Last week, a Swiss music publisher contacted me because he is planning to publish the complete catalog of a composer with whom my mother extensively collaborated back in the 1950s and 60s. While I was trolling the Internet looking for some information he might find useful for the book, I came upon this snippet on a site designed to inform relocating businesspeople:
About Little Falls
Little Falls is a medium sized community found in the northeastern portion of the state of New Jersey. Little Falls has a population of approximately ten thousand nine hundred residents, and is technically considered a township of the Garden State. Little Falls is situated in Passaic County, and is currently governed by Mayor Eugen Kulick. Little Falls has a history dating back past the community’s incorporation as a township in the year eighteen sixty eight. ..The educational needs of Little Falls are met by School #1, School #2, School #3, Passaic Valley Regional High School, and Montclair State University as well as other regional private institutions, colleges, and universities. Two notable residents of Little Falls are illusionist David Blaine and author Lois Utz.
My reading had been going well until that last sentence, which stopped me dead in my tracks. Whoever penned this bit of content—obviously well vetted—had perhaps fallen under the influence of David Blaine. My mother has not wandered the streets of Little Falls, New Jersey, for 23 years.
Or has she?
I started to give this a little thought and began to wonder if, perhaps, she’d taken up with Blaine the Illusionist on one of his trips to the Great Beyond and was now back to sauntering Stevens Avenue, hanging out at Tony’s Pizza, having a slice with her old friend Vickie. And with all the hullabaloo surrounding reincarnation, messy as it must be, maybe it just sort of slipped her mind to try and let me know.
After all, Little Falls is the kind of town it’s very easy to slide in and out of. When I went back for my college reunion in 2003, I walked the streets just the way I used to when I was 12--and seriously, nothing had changed. My best friend Frankie’s family still had their grotto to the Virgin Mary set on the front lawn in the tomato garden. The DeFazios were unloading groceries from their 1966 Plymouth Barracuda, which still had nary a scratch on its black hull. And 2 blocks down, Kenny Sheleigh was still dragging a lawnmower across the huge patch of grass adjacent to his rambling old Victorian. As I walked by, almost 20 years since the time I’d last walked by, Kenny yelled out, “Hi, Heidi!” without missing a beat. I’m quite certain he’d never noticed that I’d been gone since the Reagan Era.
So perhaps my mom had spent some time wandering the Elysian Fields, then decided that she preferred Duva Field, where Little League and basketball are a big deal on weekday nights. Maybe all the stress and strain of hanging out with a bunch of blissed-out angels finally got to her, and she decided that if it was good enough for Tony Soprano...
And after all, it would be hard for me to spot her. I'm more than 2,000 miles away, and believe it or not, there's no webcam trained on Little Falls, New Jersey. She could have completely snuck in under the radar--and there Kenny Sheleigh would have been with his lawnmower and golf cap, cheerily greeting her. "Hi, Lois!" "You always look so nice in that dress."
And after all, it would be hard for me to spot her. I'm more than 2,000 miles away, and believe it or not, there's no webcam trained on Little Falls, New Jersey. She could have completely snuck in under the radar--and there Kenny Sheleigh would have been with his lawnmower and golf cap, cheerily greeting her. "Hi, Lois!" "You always look so nice in that dress."
My mom didn't give a hang about electronic devices. Before she died, she’d never even touched a computer, and generally, dropping the needle on a record was about as big a technological challenge as she endured before calling for my help. So, obviously, even in 2009, she’s not going to be tweeting or blogging or Goggling or Bing-ing her progeny to say, “Yo! Word up! I’m back in the hood!” More likely she’d be chatting up a Sephardic poet at her favorite breakfast spot, doing some sketching, writing a little abstract free verse, dancing with some 20-year-old boy at a club, and shaking her head at all the displaced NYers, moving so fast with their heads buried in their screens. “What are they doing that for? They could be in Venice, cruising the canals in a gondola! Getting some sun on the Riviera! Painting the sky in New Mexico! Sipping au lait at a café in Paris! Eating cannoli in Italy!”
She would have been David Blaine’s friend, bought him cheesecake, flirted with him madly, and written a poem to fete him as he arose from being buried alive seeing visions.
Through all her struggles and challenges to her health, my mother believed in living life to the fullest. She had just enough French blood in her to speak fluent hédonisme et la vie de bohème--with a toast to Colette and Anais Nin. And even in death, I believe she’s still got it down.
