Thesis Writing 7

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After a winter so long that it made me doubtful that there was really such a thing as seasons or change or hope, spring finally returned to New York.  And with the return of spring came the rebirth of my belief in people and possibilities.  On the first evening warm enough to only require a light jean jacket, I sat my favorite piano bar with a man I had somewhat accidentally started dating and was finally starting to take quite seriously.  That day we had walked through Central Park that afternoon, where there were daffodils poking up between the brown patches of earth and pink magnolia trees bursting into bloom.  Then we had returned to my Upper East Side neighborhood and I had led him to that bar, which had become my favorite place in the New York.  The paint on its walls and tables were chipping.  Everything about it had lost the loveliness it must have once had, but it was the most genuinely alive establishment I had found in the city.  Its staff was all older singers who had never made it big but who filled the small bar with their larger than life voices every night until 4a.m.  And the drinks were cheap and strong.

I loved it and I knew my mother would have loved it too.  I could picture her and drinking and joining the piano player in off-pitch harmony on a hearty ballad.  And I could imagine my grandmother there with the man I had always thought she should marry when I was young, who would be drinking whiskey the way I was drinking whiskey.  I could hear their deep, ever-on-point voices soaring like his had when he yodeled for me at The Hotel in Wisconsin.  And I knew my brother would have loved it because he had always loved anything I loved, especially music.  And I felt sure the man I had dated and loved when I first moved to New York would have loved it too – he would have loved how the bar felt like something out of a black and white movie about old New York and he would have mouthed all the words when the piano player sang Frank Sinatra songs.  The piano bar was a place that brought back to me everyone I had lost.  And it was good to see them again. 

The long months of winter had taught me forgiveness – something I had never really understood before.  My whole life I had run from what had happened to me and when I had discovered that it is impossible to run from pain itself, I had tried to kill it with sex and drinking. I had never understood when people talked about forgiving and letting go.  And the truth was that I couldn’t let any of it go because in spite of everything, there was love.  But I had learned that I could forgive by accepting people for precisely who they were and for the ways they were able to love me.  And I could love them back.  And I really meant it.  I loved them.  Not in spite of anything.  I just loved them.

I sipping my whiskey sour and my date was holding my hand under our table when I heard the first verses of the song.  It was my grandmother’s song.  I sat up straight and leaned my body over the table, towards the piano player, who was singing “The Rose,” a Bette Midler song.  I remember riding in her car, cigarette smoke stale and thick all around me, her voice clear and strong as she sang the song over and over again.  I was eleven years old when I wrote the words she was singing in my notebook because it had felt important.  I lost that notebook but I didn’t forget.