Bridges to the Past

Today again I sat for many hours in front of the computer screen, working on these never-ending translations. I got up at 6:45. When I finished with one script at 6:25pm, I decided I would go for a walk. Why not, when the day is so lovely, walk briskly for an hour outside, I thought, instead of on the treadmill in the gym? So I did. I walked north along Columbus and looked at people—young women in long dresses, older women with white-haired husbands, men running with their dogs, tots licking ice-cream cones, many people hurriedly walking, talking on their phones. I walked along and watched them like a play, recorded in my mind bits of their conversations—“I know! can you believe it? After 30 years!”—the look of one man’s sleeping caterpillar eyebrows, or one slender girl’s particular way of moving her legs like a show pony when she walked. Every day I like to add more such things to my mental bank of peculiarities, one day to pull them out perhaps to tell a story. I have always liked to keep track of people, to personalize them by remembering their trademarks, both physically and personality-wise. But I was a little bored by the play today, so instead of throwing tomatoes, I turned to walk back through Central Park. I must admit it is lovely that New York offers such options of diversion.

There in the park the sun was rose-gold and warm, the breeze just chill enough to cause a shiver when I took off my sweater. Sparrows and finch and birds nameless to me chattered from the beech and sycamore their frenzied the-sun-is-setting chatter. Suddenly and once again time and space were collapsed as I found myself once more in Grosse Ile. On part of the north end of the property nearest the neighbors’ house stood a hedge of never-trimmed privet which, in my memory, was 10 feet tall and just as wide. There, at the close of each summer’s day, when flowers are most fragrant, when white petals seem to glow, and when the sky shines gold with the setting sun, hundreds of small birds would crowd the privet hedge, and drive up a chorus of chirping so loud that from the third floor of the home, with the fat-paned windows closed, I could hear them: a hundred little bells ringing all at once.

This is not the first time in New York I have stumbled across a hidden-to-all-but-me portal back to Grosse Ile. Along 58th street near the piano shops there are two such spots: when I looked into the window of the Klavierhaus the other day at the piano they displayed, I found myself back in the living room in Grosse Ile, at the 1930s piano that was always out of key, practicing the only piece I knew very well (Minuet in G). The second spot is closer to Columbus Circle, but is harder to locate because I can only find it by smell, which is not always present: the vent from someone’s laundry on occasional mornings sends a detergent fragrance floating into the street that reminds me of something….something….from Grosse Ile.

And so in Central Park, at dusk, I realized that Manhattan is my second island home. Maybe there are bridges between them. And maybe, just maybe, that's why I like DUMBO--I like thinking about bridges, and the places they might lead.

(The Grosse Ile Bridge)

(The Manhattan Bridge)

(The Grosse Ile Toll Bridge, 1925)

The Toll Bridge photo is from www.grosseilebridge.com. This person (http://www.flickr.com/photos/islandphotobug/2286804265/) has a number of photos of Grosse Ile and other areas around Detroit.