew I loved the movies.  He and I had had some great times going to them together.  When we went, we used to sit in the back of the theater and whisper.  Lots of laughs and dish.  Who was hot stuff.  Who had grown too big for their britches.  Who had become pompous and foolish.  We never talked about anything serious back in those carefree days before he got sick.

We never talked about anything serious after he got sick, either.  I just didn’t know what to say to him.

I do now.

I’m sorry that I never told you how much I admired your talent.  I’m sorry I never told you how much I admired your courage.  I’m sorry that I didn’t know how to save you from this terrible disease.

These days, when I look up at the night sky, I am reminded of the collage that he made for me.

I like to think he’s up there now, cutting out star collages and embellishing Heaven.

I know this post is way too short, almost over before it’s begun.  Ended way too soon. Cut off for no good reason.

Just like his life.

Thanks for stopping by, my friend.  Come back and see me anytime.  My bath tub’s always open.

In my junior year of high school, I found myself deeply enmeshed in a torrid menage a trois. I had a boyfriend named Jimmy.  I really liked Jimmy.  And Jimmy really liked me.

But Jimmy loved his car.  It was a 1966 Dodge Coronet 426 Street Hemi, a major muscle car that he had bought from Mr. Norm’s Grand Spaulding Dodge in Chicago.  It stuck out from every other car in the New Trier parking lot. (Not that it spent much time in the New Trier student parking lot.  Jimmy put his pampered darling up in style in a pricey rental space at a nearby gas station on Green Bay Road.)

It was fast, see.  Real fast.  Like zero to sixty in six seconds fast.  It was the fastest thing around.

Jimmy spent all of his time and most of his pocket money on that car.  It had custom everything.  Isky cams, a Sun tach, a Hurst ball shifter knob, and M&H Racemaster slicks- special racing tires that Jimmy hid in our basement.  (He wasn’t too keen on his parents knowing exactly what he did on weekends.)  He also replaced the lake pipes with “Headers by Doug,” and the factory-issue headlights with airplane landing lights.

The end product of all this customization was magnificent- and loud.  Whenever Jimmy came to pick me up, the whole neighborhood heard him and saw the megawatt headlights from miles away.  That is whenever he could actually make it to our house.  There was always something broken, haywire, or about to blow on the Dodge.

(Sidebar:  Once, when Jimmy was issued an expensive “noise” citation for having those headers roaring full-blast, I turned to my politically-connected Uncle Jack. He was wired into the Daley democratic machine and could make petty annoyances like that “go away.” After a happy resolution of Jimmy’s problem, I did what any well-brought up great-niece would do. I wrote Uncle Jack a note thanking him for fixing the ticket.  The next time I saw my uncle, he took me aside, ruefully shook his head and said, “Never in writing, darling.”  My first valuable lesson in Chicago Realpolitik.)

The Dodge was a diva- jealous, high-spirited, unpredictable and temperamental.  She was always acting out- blowing a gasket or cracking her pressure plate.  On the night of our junior prom, Jimmy arrived at my house an hour late in a tux covered in grease.  The Dodge had blown yet another pressure plate and left him with only two gears.  First and reverse.  We did a lot of backing up to the gym that night.

But when the Dodge was in working condition, Jimmy raced her.  I was a good sport girlfriend and allowed to come along for the ride.

That’s how I now found myself plunged headlong into the arcane world of drag-racing.

WLS radio screamed all about it: “SUNDAY SUNDAY SUNDAY At US 30 Drag Strip” or “GREAT LAKES DRAGAWAY In Union Grove Wisconsin!”  These places became my new and very un-New Trier weekend stomping grounds.

I learned a whole new vocabulary- on top of the four level Italian homework that I always took along to study.  Words like”Christmas Tree” (the green and red lights that signalled the start of each race) and “funny car” (any standard stock car with an altered wheel base.)  I learned that a car always has an engine, never a motor.  (A “motor” is thing that runs the blender.)

I got acquainted with new people like “Big Daddy” Don Garlits,  Art Arfons and Tommy Ivo.

And I was exposed to a whole new kind of teenaged girl.  Other guys brought their girlfriends to the racetrack but they sure didn’t look like my classmates at NTHS.

