Nows and Forevers

At this time every year, even though I know it’s not always something I’m going to follow through on, I do two things: I write a review of the year past and then I write what I want to accomplish in next year.

I’ve been doing it for the most part for 30 years, and most of these documents I have kept, either in my journal or on paper.

I say most. Some I’ve gotten rid of, because the year past has been so painful.

But it’s mostly a useful exercise. We mark time in many ways. But every Dec. 31 we close the books on one 12-month period and then start a new one. At least I do. It’s not just a new calendar that I buy. It’s also trying to understand what happened and how I took it (hence how painful it can be), and then also what I think I should accomplish in the new year.

Whether I do, I don’t know. Sometimes I do, sometimes I just drift along and see what happens. I like to at least challenge myself.

I wrote the review a few days ago, when I was back in a place that held a lot of memories for me and I was in an emotional state. I wrote notes on what I wanted 2023 to be, but I haven’t written that yet. I’m going to finish that later today.

I do have plenty of things I want to accomplish. I can’t wait to begin.

Back in New York I had to listen to one of my jams, WCBS Newsradio 88. As a teenager and a budding journalist growing up in Connecticut, I listened to it all the time. (Yeah, I was odd.) Plus my dad listened to it in the car. Some of the same people I heard listening to it in the 1980s are still there. But that’s another story.

One of the commercials I heard was 1-800-Kars for Kids, which played incessantly on WCBS in the ‘90s and 2000s. My dad and I both had the same reaction at the same time.

“That song again!”

I don’t know if it was just a tristate area thing or whether it went national. But that little ditty is burned into my brain.

It reminded me of this scene in “The Good Place,” where the demons sing the official Bad Place Song.

Yep.

I remember seeing that when it first was on and nearly doing a spit take. That was a deep cut by “The Good Place” writers, and it probably sailed by 95% of the audience.

But it was awesome.

Nice surprise about being in the Hudson Valley, New York, however briefly, is that I can pick up Polar soda anywhere.

That’s a comfort drink and always has been, in bottles at my grandparents in Massachusetts when I was growing up. Plus my parents used to drive me on I-290 past the bottling plant in Worcester, Massachusetts, with the huge Polar bear mascot.

Nice to see some familiar items here.

Interesting day to be at Newark-Liberty International Airport. I drove my stepmother from Pennsylvania to Newark for a flight to Europe. Twenty-nine years ago this morning, my dad drove me here from Connecticut so I could go visit my mom, who was dying of cancer. It would be the last time I saw her.

It was a bitter cold morning, Boxing Day 1993. Dad got up super early and picked me up, and we drove about 60 minutes to Newark. It was the first time I had ever flown out of there and my first time in an airplane in 10 years. The flight had only a handful of people and I sort of just wrote in my journal and didn’t look out the window or care much about what was going on. I landed, picked up my rental car at O’Hare, then drove another hour to see Mom.

I don’t like to remember that visit. I spent the whole week and a few days crying, near tears or coming to grips that I was going to lose my mom and soon.

Turned out she died less than two weeks later, a few hours before I was to see her again.

I was a poor journalist then and I couldn’t afford the flight to Chicago. So my paternal grandmother and my paternal aunt gave me the money for the flight, which was $600 more than I had to my name. Dad gave me the money for the rental car. I owe them a lot for making sure I could see Mom, as devastating as it was.

Came back a week or so later in an epic blizzard. Flew out of Newark a bunch of times when I lived in New York but only via train, bus or Super Shuttle. Melissa and I went there one time, since we liked watching airplanes and then I picked up my sister there on another snowy night in 2005. Both visits were relatively short.

But this one was the shortest. It took no time at all to drop my stepmother off and then head to the next destination. Leaving me with remembering the first trip, 29 years ago. I didn’t really want to.

Those who are hurting from the loss of loved ones, no matter how long ago, this holiday season, I see you.

I am you.

Decembers have hurt in varying degrees since I spent a final Christmas week with my mother, dying of cancer in her 40s, in 1993. She passed days later. That sent me into a skid, a long and dark time in my life. Though I was foolish to think Mom dying was as bad as it would get. Eight years later, three days after Christmas at a hospital in New York, at the happiest moment of my life, another loss showed me how naive I had been. That led to another skid.

