In those halcyon days kids walked to school. Not in the 5 feet of snow as many old-timey tropes would have you believe. Nor was the trek 5 miles in length. With no foot coverings'.
But make no mistake it was no leisurely stroll.
From my apartment on 92 street and Northern Blvd. it was a good ten blocks to PS 149, including a few blocks through the tough neighborhoods of Corona and Jamaica. This was way before helicoptering parenthood came into fashion.
Show me a mother who would send their 7 year old son into that these days and I'll show 100 looky-loo parents peering out their windows and speed dialing CPS.
Once you learn to navigate New York City streets, you can pretty much find anything, anywhere like an idiot savant homing pigeon.
Deb, on the other hand, had a self admitted terrible sense of direction. I would often park the car and purposely slow down just to watch her get out of the car and watch her walk in the wrong direction. I'd wait until she distanced me by a couple hundred feet until she turned around, saw me waiting and started laughing.
"You asshole."
In the arena of directions, she would always defer to me. And brag to her friends about my special sixth sense. But that took years develop. I read in one of my many grief books, that true love grows with time. Yes, we were in love for 3 years before we got married, but we were bonded in love, companionship and oneness for the next 29.
And yet, it almost didn't happen.
Shortly before our wedding, we met for lunch in Santa Monica. I wish I could remember where. Just to close the circle, let's say it was Fromin's Deli on Wilshire Blvd., because that's the last restaurant the four of us ate at as a complete family.
After lunch, Deb gave me directions to the Santa Monica Courthouse, including the floor and courthouse office where marriage licenses were issued.
She arrived first. I arrived 15 minutes later because the directions she gave me were slightly off.
Like a scene from The Graduate, I literally found myself running up staircases and sprinting down long hallways just to find Room 206B West. To this day I contend she sent me to 206B (East).
We stepped up to the counter and started answering questions with the woman at the counter. She was an older woman, with a deadpan, I've-seen-everything-look on her face. Except what she was about to see.
"Where were you?" Deb said loud enough for the folks getting fishing licenses down the hall to hear.
"You sent me to the wrong office."
"I sent you to the right office, you just couldn't be bothered to write it down."
"I wrote it down in my head." (I was only 34 at the time and had full control of my faculties.)
In between the perfunctory filling out of the forms, we continued our snarky, passive/aggressive bickering. All the while, I could feel the steely eyes of the counter woman locked on us. I even saw one of her co-workers peer out beyond the clouded glass counter window to get a better look at the ill-fated couple.
We stepped up to the counter. Silently. And we each countersigned each other's paperwork and handed in the documents that would in the eyes of the court make us Mr. and Mrs. Siegel.
The older woman behind the counter checked the documents and then offered us an off-ramp.
"You two sure you want to go through with this?"
Like I mentioned earlier, I have an instinctual ability to find the right direction. It is only now, in Deb's absence, am I discovering the feeling of being lost.
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