We only wore Villager skirts, Lanz dresses, culottes, and round collar or “nothing” blouses that we had bought at Betty’s of Winnetka or Young at Heart in Hubbard Woods. We sported circle pins, charm bracelets and madras bermudas.  We wore penny loafers or Capezio flats and carried John Romain purses.  The look was no makeup, straight hair, preppie.

The girls at the dragstrips had tall, lavishly-teased and lacquered beehive hairdos, white lipstick, mohair sweaters, black tight skirts, leather jackets and chewed gum- when they weren’t smoking.  Some did both simultaneously.

This was not a high school casting call for the Pink Ladies.  They were the real deal.  And I must have looked just as alien and odd to them, too.

With Jimmy always racing, tinkering or ransoming the car back from Green Bay Auto Body, he was spending every last cent of his allowance on the damn thing. His constant state of auto-related poverty inevitably led him to to an after-school part-time job, at, where else, a gas station in Glencoe.

All his waking moments were taken up with his true love.  They made such a beautiful couple.  But finally, even Jimmy got sick of her prima donna ways and reluctantly traded the Dodge in for a Sunbeam Tiger.  (Do you remember that car?  The ‘roided-up version of the British Sunbeam Alpine?  Do they even make those any more?)

Sigh.  That was an adorable car.  And the three of us were so happy together.  Jimmy, both cars and I went steady for about thirteen months.  Forever in high school romance years.

And even though US 30 Dragstrip is no more and I haven’t set a penny-loafered foot in Union Grove for forty-six years, the roar of a lake pipe can still get me going.  I never lost my taste for fast guys in faster cars.

Vroom vroom.  Anybody wanna drag?

Not counting professionals, who is the funniest person you know?  Maybe it’s your old high school pal or frat brother or goofy class clown or your nutty cousin or the kid who sat next to you in Sunday School who could always make you crack up.  Maybe it’s that gal at your office or guy who does your hair.

For me, it would have to be Steve Gersten.  You might not know him but it doesn’t matter.  If you’re lucky, you have a Gersten in your life.

I must have been about fourteen when we met.  He was a year older than me and he was a buddies with several boys I knew.

Soon Steve and I eliminated the middlemen and became close friends ourselves.  No, that’s not accurate.  I was his best audience. Everything he did or said just killed me.

(Whenever he’d telephone, my mother would hear me screaming with laughter. “Cheer up, Ellen,” she’d always call up the stairs.)

Self-deprecating, wry, irreverent, observant and wildly mishap-prone, he was a one-man Seinfeld.  He was a teenage amalgam of Jerry, George, Kramer and Newman.  He even had music to go with his laugh track.  I have no idea how it started but “Doo Wah Diddy” by Manfred Mann became his theme song- complete with a special bouncy dance that featured rolling fist gestures.

Gersten had signature “bits.”  Like the car door gag.  With a sweeping gesture, he would gallantly open the car door for me- only to push me aside and climb in first.  This never failed to convulse me.  I know we’re not talking Woody Allen here, but it got the desired effect every time.

About that car.  Steve drove his mother’s Buick Wildcat.  His parents thought that if they bought him a car, he wouldn’t take good care of it.  They reasoned that if they let him “borrow” his mother’s car, somehow the reponsibility gene would kick in and he would be careful.

Wrong.  Now that the statute of limitations has passed, let me tell you a few things that happened in the Wildcat.

First he taught me to drive in it.

Steve’s idea of Driver’s Ed included fun pranks like yelling “Look out!” and covering my eyes when we were on Edens highway.  Or he would actually turn the car off when we were cruising on the highway.  (We spent an awful lot of time on that highway.)

He beat up the Wildcat so badly that when his mother went to trade it in, the dealer took one look and told her he could get rid of a social disease faster than he could the car.

We screamed at that.  It was so Gersten.

Funny or aggravating things followed him around.  It was part of his “George” persona.

Like the time he took me to the Old Town neighborhood in Chicago.  I wasn’t supposed to be there in the first place and I had a strict curfew to boot.  But that never stopped us.  We were illicitly wandering up Wells Street when a cop ordered the crowd to “stop congregating and keep moving.”

Steve complied instantly- by turning in circles.  Predictably, I thought the move was hilarious.  The cop…umm…not so much.  He immediately threw Steve in the back of his squad car- and handcuffed him to it for good measure.

