Perfect.

I've always loved the perfect squares. They are numbers that stand out, that mean something, that can be represented visually in so many pretty ways. It is for this reason that I get very excited when I reach a "perfect year." Today I am turning 36 years old. 36 is a perfect square, therefore, in my mind, I can expect big things this year... and, hopefully, they will be awesome.

The "perfect years" I have experienced so far are 1, 4, 9, 16, and 25, and though I can't really recall the first year, the other four were very important to me.

4 Years Old

No, I don't remember being four years old. I'm not that amazing. However, something so incredible happened to me that year that it has altered the course of my entire existence. When I was four years old I got a baby brother. Aside from my husband, this other "boy" in my life is the most important person in my life and I knew it the moment I met him. So, yeah, 4 was pretty awesome.

9 Years Old

Like many girls I knew, I grew up a tomboy. Boys were nothing more than peeps to hang with and there was nothing greater to watch on TV than baseball. My team, for all the heartache it gives me, is the New York Mets. During the summer of my ninth year, having another "perfect year", the Mets played baseball in a way I had never seen before (or, sadly, since). Although I had already turned ten by the time the final 1986 World Series game was won, the real baseball joy came from that summer when I was nine.

16 Years Old

Junior year of high school. In my mind, there's nothing better than it. There's a certainty in all acts. You know where you fit in your social circles, you're making your plans for college (before you really see how terrifying it is) and you still have another year to fool around. All of these things were true for me, but what makes 16 shine more than all of that wrapped together is SWIMMING. I was 16 years old when I joined my high school's swim team. It was one of the best things I ever did for myself. In the twenty years since, I have always felt a sacred calm whenever I am blessed enough to find myself back in the pool. 16 - I love you forever!

25 Years Old

Holy crap. What can I say about this year? It was on target to be amazing. I was attending Hunter College I was going for my Masters in Pure Mathematics, a dream I'd had ever since a summer program at Rutgers put me side by side with real mathematicians. I was commuting in and out of Manhattan for night classes and loving that I had an excuse to be in "The City". In addition to all of this, my school year as a teacher was starting out fantastically - I was heading in to work super early, I was ahead on all of my grading, I was connecting with my students and loving all of my classes.

But I turned 25 in 2001, a month after my city was rocked. Then, for the rest of the year, my family was rocked. My aunt passed away who I loved and felt I could identify with more than any other adult in my family. Followed by my grandmother, the mother to my father who I had lost when I was twelve, passing away a month later. And, of course, my grandfather passed away months after that - I felt like I lost my father all over again.

25 wasn't a perfect year, but in its unrelenting storms, it chiseled my innocent form into the adult I am today. I don't know how I survived the year, but, I tell you this, it is one of the most memorable of my life. It changed everything. It changed me.

36 Years Old...

What will be the legacy of this year? So far, the odds are in my favor that it is going to be a pretty good year. Even 25 had such potential for being one of the greatest. I have good feeling about this. Hey 36, I put my two chronic conditions in remission for you and I've been writing a lot lately... I think we might have something to work with here!


And you??

How do your "perfect years" measure up? Do they stand out amongst the rest? Is there some other pattern in your life - perhaps you are cubic? Hmm... not a lot of years to work with there... Oh well, you let me know!

My Room

Back in business with the Scintilla Project. Here are the prompts for today:  
Day 4: Monday, March 19, 2012

• Prompt A: Talk about your childhood bedroom. Did you share? Slam the door? Let someone in you shouldn't have? Where did you hide things?
• Prompt B: What does your everyday look like? Describe the scene of your happiest moment of every day.

I truly enjoyed journeying back in my memory to tackle Prompt A. 

The centerpiece of a my magical childhood private palace was a four post full sized bed with room below for my Wheaton terrier to sleep and hide. The wallpaper was peach with tiny flowers and the blankets were frilly with peach ribbons woven through in design. The furniture was a rich dark wood, Victorian in style, which didn't seem strange to me since we spent most weekends browsing through antique stores in quiet towns so unlike the place where we lived.

I would lay diagonally across the bed as I was swept away from island to island on the words of the books my father brought home for me to read. I would spread out across the hardwood floor pouring over thousands of bits of cardboard with pieces of pictures on their backs as I painstakingly worked on jigsaw puzzles night after night, sliding them under my bed until I was finished. I would take a running jump from the door on to the bed when I came home with a new cassette I would play incessantly in my stereo while reading the lyrics to every song in their tiny print on the folded inserts.

I would tell my little brother stories in that room and from that room. His room was beside mine and when it was time to go to bed, oftentimes we would lay awake whispering from room to room. He, laying normally in his bed since the head was near the door, and I, flipped upside down, with my head at the foot of my bed so I could squint in his direction. Oh how I wish those conversations could be recorded! If words could become realities, I promise with those bedtime chats we two created kingdoms, creatures, space adventures and hilarity we would still enjoy until this day. We were imagineers, inventors and innocent.

I slept soundly in that room. It was safe. It was comfortable. It was certain in both day and night. When the sun rose,  my window to the world didn't see too far, but it was enough to fill my days with happiness. My bedroom window faced an enormous crab apple tree over my bed of strawberries in our backyard. Whatever the season, I felt connected not only to the world within my room, but that which I could see beyond it.

It was my home, it was my room and I pray that every child has one just as magical.

9 11 My Story

This is last Friday's SI Ferry armed US Coast Guard escort. Not a part of our world until 9/11/01

Earlier this week I responded to a discussion entitled, "9-11... Where were you?" Here is my choppy story. Perhaps someday I will be able to tell it with more elegance.

