Jane Marx

You Are Your Own Star

At the corner of 79th Street and First Avenue, I knew the light was red but I took three steps into the street anyway, ready to dart across when I saw an unending stream of cars headed in my direction. I thought, "I'm resilient, but my DNA may not be able to withstand an onslaught of vehicles running over my body and still give me the ability to get up." So, I stopped. That's when I noticed to my left a short, balding man with white hair; his shoulders were back and at arm's length he held a white metal stick with a silver tip. I said, "Get back onto the sidewalk. The light's red. I'm here because I like to be on the move and when I saw the traffic I thought better of it." He replied, "Oh, I can see the light alright. It's in front of me. I can't see what's on either side. I have retinitis pigmentosis and it's getting worse. It's hereditary. I'm glad my mother's not here to see me now." Then water welled up in his eyes and mine were on the verge when I added, "You can't take it personally. We're all prisoners of our gene pool" and with that comment a specific incident came to mind.

It was when I was called four eyes because I wore eyeglasses since the age of two, with my left eye with such low vision that it was not correctable no matter the strength of the lens. My father would say, "Ignore anyone who says anything about what you inherited. I wear glasses, too. There's nothing you can do about your eyes." And with that, he went back to entering numbers in blue-black ink from a 14 carat gold tip black Waterman fountain pen into an accounting ledger and I stood there preparing to tell him what was really on my mind. "How do you know when you know yourself? Is that ever possible?" He looked up, "What kind of talk is that from a ten-year old? Go out and jump rope."

He knew I needed to do something physical to turn off my mind for I was intense early on. In utero, I had my first thought. It was, "I've got to get out of here. It's dark and I'm pinned down by this umbilical cord. I need to move my legs and arms and look around." Finally, when I exited, breathing on my own, I was overwhelmed with exhilaration. I had no need to cry when the doctor whacked my bottom and when he did it again I complied, letting out a wail, thus creating my first instance of sublimating my authentic self to comply with another's expectation, an action which would have intrigued that sixteenth century French lawyer, statesman and philosopher, Michel de Montaigne. He believed by studying one's own life, the wider universe as well as the human condition could be understood and in that aspect I subscribed to his line of reasoning; I was born inner-directed; I yearned to get acquainted with myself.

I had two early instances where my natural stasis was disturbed due to an outside force. The first one involved my mother's sister, my Aunt Gloria. Her son was 1.4 year older than I. He cried all the time and he wet his bed. I do not know which came first, but I do know I did neither and since we were so close in age and I had given my mother none of this type of stress, my aunt was on a mission to even the score. She found out how to do it while visiting her parents, the same place where I lived with my mother for eleven months since my father was in the army's accounting division, burning the payroll near Nantes, France, so the Nazis wouldn't get their hands on American cash for which he earned, for these pyromaniac activities, two bronze stars.

There I was in my crib playing with my toes when my aunt, in a household filled with gefilte fish, began singing a verse from an Irish lullaby, "Tura Lura, Lural, Tura Lura, Lie, Tura Lura, Lural, Hush now don't you cry." My bottom lip dropped and I began to whimper while she poked my mother. "See that Murielle. She does cry."

And Mrs. Kipness also had the same effect on me, but not on purpose. She was my grandmother's poker playing buddy. When she came to play cards she'd wave to me and the sight of those red circles of rouge on her cheeks put me into a spasm. She'd apologize repeatedly until my grandmother figured out what was amiss; when she arrived pale-faced all was placid.

With my father's return and my mother giving him the $800 she had saved from his army pay, they bought a $9,999.00 Cape Cod house, in a post-World War II development in Laurelton. It had two bedrooms, one bathroom, a kitchen and a living room, a square footage so miniscule privacy was never a consideration. When my father with his father, a carpenter and glazier, finished the basement and then the attic, there was more space; yet I was indifferent having my own room. I missed talking to my brother in the middle of the night.

Meanwhile, I did live within the city boundaries, but I was certain I resided on a farm. We had a small lot where my father cultivated tomato plants, a cherry and apple and pear tree and we even ate our own produce. We drove around in a car, knew our neighbors and the only thing we bought-on-time was The World Book Encyclopedia, paying $7.00 a month in installments.

No materialistic envy was ever demonstrated if this scenario speaks the truth. While watching the TV show, "The Millionaire," my brother asked, "What would you do with all that money?" My father's answer, "I'd get a new lawn mower" mirrored my mother's, "I'd like a clothes dryer," whereas my brother desired a stereo and I wanted an English racer, although I had a bike with big tires which I never rode.

My father never gave his opinion unless it was solicited and lived by, "Pay your taxes. They got Al Capone." My mother believed "People who are prejudiced really miss out." She also scored the highest on her Civil Service exam in Queens County which qualified her to work for New York State Taxes. My brother spoke Portuguese, Italian and French, got his PH.D from Harvard, taking eleven years because he embraced "Go there. Taste it. Why not." while doing his research. And I got bored easily, tried too many things, never sustained a goal, went through lots of friends and daily I grapple with a lazy streak.

Years ago, one of my roommates told me that I grew up in a household with no boundaries after I repeated to her what my father had said on the phone,"Mother's fallen at work. She's in Queens General. I don't know what's wrong with her. If she dies should I move to Florida and get married again?"

Thinking now of that stranger afflicted with retinitis pigmentosis, I offer him my words inspired by John Fletcher. You are your own star in your own galaxy with your own traits and ailments. Become an honest and true man for within all of us is our fate, good or ill.
- Jane Marx

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