When I peered in, I saw a rabid police dog in the front seat hysterically charging the mesh divider to get to my merry prankster. Steve was cringing and crying “Dorton!” – his patented go-to exclamation.  (I have no idea from whence it came.  It means OMG!)

I literally went down on my knees pleading with cop.  He must have relented and let Steve go because today, as I type this, I am not still grounded.

(You notice I use the word “cop” in this anecdote.  Yes, “policeman” is the politically correct term.  But, hey, man.  This was the sixties.  That’s what we called them.  And worse, I’m sorry to say.)

Then there was the infamous “Hut Two Three” episode. A troubled and trouble-making former student had joined the Marines, completed boot camp, and wanted to show off his new uniform to his old New Trier classmates.  Most of the kids were too intimidated by his rep (and his pecs) or too smart to say anything of a derogatory nature to this guy.

But not my hero.  As the Marine proudly strode the rotunda, Steve manfully stood two floors above him calling out “Hut Two Three Four! Hut Two Three Four!”  This did not go over big with our armed forces. Soon the Marine had located his heckler and was chasing him and me- innocently swept up in the mayhem- around the school.

As Muscles drew close, Steve threw me at him yelling “Take the girl! Don’t hurt me!”

I bounced off the Marine and landed on the floor.  That was okay.  I was so convulsed with laughter that I couldn’t run anymore.

Steve took me for my drivers license.  When we got to Libertyville, he told me to go inside and wait in line.  After he shut off the car, he turned on the wipers and turned up radio full-blast.  When I came out to the car with the examiner and turned on the ignition, the car exploded.  The guy flunked me right there in the parking lot.

“Who brought you?” the examiner asked angrily.  I meekly pointed to Gersten laughing in the corner.  “Okay, wiseguy,” he said. “Show me your license.”

Steve complied by pulling out a Xerox copy- his real license being held as collateral for an earlier traffic violation.  The DMV guy tore up Steve’s Xerox- and gave him another ticket.  I have no idea how we got home.

Humor is transitory.  It’s fleeting- like laughter.  I would never be able to convey why a certain phrase or a phone call was funny forty-six years after the fact.  The joke would never travel.  I can’t explain why or how Gersten was so funny.

But I got an email from Steve the other day.  I hadn’t heard from him in a long time.

And it made me laugh.

Now listen to his theme song.

In the interest of disclosure, I think it only fair to report that my post Philanthropy got mixed reviews.  Some thought the tone was bitter.  (Although everyone agreed that my ex husband’s donation of a sexual health clinic was hilarious- and telling.)

Others thought the post was a riot.  One savvy reader suggested that “his next ex wife print it up and put it on his pillow as a bedtime story.”

Nice.  Now that’s the response I was looking for.

So proceed at your own peril.  Hic sunt dracones.

And don’t look for Philanthropy.  I bowed to the pressure and took it down.

For twenty years, I was married to a demanding perfectionist.  A martinet, a drill instructor.

A bully.

His motto was “You don’t pay, you don’t say.”  Words to live by- if you’re married to Attila the Hun with a Platinum card.

He ran his home, his business and me with an iron hand.

And the secret to his success?  Rules.  And since October is National Anti-Bullying Awareness Month, this is my last chance to give you a peek at The Tyrant’s Handbook.

Rule One: The Schedule is All.  Because my ex husband was compulsive about being at his workout by 5:20 a.m., he went to bed early.  No phone calls or intrusions after seven p.m. were allowed.  EVER.  He went to sleep immediately after The Fresh Prince of Bel Air and did not want to be disturbed.  FOR ANY REASON.

This led to a harrowing episode in those by-gone days before ubiquitous cell phones.  My son, Nick, who had left with some friends in a car at six, was now back- down the street at a neighbor kid’s house.  Nick had called home and told his dad that he would be walking home by eleven.

My ex promptly went to sleep and neglected to tell me about the change in Nick’s itinerary.  (I had been in the shower and never heard the phone.)

Since Nick had been due home by nine, I was starting to get uneasy by ten.  By ten thirty, I was frantic.  By ten forty-five, I was half-dressed and half-crazy, roaming the streets of Winnetka.  I didn’t know what to do but I didn’t want to call the police yet.

By eleven I was making deals with God when Nick strolled in.