And a decade ago this month, I said goodbye to my grandmother. Three losses, all in December or immediately after. A few years ago my dad also almost died two days before Christmas. I distrust December.

To be sure, I have a lot of blessings in my life. I know how lucky I am.

Sorrow and grief don’t follow a straight path. They pop up when you least expect it. Could be a reminder of your past, and then you are back in it. Or December itself. Some years are better than others, but 2022 has been tougher.

But I know a lot of other people feel the same way this holiday season. It’s the most wonderful time of the year, I keep hearing. Except that for more people than you would think, it’s not. The loss could be weeks old or decades old, but we feel it. And it doesn’t happen in December.

And we can feel guilty, as I do, for feeling this way. I don’t want to drag down anyone’s joy. Maybe expressing my vulnerability here will provide some comfort to the others who have lost and are missing what was or never was.

And so I came here, a United Methodist Church near where I live, this Christmas Eve. I didn’t know anyone. The Methodist church – in Connecticut and Massachusetts, Maine and New York, and Pennsylvania and California – is where I spent four decades of meaningful time with four people I have loved so much. Three are relatives. All are no longer in this world, and this as close as I can get to them now. I haven’t been a regular churchgoer in 18 years and haven’t been since my grandfather died 10 years ago.

This is where I needed to be Christmas Eve.

May someone look and feel for you the way that Mary does for George Bailey when their eyes meet when they are grown up in “It‘s a Wonderful Life.” When that happens, love her the same and never leave her.

One of my favorite stories to write as a young reporter had to do with weather, and every year someone had to do the traditional article about the chances for a white Christmas.

I didn’t do that story every year, but I always tried, no matter where I was. It was always a fun story.

There was only one place I lived where you could be as close to guaranteed of snow on the ground on Christmas: Caribou, Maine. I saw a story in The Washington Post that there’s a 95 percent chance of a White Christmas every year. There was a 97 percent of a White Christmas in Caribou, Maine, in the ’90s. I remember writing that story back then, but it’s not online. I did find one, from the same newspaper, online from 2015.

Either way, there’s pretty epic snow in Caribou and the rest of Aroostook County, the very top of Maine, every year. It gets an average of 97 inches of snow a year, and recent years it’s been over 100 inches a year.

That’s not the highest average amount snow in the United States, records that according to one search I made are Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan, and Syracuse, New York, each over 100 inches. But Caribou’s 97 inches every season beats places that you wouldn’t think, from Buffalo (a mere 93 inches) and International Falls, Minnesota (64.8 inches). It’s even higher than Anchorage, Alaska’s 73.1 inches.

But there have been plenty of stories about Caribou’s Christmas snow fame, from the Boston Globe and and United Press International, among others.

I grew up in New England, so I’m not a stranger to winter weather. But I grew up in Connecticut and Massachusetts, which is nine or so hours from Caribou and a world away from what I was used to. A winter in Connecticut is nothing like a winter in Caribou.

I lived in Maine from 1996 until 2001, all but one of those years in Caribou. (The other year was near Bangor, in the center of the state.) I had spent a week or so in Wisconsin, one of the coldest ever recorded there, when my mother was dying in the winter of 1993-94. I don’t remember it above zero that entire time I was there. It was bitter cold.
So I thought, when I moved to Maine three years later, that I was ready. I was wrong.

Caribou is next-level cold, as is the rest of northern Maine. It’s Potato Country, and potato fields are everywhere. It’s small (about 9,000 residents) and about 10 miles away is the city of Presque Isle, which isn’t much bigger. And there are a whole lot of small towns within about a 50-mile radius.

It gets cold and it gets snowy up there. The first full year I was there, 1997, it snowed on Halloween, about 8 inches. Halloween went on as scheduled. They are hardy souls up there. Look up snow and Caribou on YouTube and you will see what I mean.

And there’s snow on the ground almost every Christmases. I was looking it up and since 1940, there have only been four snowless Christmases — 1957, 2001, 2006 and 2010 — which is incredible if you think about it. Compare that to my hometown, near New Haven, Connecticut, where there’s only a 31 percent chance of snow on Christmas since 1940. There have only been 14 in my lifetime, although my first Christmas, 1967, was a White Christmas. So was the year before.

