After Ed and I moved down to Florida in 2003, I made it a point go fly back every few months to see Sophie, venerable friend and piano teacher, who died at 99 last November. She was the catalyst for my going for obvious reasons and because the lessons I had with her were so very meaningful.

As time wore on she lost ground and I finally lost her although I still hear her voice when I am practicing. I have a photo of her on my piano. She is sitting at her piano, with windows beyond her looking out on Riverside Drive and the two buildings Trump built, semi-blocking her view of the Hudson river. You should have heard her on that subject when they were going up.

In 1976, Sophie gave a July 4th “Tall Ships” party. The view of the river was unobstructed then and you could see these huge sailing ships from all over the world, come to help celebrate our centennial, gliding past her windows.

Along with my photo of Sophie, I have a photo of Bella, and her husband, Bob. They were our neighbors in Forest Hills, Queens. When I went to New York, I would stay with them. Sometimes they were traveling, but were happy to have me use their place. They had the exact same layout on the first floor of the building as Ed and I had had on the 6th floor. So staying there was comforting. Joanie, another, younger neighbor, also a friend of Bella’s, took photos of Bella’s living room just after she died and sent them to me. I now look at them with a fierce nostalgia, since this little haven no longer exists as I knew it. Bob had died just after we moved and Bella had come to stay with us twice. I cherish the memory of those visits.



Photos of my mom and dad, too. My dad, looking serious, alone in what I think was a wedding day photo, and a [portrait of my mother in her wedding dress in profile, looking at a rose she is holding. She is so lovely, it takes my breath away. Also on the piano is a photo of my late husband, Jay, looking very professional, holding a cup of coffee at a Hydra (sci fi) meeting. I even remember that night. Another photo is Mary Newberry, dead at 30 (my age also at the time) of melanoma. Mary was married to Steve, my flamenco guitar friend. He has since remarried and now lives in California. Mary was in all ways exceptional and for a few years after her death, I would dream about her, dream that I was trying to save her, that somehow I could.

And not least, photos of Scratch and Sniff, my dear sweet kitties that I got to amuse Jay when he was bedridden, and infirm as he was, he tried to keep them from falling when they were on his lap, put there by the nurse. This effort so very significant, because it was so difficult for him to make.

I looked at these photos this afternoon and decided to think of the piano as “the poet’s corner” – there is such a designation for a part of Westminster Abbey where the great writers, musicians (Handel, etc.) and poets are entombed, or at least, memorialized. I’m not sure if the actual remains are there in all cases.

They were all poets of my life.

If I were to go to New York now, I could stay with Inese on 57th Street, in her small but lovely place, with Julie in Brooklyn (the R train), a little farther afield, but do-able, with Susan (Sioux, Soo, Sue, Soozle, Soozelah, as I variously address her) in the Bronx (the A train), or down on lower Second Avenue with Terry and Lila in their loft (the Lexington Avenue IRT) next to the one I once occupied with Jay. So I am not without friends and resources in the big city, yet I miss that little haven in Forest Hills, and Bella. Being with her was so very comforting. (Also she laughed at my jokes.)

But without the urgency of traveling because each year I was convinced it was the last opportunity to see Sophie, I have no “excuse” to go that would resonate with Ed and justify the expense and, as he sees it, abandoning him to make his own dinner. Now I am trying to convince him that his brain needs a trip to New York and the two of us should go.

xx, Teal