Insomnia Rules

And I don't mean that in a good way. Anyway, here I am. Sarah is not my actual name but what I might have been named, after my mother's best friend who had died some time before I was born. My father didn't want my mother to be sad (or at least that's the story) so I was named something different. It's all part of that mysterious past, a younger mother that I didn't know and her attachment to the mysterious Sarah, who she roomed with, along with their two babies, during the war when their husbands were overseas.

Actually there was even another name before Sarah, a name that was officially on my birth certificate and then changed. I'll save that one for later, perhaps--but that one was changed because of my grandmother's objections. I feel compassion for my mother, now, long after her death, that she had to endure everyone's well-meaning or not so well-meaning interventions.

I'm not sure what this blog is going to be about: my life as a part-time academic and full-time editor? my ruminations on the infuriating and joyous city that I live in? (and why is it that I now hear in my head Robert De Niro portentously commenting on "my joy, my heartache, my East, my West Side" in that very objectionable ad that he did for American Express? How, how could he?) Anyway, I will try to stick to my own thoughts if that is possible and report most truthfully on all noteworthy New York happenings.

I am not sure how people get connected to other people doing this blog thing or how people will find me. But I am feeling that I need to find my voice and maybe this will help. At any rate, it might give me something to do during these insomniac hours.

Here's a little New York story to get the ball rolling: Yesterday, I was stuck in a Blockbuster store in the furthest reaches of Brooklyn, trying to take out some DVDs for my most beloved older brother (the baby in the World War II story above) who is unable to walk or talk after his stroke more than a year ago and lives in a nursing home now. It had been a hot, long day already, and nothing seemed doable; the staff were not just rude but aggressively hostile (or so it seemed to me). I needed to fill out the application to open an account and then wait all over again for someone to pay attention to me. The vibe in the place was just chaotic. But then there was this little blond-haired boy, not more than five or six, whose father spoke only Russian but wanted (I gathered) to open an account. So the little boy was very painstakingly trying to sound out the words on the application and then translate them for his father. "Excuse me," he kept saying in his little piping voice to the rude staff people (who were so charmed by him they forgot to be rude), "do we write our address here?" And then, the more important question: "Excuse me. . . . Can I get two games?"