But Caribou was different. Snow on Christmas was one of the benefits of living there. So was having one of the most fabulous, comfortable summers — if short — than I could ever imagine. The downside was that it got awful cold from December through March every year. And it got dark quite early around the winter solstice, only about eight hours of sun a day, with sunset on Dec. 21 just before 4 p.m. That took some getting used to.

The year before, I was working in Caribou at the newspaper for about a month, filling in, in late November until just before Christmas. It snowed, quite a bit, while I was there. But where I lived, about three hours away near Bangor, it hadn’t snowed at all.

Christmas 1997, I was up in Caribou as a resident, having moved there about two months before for work. I had always wanted to live in Caribou, ever since I heard classic WTIC-AM host Bob Steele give the weather in Caribou every day on his morning show.

Yes, it’s true: I made a career choice based on a radio show I heard when I was a kid.
That Christmas Eve 1997, we had gone to the late-evening candlelight service at the church we had found. It was starting to snow when we arrived and on our way out with the candles it had begun to stick on the ground and on the road.

It had been a long time since we had seen snow on Christmas Eve. There’s only about a 20 percent chance in Connecticut, where I had lived from when I got back from California in 1984 to 1996.
We drove around town afterward, marveling at the big flakes falling and the way the Christmas lights reflected in the snow. We listened to carols on the radio and were alone on the road as we circled around town, the snow making it even more Christmasy.

This was the first time either of us had been away from our families at Christmas, 10 hours’ drive, and we weren’t going back home to Connecticut for the holidays. We didn’t really know anyone yet. The Christmas Eve snow made us feel a little more at home.

I still think of that moment on Christmas Eve into early Christmas morning as a warm Christmas memory.

I thought about that the other day when I saw an article in The Washington Post about the chance of a White Christmas across the country. Like I said, Caribou came out very well with its 95 percent chance. But the highest amount of snow falling on Christmas since 1940? It was that Christmas Eve into Christmas Day in 1997, when 8.7 inches eventually fell.

That made me smile.

An epic winter snowstorm is about to hit the East Coast and the Midwest, where I live. It’s a little unclear what’s going to happen, but the forecasts are kind of worrisome: A couple of inches of snow atop rain that’s been falling on and off all day, then 60-mph winds that will bring an Arctic cold front that will drop temperatures to just below zero.

Everything could flash freeze, making driving hazardous.

I’ve been through enough snowstorms — and even my share of ice storms — that I’m not looking forward to whatever happens tomorrow. I don’t have anywhere to go. I’m working all day, but remotely. I have several assignments that are tomorrow and we’re lightly staffed because of the holiday. Plus I have to write whatever news stories happen tomorrow. (I don’t know what’s going to happen but today was a pretty busy news day.)

I’ll admit that not having to drive anywhere takes the edge off of worrying about a big part of the storm. A lot of things are going to stop tomorrow, and the authorities have asked people who don’t have to travel to stay off the roads. I’m happy to do my part.

But I am concerned about another consequence of an ice storm: The loss of electricity and heat. I’m not clear on what might happen if there’s a power failure at my house. Technically, I suppose I could still have heat — thanks, natural gas — but electricity could be a problem. A big problem. I am not prepared at the moment for a big ice storm and the potential for power outages.

What it’s time to do is charge up the iPhones and MacBook batteries, and make sure the portable battery I have for this occasion — which can power devices for a few hours — will be ready if needed.

And then wait. Guess we’ll see what happens.

I’ve been obsessed lately about holes in brick walls.
In the 116-year-old building I work in, there are a lot of them. It seems like every one has a story.

This building was first occupied in 1906, four years before my oldest grandparent was born. It’s along the river and part of this region’s long industrial history, a remnant of what the Rust Belt used to be since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution.

That industry, which literally built and powered the United States in the 1800s and 1900s, is a shadow of what it used to be.

The city I’ve lived in for the past decade or so has a storied history, famous sports teams, and an innovation and eds & meds economy that has helped imagine a future.

Gradually, even in the time that I’ve been here, pieces of that industrial history have been refurbished and given new life. This building is certainly like that. It was a 500,000-square-foot, six-story cargo terminal, next to a cement plant and other industry, for decades. Then it was acquired by a commercial real estate company, noted in this city for their innovative work, and it’s been slowly transformed into a series of offices.

We’ve only been here a year and I’ve been here less than that, since we didn’t go back to the office until May 2022, more than two years after we and most white-collar workers were forced out from the Covid-19 pandemic. But it’s been a joy to work here, not only for the refurbishment that will ultimately cost $100 million when it’s all done, but also because of the building’s character.

