Doing a Birdie at Orchard Beach

Orchard Beach, Bronx

Everywhere I heard different languages, the staccato Spanish of Puerto Ricans with the constant call to “Mira, mira”(look look). Then there was the richly embroidered Yiddish and Russian and Italian and the faces that went along with all the languages. I never tired of walking up and down Southern Boulevard, drawing an imaginary golden thread with my forefinger that tied everything together. I knew how to get home, waiting in the snow for the light to change green, snow that caused the city to become quiet in a gorgeous loneliness, running past tattered billboards and Nate’s candy store that sold red wax lips and egg crème sodas.  In the evening, apartment buildings blended back into the sky and there was a purple haze over everything.

Sometimes during the spring, my father took me on the subway to the last stop, Pelham Bay Station, where there was a green field filled with yellow dandelions. I collected them in my sweaty palm with a smell that tickled my nose and made me sneeze as we waited for the bus to take us to Orchard Beach where my father walked back and forth along the shoreline after a week of working in his shop. We’d find a place at the end of the beach tucked alongside one of the picnic areas where his Hungarian friends practiced hand balancing. My father lifted people over his head or balanced a woman on one foot while she held the other pointed in the air.

Mostly, I remember him teaching me to do shoulder stands and “birdies.” I approached him on the beach in a rhythm of 1-2-3-Jump! He’d coach me: “Stand up straight. Whatever you do, always stand up straight.” Then he’d grab me by the hips and quickly shift me over his head like a bucket on a Ferris wheel until I could see rows of beach umbrellas stretched along the sand.

Doing a Birdie

He’d tell me to look forward, head up
as I stood opposite him
on the sandy ripples of the beach.
We counted to three together.

I ran toward him and he raised me
over his head, over the beach
umbrellas, over the water
until I grazed
the clouds with my wings.

And when he let go and was
no longer there to lift me,
I flew away into my life.

–to be continued