I wish I could tell you exactly how many yards it was for me to get to Roxbury Park to give you the visual. A hop. Not even a skip and a jump. I walked two houses up, crossed Olympic and I was there.
That is where I spent my summers. Basically, doing absolutely nothing. Kind of like a Seinfeld episode. No sunblock. No checking in with my mother. I didn’t excel at anything in Roxbury Park. Not at caroms. Not the monkey bars. And certainly not the rings.
At the rings, I watched other kids adept at swinging quickly back and forth from one to the next. I stood high up one day, grabbed ahold and leapt off, but unable to catch the next ring, which seemed to move further and further away, I landed back where I started. I spent long days trying to push myself further until I did finally grab onto that second one, which was such a victory. Then I kept swinging back and forth, trying to gain the momentum I would need to get to the next, but failed and dropped to the ground. Again I tried, over and over, all summer until I was finally able to go back and forth, leaving the other kids waiting in line, drumming their fingers. And like a monkey, I would copy what the other ring junkies would do just before taking over the set for their performance. They would dig their hands into the sand and rub some of it between their palms for better friction. Or use chalk. It never seemed to work for me, but I did it to look cool, like them. Inevitably all us monkeys ended up with blisters.
In the thirty years I lived in Los Angeles, I experienced a wide
array of social gatherings including a séance, a cocktail party in a
cancer ward and an evening of Pictionary at the home of the late Don
Knotts. But, I never went to a pot-luck dinner.
Even in turbulent time like these there are certain constants in life – like noodles. Noodles have played a very important role in my life. Whenever I got sick my mother would cook luchen (‘luxshun’ for those jews and non-jews unfamiliar with yiddish pronunciation) and cheese. I have vivid recollections of her bringing me a steaming bowl (not just a bowl but a BOWL) of wide egg noodles (like pappardelle but eggier and chewier) bathed in butter, cottage cheese, cream cheese, cinnamon and a touch of sugar and salt. It was the only thing I had to look forward to when I got sick. If the noodles were hot enough, the sugar and butter would melt into a glaze over the whole dish. And in college when I got sick I would routinely make myself a bastardized version of the dish usually with just spaghetti, salt, butter and cottage cheese. As I got older and began moving around the country for different jobs the luchen and cheese unfortunately receded into my history. 
It's autumn and that means....
When Chloe was three, we lived on Martha’s Vineyard. She was an unusual three year old. She didn’t like pink, or dolls but her most unusual quality at that tender age, was her love of lobster.