“Hey, dude,” he greeted me.  “Why are you up?”

I explained.  He explained.  All was well.  But at NO time did I dare wake my ex to tell him Nick was missing- presumed dead.  It was after seven.

Rule Two: Post-it Notes.  Everything is better with a post-it on it.  Or three.  I would awaken every morning covered in a flurry of these damn yellow pests until I couldn’t take it anymore.  After fifteen years, I pleaded for Saturday and Sundays off.

Now all communiques- frosted with an icing of post-its- would be waiting for me as I stepped outside my bedroom door.  But at least I didn’t have to face them first thing 365 days a year.

My brother gave him a case of post-its for his birthday one year.  It was gone faster than you could say “3M”.

Rule Three: No Dirty Cars.  Absolutely verboten.  And if this meant driving Natasha to the stable in Lake Forest during one particularly nasty storm in my snow-unworthy car and skidding through every ice-laden stop instead of taking our Forerunner, so be it.  (I had asked his permission to use it but he said no.  We were headed to Snowmass the next day and he didn’t want to leave a dirty car in the garage.)

If Natasha and I had been killed in a fiery car crash, c’est la guerre.  And I promise you that our hearse would have been spotless.

Rule Four: Money.  It all belonged to him.  No clue how much we had.  On an allowance-only basis.  Any charge over $500 had to be pre-authorized.  Same as the kids.

Rule Five: Room Entry.  I was never allowed to come into his room uninvited.  (See Rule One if you missed why we had separate bedrooms.)  I had to stand at the threshold and ask permission to come aboard.  I once forgot myself and just walked in. It wasn’t pretty.

Rule Six: Mandatory Early Airport Departure Times. We had to be on the first flight out of anywhere. Once, when he was twelve, we were taking Nick on a tour of boarding schools.  Because of a storm, the only eastbound flight we could get departed at two.

When I told him, he wailed, “Two?  I have to get up at two o’clock in the morning?”

“No, Nick,” I reassured him.  “Two o’clock in the afternoon.”

“There are afternoon flights?” he asked incredulously.  He had never been on one.

There were non-negotiable rules about coming to or calling his office, turning in receipts, carry-on luggage, tidiness, appearance, promptness, hand-holding in public (agin it), the correct degree of whiteness on his workout socks, and the proper way to pick fruit.  (I never did master that task because he ultimately handed it off to Pete at Anton’s Fruit Ranch.)

And an iron-clad rule about making copies of everything.  (A rule that actually came in handy when he angrily tore up the the anonymous letter I showed him reporting his latest infidelity.  He ripped it to shreds, but no matter.  He had, after all, taught me to always make a copy.)

Finally I broke under the relentless pressure, coupled with the certain knowledge that he didn’t love me any more – and probably never had.   I told him that I couldn’t go back to the concentration camp anymore.  And I begged him to ease up a little.

He thought it over for a split second and then said “It’s not worth it.  I guess you just couldn’t hack the schedule.”

And once his initial shock wore off, he gleefully started divorce proceedings the very next week.

So that’s how twenty years of marriage ended for me.  Not with a bang but with a “You just couldn’t hack the schedule.”

I miss lots of things about my former life.

But lo, these many years later, when we are no longer man and Stockholm syndrome sufferer, I still tense up when I remember the rules.  I don’t miss the owner’s manual at all.

New Rules Update:  I hear that Cruella, my ex’s third wife, is an even bigger bully than he is.  The word is that she’s in charge now.

Karma ain’t the only bitch.

And bitter or not, this post isn’t coming down.

MY rule.

My father’s birthday is Tuesday and I looked all over town for a musical card that played “Take Me Out to the Ballgame.”  I couldn’t find one so this will have to do.

My dad was a North-sider who had given up on the Cubs.  And when he couldn’t take the team’s perpetual lousy level of play* any more, the Chicago White Sox became his team. He took a lot of heat for it.

*(“They stunk” was my father’s exact quote.)

“Sometimes you’ve just got to take a stand,” he told me the other day when I asked him why he had changed allegiance.

But by the time I was born, he loved the White Sox more than anything. And since I loved my dad more than anything, I loved them too.  I knew what a three-two count was before I could walk.  According to my baby book “Go Go Sox” was my first sentence.

