A story in my family's lore involves dear family friend Amanda -- Mike and Loni's girl. She and D2 were born less than a month apart, and were very close friends all through childhood, especially after her family bought the Andrew damaged house right across the street from ours in 1993.
Amanda was, and remains, a delightfully ebullient young woman -- now a USC Film School grad living in LA with a very nice boyfriend, who we all met when the couple was here for little brother Chris's wedding.
Loni was, to put it subtly, an overprotective Mom -- always far more comfortable having D2 there than Amanda at our house, especially when it was just Wifey home. Wifey was a great Mom, but Loni and I shared anxiety about safety issues -- and there'd always be the "Is Dave home" question. We laughed it off.
But for D2's 8th birthday, we planned a trip to Orlando, and Islands of Adventure, and told D2 she could bring a friend. Of course she chose Amanda, and the two girls had a banner day at the park. 2000 was the time of flip phones, and on the way home, we called Loni and Mike to let them know Amanda was fine. We put Amanda on the line, and she said, and I recall the exact words, excitedly spoken: "Mommy -- today was the BEST DAY of my life!" Loni said she was happy, but you could here the disappointment that her daughter's best day excluded her. We all laughed at that, of course, but "Today is the BEST DAY of my life" became canonical in our family.
Well -- through the wonder of FaceBook (tm) posts, I saw that 2 days ago was October 16, and that day, back in 1969, when I was eight years old, was to that point the best day of MY life.
As a boy in suburban Long Island at that place in time, I had two passions: astronauts and the NY Mets. And 1969 was quite a year for both. My hero Neil Armstrong walked on the moon in July, and we watched from a TV in Tel Aviv, where my parents had taken me on our first airplane trip. I still recall the huge cheers that erupted all over the street -- Israelis kind of dug Americans, of course.
We had a nice connection to the mission, too. Grumman Aerospace was on LI, and our across the street neighbor was Mel Paiken, who was a WW II vet like my Dad, but also an engineer, and he worked on the LEM, which was the Lunar Landing Module. I remember lots of pats on the back, and "Atta Boys" directed to Mel when we returned. Every American was proud. We had a different country then.
But even more of a miracle were the '69 Mets. They had been awful since they started, when I was a year old, in 1962, and had improbably made it all the way to the Series, against the mighty Baltimore Orioles, who had THREE 20 game winners on their pitching staff: Cuellar, McNally, and Palmer. I was really into baseball as a boy.
The Mets were up 3 to 1, and the possible clinching Game 5 was at Shea. All during the school day, most of the boys fidgeted, and crowded around whoever had brought transistor radios.
My third grade teacher was Miss Dempsey, a pretty young single woman, who always spent LOTS of time with my kindergarten teacher Miss MacNamara, also single. My friends and I kind of figured out by high school that there was a reason other than planning elementary school lessons that they were ALWAYS together, but back then, in the Levittown schools, such a love sure did NOT speak its name.
Miss Dempsey finally had enough of the fidgeting, and I recall this clearer than what I had for breakfast yesterday: she said "Ok -- all of you. School's dismissed. Let's Go Mets!" None of us waited for her to change her mind.
I raced to the bike rack, unlocked my yellow Schwinn Stingray, and rode home as fast as I could, just leaving my bike out front instead of putting it in the garage, as I was always told to do.
I blew past my Mom, in the kitchen as usual, and plopped in front of the TV in the playroom. I'm pretty sure it was black and white -- we became a "family of color" the following year, I think.
I had made it. Davy Johnson of the Orioles hit a fly to left. Funny -- he would later manage the Mets in '86 to their only other Series title -- but by then I had far less passion towards the team. Another of my heroes, Cleon Jones, caught the ball, went down on one knee, and it was over. The Mets were world champions!
Most of the Dads were still at their jobs in the City, so there was only sporadic horn honking on the street -- from the older siblings who had cars.
But my guys had done it. I was joyful -- in a way I would come to know again and again with my beloved Miami Hurricanes. And theirs is a mature love, sort of -- I became a fan as a college freshman.
But 8 year old David understood 8 year old Amanda. There is something amazingly precious about having the best day of one's life -- up to that point!
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