I was in the teacher's lounge of my school when the first plane hit. My school is right across the river from downtown Manhattan.

I was on the phone with my mother trying to find out if she spoke to my brother overseas in the Marines when the plane hit the Pentagon.

I spent the day in front of classrooms while the principal called over names of students whose parents had come to pick them up. It was their third day of high school. They had questions when the principal said that it "appeared" that this might not be an accident.

They said that didn't make sense. They said, "Who would do that? Why would they do that? They died too." They didn't understand the mere concept of dying just to kill others. I didn't know how to explain it to them. I told them I didn't understand it, but it might be possible.

I had a break in between classes when a colleague of mine said to me, "I can't believe they're gone..." I asked him who he was talking about. When he told me "the towers" I thought I would fall over. He walked with me down the block to show me the plumes of smoke as the military trucks drove by us.

Back in my classroom I nearly jumped out of my skin when the military planes flew right outside my fourth floor window bringing up the river water below them. I heard later that the students that were brought to our school from lower Manhattan, when their teachers ran with them to the Staten Island ferry having no other idea where to go, all screamed when those planes flew by... they thought it was another attack. It sounded the same to them.

I operated on automatic the entire day. I have no idea how I made it through, but when I made it home, unable to make phone contact with my mother since the morning call, I broke. I cried, I screamed, I asked where my brother was, where my boyfriend was, where my best friend was, where my neighbors were, my family, people I hadn't talked to in years.... I just needed to know where EVERYONE was and it was an impossible task.

9-11 taught me and my students a lot of things. Not all of them good. We learned how frightening humanity can be. However, we also learned about how unified we can be in our school and our city when attacked. I had a lot of anger about the world my students were exposed under my watch, my initial thought, always, when I think of 9-11 remains, " How DARE they."

How dare they do that to my students.

How dare they do that to my family.

How dare they do that to my city.

How dare they do that to my country.

How dare they do that to my fellow man.

How DARE they.

Memories of Gloria, Waiting for Irene

It was 1985, less than a month before my ninth birthday. We weren't very close to my grandmother who didn't really raise my mother at that time, but she was still the only Gloria I knew. I wondered what it was like to have a song sung about you and have a really big storm named after you. It seemed exotic, dangerous and showy. I didn't understand these things, but imagined this somehow exemplified the woman I didn't truly know.

As the storm came closer, our emergency plan became more of an event:

• "We'll watch movies in the basement!" covered my mother's fear of us being near the windows. 
• "You can bring down all of the snack food you want with you! Make sure you bring drinks too! We're camping out!" was her nice way of saying upstairs will be off limits.
• "Let's bring flashlights and candles. We can keep the lights off for the movie!" Another great plan to make sure losing power would not be overly dramatic for her young children.

With all of this caution, there was also an excited energy in the air. Mom loved storms. I understood why when we watched a lightning storm in the Florida Keys during one vacation. Storms were dangerous, but they could also be quite beautiful. We watched our movie, distracted from Gloria, but what we didn't realize is that Mom was waiting. Mom was watching.

Seemingly out of no where, "The eye of the storm should be overhead now! Let's go see!" she was almost childlike in her glee. We didn't know what was coming, but based on her tone, is was bound to be good.

As we emerged from our darkened basement we were fascinated by the deep gray sky framed in our front windows. Mom practically skipped to the front door and opened it.

"Nicole, are you ready?" she was smiling wildly.

Wrapped up in her excitement, I smiled back, "For what?"

"I have an idea for an adventure. People must be going crazy stuck in their houses all day, do you want to go see them your candy bars?"

I looked over her shoulder, out the window. I never saw the world look that color. I never experienced such stillness in our suburban neighborhood. I could think of nothing more exciting than getting out there and feeling it. "Really?"

"Only a couple of houses. Only where I can see you. The neighbors will love it!"

This picture alone make me drool. I LOVE these.

And that was it - raincoat was adorned (with awesome hood, of course), World's Finest school fundraising candy box was grabbed and I ran! I don't remember who's house I went to first, but I remember the smiles, the laughs, and the rolled eyes. I remember the, "Is your mother crazy?" questions and the family's gathered around the various doors as they shared their own, "Can you believe this?" or, "Isn't she so funny?" I would always give Mom the credit and point back to her and my little brother standing in our front door, watching my every move and exchanging happy waves with the bemused neighbors.

It was pretty successful, although I didn't get to too many houses before I heard, "OK! Just one more," with a slight tone of worry.

Almost everyone bought multiple candy bars (you can imagine the ruckus I created in the homes with other kids on Mother Nature's house arrest!). I ran home elated. I made people happy. Even as a child, I knew there was no greater high. We all laughed as I shared my experience, telling Mom, Dad and my brother about the shock on people's faces, the children who begged for more candy, and the people who were so happy just to see chocolate!

Hurricane Gloria was scary for all of us, but that little adventure in the eye is one of my great memories of my childhood. It is analogous to so much of the life we lived in this house - storms were always swirling around us, tragedy laying wait, but somewhere, usually right in the middle of it all, my family would gather, bunker down together and share joy with the few we could touch.


I know storms can be dangerous. I know they can be scary, but I know, too, that inside every storm is a beauty waiting to be discovered.

To everyone on the East Coast awaiting Hurricane Irene (strangely, the name of my great-grandmother) be safe this weekend!  

Embrace only happy, silly adventures and make sure someone is always watching your back!