It’s terrific. There are so many nooks and crannies and even though I’ve only been on the ground floor, the first level and the floor my office is on, I’ve appreciated what I’ve seen.

Now to the holes.

There’s brick everywhere, mostly painted over white, and bubbly and bulging, depending on the condition of the mortar and the bricks themselves. And there are holes in the bricks, some large, some small, all over the place. There doesn’t seem to be a rhyme or reason for most of them, although some of them clearly had important use that is still apparent today.

Even if they are just holes.

But others, it’s hard to tell. And I’ve been wondering.

Like this hole. It’s small enough for me to put my finger in — I have pretty small fingers — but I can’t seem to put my finger in what it’s for. It’s not bothering me, per se, I’d love to know more. What did this space look like before 2016, when the building was bought? What happened here, what kind of work and how many people, in all the decades between 1906 and 2016?

And whatever was in the hole, and all the holes, what happened to them?

There are a few clues. I was walking back to the office a few hundred feet away, sort of taking notice of all the holes that up until recently I had just sort of passed by. Then I saw a washer and bolt orphaned along the brick wall. That’s obviously what was in at least some of the holes.

I sort of wondered why that washer and bolt were left in place. There are a lot of holes and not a lot of bolts.

I don’t have much experience when it comes to old buildings. Most of the places I’ve lived in, including all the way through childhood, were either younger than me or not too much older. My maternal grandparents’ house was older, probably 100 years old by the time I came around, in an old and dignified section of Newton, Massachusetts. And my first newspaper had once been a train station and was modeled on a building in Siena, Italy. But neither had the level of stories, it seemed to me then, that my new/old office building does.

There was one place, however, where I lived in the mid-1990s, that reminds me a lot about this. It’s in Beacon Falls, Connecticut, and before it was converted to apartments in the mid-1980s, it had been some type of mill. Beacon Mill Village still retained that look on the outside, four stories and a little under 200 units, red brick and with some of the mill infrastructure still intact, inside and outside.

I had a two-bedroom, corner apartment there in 1995 and 1996. It was glorious, with 15-foot high ceilings and windows that were almost that tall, floor to ceiling. The carpets were plusher than I had ever seen before, even more plush than my maternal grandparents’ house, which you could sink into. The exposed brick was everywhere, it was buffed and classy, and the inside had been transformed into a chic living space for the 20-something I was. I lived there alone for most of the time I was there.

I didn’t have any particular affinity for Beacon Falls, a small town off the highway between Bridgeport and Waterbury. I worked in Norwalk at the time, about a 45-minute drive on a good day. I actually don’t remember why I moved there. It was closer than living in New Haven, where I did when I worked in Norwalk. But it wasn’t that much closer, and I didn’t at the time have any family within 25 minutes or so. And it was about that far to my graduate school classes in New Haven.

But it was wonderful.

I’ve lived a lot of places. I’ve moved about three dozen times, thanks to my parents’ divorce, my mother’s remarriage to someone who worked for the Navy and got transferred a lot, and then an itinerant newspaper career. But in terms of the bricks and mortar, not taking into account either the loved ones or the location, Beacon Mill Village was the best place I’ve ever lived.

Being in the corner, on the second floor, on the street but not on the main street, helped. It was both quiet and secluded, but not that far away from everything. It was quick to go down the stairs or the elevator to the parking lot. And when it snowed, which it did a lot in that winter, laying on my bed, surrounded by the biggest windows I had ever seen on two sides, the effect was stunning.

I really enjoyed living there.

Plus it was the best kitchen I had, big and modern and I loved cooking at the time.

All around, a great place.

I also enjoyed exploring that building, inside and out. It was historic and yet had all the trappings of modernity, too. It was almost like I could touch, if I looked closely, the history and the people who had been in there in the building’s former life.

I thought of that today when I started looking a little closer at my office building. Beacon Mill Village is red brick and an apartment building in a valley in Connecticut, 400 or 500 miles away from where I live now. I haven’t even been by the place since 2007. I just don’t get back to Connecticut much and if I do, it’s usually on the Merritt Parkway or I-95. Beacon Falls is out of the way.

Anyway, I’ve been thinking a lot of holes in brick walls lately.