Ann Ferro: Singing my own song

The crunching sound of boots on snow, the brisk air clearing the remnants of the night’s sleep and the distant growl and scrape of the plows combine to make a morning serenade in the valley where Marcellus has nestled through many a winter. Whether the frigid sounds of winter or the more salubrious sounds of summer, the village sings its own songs, songs I have heard for most of my life. But I’ve heard other songs, too. Songs and sounds wrapped in life and experience and much love.
Someone asked me where I was from. I replied almost instantly that I was originally from Brooklyn. I was forever molded, created by family and surroundings there. I am from Brooklyn, by way of Carmel, N.Y., but firmly a resident in long standing in Marcellus. I have memories of all of these places, each one capturing a portion of my experience, carving out meaning that makes me who I am.
I remember clearly the smell of the ocean, the sound of the big ocean liners entering the narrows as they headed for the port of New York. I remember crossing under Fourth Avenue at the subway stops and walking to school some seven blocks from home, of going to church every day. My father would hand my sister Kathleen and I subway fare and instructions to go to Rockefeller Center.
“They need to learn their way around,” he would tell my fretting mother.
I hear the sound of old men cheering at the bocce games on Third Avenue and the songs of the nuns at our Lady of Perpetual Help School. There are the sounds of siblings, tucked in bed, telling stories as they fall asleep.
I can easily call forth the mythical existence we lived as teens in Carmel – bus rides to school, band practices, football and basketball games, homework projects, trips to the “city” and long-time friends.
I remember riding with my mother every day to pick my Dad up at the railroad station in Brewster – a life my father gave us with his long commute each day.
I’ve lived in Central New York since 1958. I was a scholarship student at Syracuse University before the Dome.
I’ve lived in our house on First Street since 1967. I painted, dry walled, gardened and more to make the little house ours. I brought our children to this home from Community Hospital, set forth for two weddings and the joy of four grandsons to listen now to the quiet of a house filled with two aging adults and a seven cats … maybe eight. I’m not sure. Cats sing their own songs.
There are mountains of memories of dissonant tunes and sweet melodies, of exploration, innocence and reinvention. I’ve raised lots of money for good causes, had the unequalled privilege of teaching and taken an active part in local organizations. I have traveled, stayed home, spent glorious summers on a lake and hosted uncounted dinner parties for friends. And, of course, there are the cycles of weight gain and loss that figured (pun intended) in my biography.
For my spouse and I, we recognize that time is a thief and although we are so blessed to have our children and grandchildren, time and its minions have stolen facility and ability along with the accumulated experiences that make up a life. It is getting harder, but it is required that we do try to remember their fading melodies.
That girl who walked to school and mass every day in Brooklyn, now must use a cane to walk across the room. The energy and focus of the teenager who lived in Carmel has been modified to someone who remembers what energy and focus was like, while she is plotting how to get rid of weight that added as time subtracted.
And still, I remember the lullabies I sang to my babies and my grandchildren as they grow and I don’t.