My earliest memories of my father are inextricably tied to the Sox.  My father talked about Al Lopez so much and so passionately that I thought he was mayor of Chicago.  And Bill Veeck? Easy.  Bill Veeck was the president of the United States.

WCFL, the “Voice of Labor,” was invariably on the radio.  Bob Elson was in our car and our house so much that I came to think of him as an uncle.

But not a rich uncle.  That title was reserved for “Friendly” Bob Adams of Household Finance.  Whenever I heard him he was always offering to lend somebody cash.  I never heard of anyone so generous.  I knew he must be made of money.

And of course I remember going to the ball park.  About once or twice a summer my dad would take me all the way to Comiskey Park for a twi-night double header.

Edens Expressway was a mere gleam in some politico’s eye when we first started these jaunts.  But the long ride was worth it.  The sights- row upon row of white seats, the sounds- vendors crying “Cold Be-ah!” and the smells embraced us as we entered those hallowed halls.

What could be better than a balmy summer night and all the hot dogs, peanuts, and crackerjack that you could eat?

I was in heaven.  I loved it all.

And I loved the ballplayers, too.  They were magical figures to me- larger than life.  Once when Minnie Minoso got hurt crashing into a wall, I sent him a get well card.  It was my first fan letter.

The ’59 team was legendary. Catcher- Sherm Lollar.  First base- Ted Kluszewski. Remember his arms?  According to park lore, they were so big that he had to cut his sleeves to make room for all those muscles.

Second base- Nelson Fox.  Playing shortstop- my hero, Luis Aparicio.  I adored Little Louie and still treasure my Aparicio-autographed baseball and trading card.

I remember Billy Goodman at third.  And Sammy Esposito.

And in the outfield, two big Jims- Jungle Jim Rivera and Jim Landis.

And pitchers?  I can remember seeing Billy Pierce.  And of course, the best-named pitcher there ever was- Early Wynn

Many sports fans today complain that baseball is too slow.  But that’s what made it perfect for near-sighted little me.

I had no trouble following the action.  If pitchers’ battles moved at a snail’s pace, it was fine by me.  More time for an extra hot dog. Extra innings?  No problem.  More time alone with my dad.

He taught me how to keep a box score.  He told me all about legendary plays that he had seen.  He answered all my questions about stealing bases and dropped third strikes.  And he never ran out of patience with me- or the team.  He was a good sport.

Dad had to be a good sport about one other thing, too.  As I kid, I was terrified by loud noises.  I loathed and feared fireworks.  So we always had to leave the park before that darned exploding scoreboard went off.  It might have been the only bad idea Bill Veeck ever had.

The year the Sox won the pennant- 1959- I was almost ten and at a perfect age to follow the race.  And even though I didn’t accompany my father when he got the thrill of a lifetime and attended his one and only World Series game with my (real) Uncle Jack, I would smuggle a little transistor radio into school and listen to the games on tiny headphones.

After the Sox lost, I lost interest.  Maybe I was just starting to grow up.  I only know that suddenly the Everly Brothers were a lot more important to me than Bob Elson.

I left the White Sox in my father’s safekeeping.  Where they are to this day.  He’ll be ninety-three Tuesday and he still avidly followed his “Go Go Sox” throughout this season. But I just outgrew it, I guess.

But every once in awhile, if the night is balmy and the breeze is blowing just right, I can shut my eyes and be back in a sweet world where Al Lopez is mayor of Chicago, Bill Veeck is the president of the United States and my father is the center of the universe.

Hello, helicopter parents.  I’ve heard a lot about you lately.

Protective, constantly in touch, always hovering around your children, negotiating their way, solving their problems.

I never could have been a helimom.  My children wouldn’t have let me.

From the day she was born, my daughter, Natasha was strong-willed and clear about her own limits and abilities.  And she certainly didn’t want any help from me, thank you very much.

Her favorite word was “self” – as in “I want to do it myself. ”

That is when she chose to speak at all.  Natasha kept determinedly mum for years. She would mime all her requests.  I knew she understood everything that I said to her, but she simply refused to volunteer any information of her own.

Finally, after two and a half years of the silent treatment, I was in despair.  As I was dialing the speech pathologist, she nonchalantly strolled in and had a pithy conversation with me.

Ha!  I knew it!  She could talk.  She just hadn’t felt it necessary to divulge anything of a personal nature until then.

