Safa means tranquil, serene, calm…I try

I was just telling a friend of mine that some things never change. I am 34 and a wannabe culinary genius (thanks to Paula Dean, S.outhern Living, and Foo.d Network). I’ve spent a lot of money on cookbooks, cookware and exotic ingredients over the years. Tonight’s dinner masterpiece was so delicious that there was hardly any left for hubby when he came home. Everytime I make it, it comes out just right.

Whether 4 or 34, beans and franks are still my favorite dinner. Hebre.w National or Nathans cut up in a pot with Bush’s Vegetarian baked beans…yummy!

Following the “memory lane” theme from my last post, I received some disturbingly weird closure to an incident from my youth.

When I was around 6, my mom and I returned home from running some errands. During this time we lived on the 3rd floor of an apartment building in Harlem. I remember I had to go to the bathroom real bad. The door had 2 locks on it. When my mom turned the bottom lock with her key, someone from inside the apartment locked the top lock. When she put the key in the top lock to unlock it, the bottom lock clicked from the inside. My mother assumed it was my dad being funny. This went on for about 4 or 5 rounds. Finally, she turned the key and the door opened.

When we got inside, we could see the window wide open in her bedroom (as the bedroom door was open). She ran to the window and I followed. We saw this man running down the alley with our TV on his shoulder and his female companion running with our other belongings. I guess the lady had to keep us at bay while he struggled down the fire escape with the TV!

As it turned out, the lady was a “friend” of the family and the man her boyfriend. Looking back now, I wonder why my parents just didn’t call the cops. Needless to say, the friendship ended. As I got older, I always saw Cheryl’s kids as they would visit their grandmother in the same neigborhood as my grandma. They always talked about how we grew up together and were like family. I don’t think they knew about what their mom had done some 10 years before.

I went home to New York a few weeks ago. We got on the subject about what happened b/c my sister told us about the death of Cheryl’s son last year. My dad asked if I remembered what happened. Of course I never forgot. I was not prepared for what he told us was the end of this story…

He said a few days later, he and a few of his buddies went looking for the guy. They found out he was at this resturant. They got on the bus (I know, a bunch of ghetto broke vigilantes) to go to this resturant. At a red light, they clearly see him eating through the window of the resturant. They ring the bell on the bus to exit about a half block up from the resturant. They got off the bus and began walking back towards the place. My dad says they walk in the resturant and ole dude is face down in his lunch with a bullet hole to the head. Someone shot him in between the time my dad saw him on the bus, and they walked a half block back to the resturant…all of 7 minutes? My dad said he was eating alone so someone must have walked in, did it, and left.

I never knew that happened. Now I’m not saying it was justice for his breaking into our apartment, but man! My dad was like, yeah we were just gonna eff him up! I don’t know if they ever caught who did it…AND NO, IT WASN’T REALLY MY DAD!

This evening as I was receiving my daily 15 minute shoulder/neck massage (hubby promised to try to do this until the baby is born…in large part due to subject of this post), my mind began to wander and I remembered something from when I was around 8.

We used to go the playground in my housing complex in New York City to play during the summer. Anyone from New York knows the generic make up of these playgrounds. They had monkey bars (usually shaped in an arc), two or three concrete hollow “barrels” or logs that we used to sit in and chill. It’s amazing to remember that we were small enough to fit 4 in at a time. The playground had a few benches and maybe a small basketball court.

Anyway, one summer a white man began coming to the playground to “work-out” on the monkey bars…do flips and stuff. We all thought it was cool and a bit weird for an old (probably in his 30s) white guy to come to a playground in the “projects” to play on monkey bars. When he came, there were usually no more than 5 of us little black and puerto rican girls there.

He wore those now too-short gym shorts (circa 1979-80) that were usually navy blue with white lining around the legs…remember they did an upward dip on the side of your thigh? Anyway, I don’t remember at what point it happened, but he would invite us to stand around (or maybe we stood on our own?) and watch him hang upside down by his legs. We soon noticed that he wore no underwear and his “thing” would hang down out of his shorts. We never said anything and he acted as though he didn’t notice. He never really talked to us and of course no adults ever came to the park with us. He came a few more times (always sans undies) then just stopped.

I wonder what became of him. Did he ever wait until only one girl was left in the park and then molest her? Did he eventually move on to even more sinister acts? I don’t know. However, I know now that it was no accident that he chose a playground populated by black and spanish little girls in the inner-city without supervision to hang upside down on bars with no drawers on!

Man do I wish I could recapture some parts of my youth. Things were so different growing up . In 1979 I was 7 seven years old. I remember like it was yesterday. I lived on 159th and Amsterdam Ave. On long, hot summer nights the kids got to stay out real late while our parents sat on the stoop listening to the radio (or the records from the stereo with the speaker propped in the window). I just remember jumping rope, playing hand games, making up dances. The dances that comes to mind are bus stop and hustle.

I am thinkng about this now because I just finished having a play date for my son. Since we don’t celebrate birthdays, I have to be creative with his entertainment. One or two times a year I throw a “themed” play date that includes pizza and ice-cream/cake. Today’s theme was a silly hat party. He and 6 of his little friends designed their own hats. I bought these foam visors for the boys and foam tiarra-style hats for the girls. I purchased all of these little stickers, jewels, letters, etc and the mommies helped. It was so much fun. Aside from the fact that we don’t do birthdays, kids in general nowadays have “play appointments”. I find this so “new”.

I don’t remember my mother ever doing anything like this. I can’t remember having tumbling classes, little league t-ball, dance & twirl class, or mommy and me classes. It may be that I just wasn’t exposed to it b/c we were from modest means (ie…po folk). I often wonder, although I think I know the answer, if all of this new-age play/organized activities mean anything. I wonder will my son remember this anymore than he would remember other events of his childhood.

I remember and relish my memories of my mom holding my hand as she knocked on the apartment door on the 2nd floor to see her friend. I just walked into the kids’ room and we played. They weren’t necessarily expecting us most of the time. We had a ball. I never had to take tumbling or “let’s cooperate” class. I mean, I tumbled with my cousins and if I didn’t cooperate, I’d catch a bad one! My son is an only child (for all intents and purposes). My 2 step daughters are 10 and 16 (he’s 3). He does play with his class mates…but they are all girls! He is in a homebased daycare with 3 other children. I love it though…he’s so intelligent. I have two young newphews that he is close to and gets to play and rough-house with. However, I like to limit and watch that closely because, well er…how can I say this? My nephews are Ghettronic! The 4 year old walks around saying he’s a gangster and hustler and the 7 year old is addicted to tv and x-box. We have no x-box, play station, etc and the only tv in our home is kept in the basement. My son watches it once or twice a week for an hour or so to watch the Noggin Channel (Maisy, Franklin & Blues Clues). The other day, the 4 year old said, “auntie” he stuck his middle finger at me”. I was so angry. I told him, “he’s 3 and doesn’t know what that means and never even heard that phrase before”. My sister is great but young and I try to remind her that she really shouldn’t let them watch videos, etc.

My point is …I am tired. These kids and their moms wore me out! It was all so simple then. Ya know, back in the day when I was young.