MT. ROYAL DRIVE, 1959 The garage door— atop which my father placed a basketball hoop, its backboard sawed, drilled, painted and hoisted by his own hands, Against which dodgeball epics played out among siblings and neighbors, Past which we dashed in races that began north of the driveway and careened to the back fence, Inside which I smoked my first cigarette, nervous as the homing pigeons who pecked warily in their coop above (another father-built project born of scrap wood and love). The basement— place of hiding & seeking, caroms & checkers on idle summer days, where the parents retreated…
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I’m 3-something years old, and my family is living in an upstairs apartment in Woodbridge, New Jersey. My dad is working two jobs, 16 hours a day, just a few years after we have immigrated without a penny in our pockets from a ravaged post-war Europe. There’s a howling nor’easter going on, buckets and buckets of rain. Probably some vestige of a hurricane. I have somehow managed to sneak downstairs and out into the little spot of dirt and concrete that serves as a front yard. My mom is no doubt occupied with my newborn sister, her fourth child in nine years, and I am roaming free. But as I’m looking up, I suddenly hear a voice…