When I signed her up for “three year old class,” a low key morning program at a nearby elementary school, she didn’t think much of that idea, either.  But she did agree to give it a test drive.

The first week of school, one by one, all the other mothers slipped unobtrusively out the class door.  But every time I tried to leave, Natasha would protest.  She kept an eagle eye on me to make sure that I was still in the room- with my foot on the rug no less- just to make sure that I wasn’t trying to make a break for it.

By Thanksgiving, when I was the only mother left, her teacher insisted that I adios the premises and leave her to the school’s good offices.

“Natasha, I am getting pressured from your teacher to beat it,” I reported.  “What do you want me to do?”

“Mom, when I am four I will go to school,” she solemnly assured me.  I believed her and withdrew her from three year old class.

“You’re not doing the right thing here, Mrs. Ross,” the principal scolded me when I delivered Natasha’s verdict. “You are teaching her to be a quitter.”

“She told me that when she’s four she will go to school.  I believe her.  She always seems to know her own mind,” I countered politely.

“You are only the mother, Mrs. Ross.  I am the professional here and I have seen this before.  If you take her out I predict nothing but trouble from here on out.  She will never go to school,” the teacher said direly.

(Author’s note:  Natasha has more degrees than a thermometer and is a first grade teacher at an extremely selective private school out east.  So, in fact, she’s still in school.)

I wasn’t helicoptering.  Just following orders.

My son, Nick, nineteen months younger than his sister, had no use for a helicopter parent, either.

He talked early and walked early and wanted out early.  He wanted limited parental speed bumps put anywhere on his world.

When the big yellow school bus pulled into our driveway to take Natasha to her first day of kindergarten, she hung back a little until she could figure out her next move.  As I was coaxing her gently into the whole idea, Nick eagerly dashed on board and disappeared into its maw.

I had to pull him off bodily.  He was miffed.

It was the same at Halloween.  Neither kid would let me be the overbearing helicopter parent, doting, or dressing them up for the camera.  I was lucky that they let me tag along.

After she passed the age of six, Natasha never again donned a costume of any kind.  I never once got to see her dressed as a princess or a bride or a little mermaid or a cheerleader or a ballerina, no matter how much I begged for the cute photo op.

To this day.  (See me later about the “bride” outfit thing.)

Nick loved the costume and the candy bit, but he never cottoned to the idea of ringing doorbells and waiting passively for the loot outside with me.  As soon as the hapless homeowner would open his door, Nick would bolt inside.

We tricked and treated in a pack of neighborhood kids and moms, and thus I wouldn’t notice that Nick was missing until three houses later.  I would have to double back and pull him out from under somebody’s grand piano.

Nick also liked his independence when it came to errands.  He would only do them if he could do them himself.

I have vivid memories of his riding his bike two miles into town to pick up a sports jacket that I had ordered at our dearly-departed  Fell Company when he couldn’t have been more than seven.  He peddled off alone, shakily signed the receipt, and rode back with the jacket hanging precariously off the handle bars.

He just wanted to be on his own.

And it was the same when he visited friends that he made at summer camp at their homes in Manhattan or Montreal.

At thirteen, he would jump out of my car at O’Hare- before I even had a chance to pull up to the curb.

With a two-suiter over his shoulder and without a backward glance, looking for all the world like a scale model version of frequent flier George Clooney in Up in the Air.

And this was in a world before cell phones.

I wanted to hover, honest.  I just couldn’t do it fast enough.

Only once did I put my foot down.  Nick had seen Lawrenceville, the boarding school in Princeton, New Jersey, and was all for it.  They admitted boys at the age of twelve and he was rarin’ to go.

Even though he was tall and mature for his age, I had to nix the idea.  I didn’t want him to leave home quite that young.  He would have to wait until he was thirteen, like his sister, off at school in Newport, Rhode Island and loving it.

Nick was disappointed that he would have to stay home an extra year but he took it with good grace.  But I couldn’t resist teasing him

“You know, Nick, when Douglas MacArthur went to West Point, his mother moved there so she could be with him.  Maybe I’ll do that when you go away to school. What do you think of that idea?”

“I have two words for you, Mom,” my son said balefully. “Menendez Brothers.”

May Day!  May Day!  Blackhawk down.