Grand Central Station
Written on February 1st, 2013, this is the 100th birthday of Grand Central Station. That means that when my mother, Freda Berlowitz Young, was born, Grand Central was 9 years old. That means that on the day this is being written, Freda would be 91. That seems impossible.
Mother grew up in the Bronx. She graduated from Theodore Roosevelt High School at the age of 16, a member of Mensa, and had to go to work. She took the subway from the Bronx to Grand Central Station every day. It took a long time. She hated it. She hated the train and the dirty, dreary station. In 1938, Grand Central looked exactly like it looks in cinema noir films: black and white and poorly lit and crowded chin to shoulder as far as you could see during rush hours, nearly everyone wearing a hat. Bumping.
She always said that she would “never step foot inside Grand Central Station again as long as I live.” It brought back the days when she was working and living with her parents in a 1 bedroom apartment where she and her sister Minka shared a sofa bed and she gave her weekly paycheck to her father. By the time her knight in shining armor showed up, she was used to hating Grand Central Station. It was both a habit and a mantra. Grand Central gave her a name to which she could attach her sadness and anger.
Grand Central Station stood for her past, and as fast as she could, she left her past behind. She never wanted to go back to the Bronx or even Manhattan, but she figured she would have to go to those places eventually for one reason or another. She COULD, however, keep the vow to never go back to Grand Central Station. That one, she could control.
Jackie Kennedy decided to wave her magic wand over Grand Central and make it gleaming, smooth shiny marble, twinkly stars in the domed ceiling filled with lore. She turned it into a place that brought back the romance of traveling by train, of perhaps meeting a sweet and possibly sinister new someone on the train, or falling asleep and being awakened by a kiss from your sweet and not at all sinister young husband. All the romance of comings and goings. Of people going home. Or away. Of wanderlust when that word still had a dreamy and bravely optimistic connotation. Jackie brought back the feeling by bringing back the architecture. Grand Central was transformed into one of the most beautiful interiors in New York with its sky blue aqua and gold and white colors, and squeaky clean windows with the light streaming in, and the clock on all four sides, echoes, grit-free corners, pleasant smells, and nice things to eat and drink, and covetable spaces in which to hold fund-raising balls. I loved it there when Jackie’s project was complete, and I still do, even though it isn’t now as good as it was when Jackie first did it. I remember.
In 1997, my friend Trudy came with Jesse and me from Portland to spend Christmas week in New York. THE week. We stayed in my friends’ upper East Side apartment while they were away for the holidays. We hijacked Mother from Piscataway, NJ and forced her to Grand Central Station. She was actually really scared, shaking as I escorted her from the cab into the building. We all made our way to Michael Jordan’s balcony and stood there looking down and looking up.
While still holding my hand tightly, Freda gave it good long slow look. I felt the moment when she relaxed, let her shoulders down and accepted the fact that things CAN change for the better – a foreign concept to her. She could see that New York was no longer Freda-scary, that Grand Central was no longer Freda-scary, that people actually really like it there. Love it. That day in that place, Freda allowed herself to understand all that. She got it. She felt it. And those particular old uglies untied themselves from the rest of the bunch and dissolved just like that. Gone forever. She liked it! She really liked it! And liked being there with her grandson and me and my friend. She was really kinda sorta happy.
The cold winter light did stream through the windows as in A Winter’s Tale, and cold people were wrapped and rushing. There was a buzzy hush. Individual laughters could be heard while the glittering golden starry perfect shade of blue skied dome embraced the activity below.
It was a great and glorious day for Mother, maybe even more so for me as I witnessed it with empathy and pleasure. All thanks to Jackie. What could be more perfect than that? Much admired Jackie had helped my then 75 five year old, widowed mother open up to having a new experience, and thus ridding herself of a few of the badillion fears that were her DNA.
I have the pictures to prove all this. In the pictures you can tell that Freda understood that she had grown up some that day, learned something new and felt something new. It’s all right there. Plain as day. Nice pictures.
Happy birthday Grand Central Station. Happy Birthday Freda. You are both remembered, and I am smiling. — February 1, 2013 6:26 p.m. 27°