“My river,” said Will, in a quiet voice, as we turned onto the FDR Drive at 79th Street to take him home. It was not an assertively possessive statement, not like “MY truck” or “MY teddy bear.” It was, rather, meant to share. The East River is one of Wil’s many possessions, and he felt very good about having it. I was immediately struck that “my river” is what has always linked “my house” to “Doodad’s house.” He has been taxiing up and down the river, between the two flats, all his life. And for all his interest in trucks and cars, what catches his fancy on the Drive is not the immediate traffic but the placid ribbon of water the runs under the bridges and floats the occasional boat. We had stood at the railing of the John Finley walk earlier in the day, and he had been disappointed by the absence of river traffic; a pair of barges lashed to a tug could be seen lumbering along, almost motionless, down off Kip’s Bay, but we couldn’t tell which way they were headed, so we didn’t wait. Now, in the early evening, the taxi slithered from East End Avenue onto 79th and then onto the stub of an access road, and the river in front of us was part of the ride. “My river.”

His river, but it has a name, and he repeated it after I said it. (“East” is not in his vocabulary yet. “Left,” especially, and “right” are.) 

At the corner of 2nd Street and Avenue C, Will surprised me, because I thought, erroneously, that the darkness of night would impair his sense of orientation. It didn’t in the least. He pointed ahead and to the left, over the slim triangle between 2nd and Houston Street, and said, “I go to school that way.” Which was absolutely right. Houston and the Drive (with the river) are the arteries of Will’s everyday travels.

Well, not “everyday” in the case of the Drive. He had not been up to our place since August, before Fire Island. On Saturday, he walked around as if taking inventory. He did claim Kathleen’s teddy bear as his own, and I had to allow that it was hers before it was his. In all fairness, he has never seen Kathleen play with the teddy bear, unless she was playing with him as well. And he does not fully grasp the fact that there was a time when he didn’t exist — when we were here, but he wasn’t. You can see glimmers of comprehension, but it’s nothing to push. He’ll get it soon enough. Will certainly understood that his teddy bear lives in our apartment.

***

It’s a local holiday here, Columbus Day (once upon a time the big Italian-American day), but it’s a working day for Kathleen, and I’ve got some business to attend to this afternoon. At some point between noon and four, I’ll get a call from some movers, to give me an hour’s notice. I’ll run down to the storage unit on 62nd Street and meet up with them. I’ll tell them what to take out off the storage unit, for the move up to the new storage unit in Inwood. Then, I suppose, I’ll go up to Inwood, to see the new unit and to lock it up. I’ll be glad when that’s done. 

Everything that had to be taken off the balcony will go to the new unit, but so will two clothesracks of dresses that Kathleen is determined not to give away, not quite yet. And a piece of furniture, also not to be discarded quite yet. The old storage unit will feel like a ballroom. That won’t last for long. By the end of this weekend (which Kathleen will be spending in North Carolina, visiting her father), I’ll have schlepped any number of bags and boxes down to 62nd Street. I’ll empty out great portions of several closets in the apartment — so that I can fill them up again, don’t ask with what. (I hope that Project Management for Dummies arrives in time to help me do it right.) In a couple of weeks, I may even be able to walk into the blue room without feeling that I’ve fallen into a bog of books.

Wish me luck.

Drop me a line at rjk@dailyblague.com
This entry was posted on Monday, October 8th, 2012 at 9:51 am.