Palisades, Devils Tower, Tower Park

I’m sitting on the soft brown couch in Riverdale (the Bronx), listening to the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, little Victoria kicking her legs and waving her arms. Andrew is munching on Lucky Charms in between kissing his baby sister.

    Victoria was born 40 minutes after David died. She’s now two months old. It will always be easy to remember the date. Will I remember it more for the death or the life? The life I think. Every year Victoria will change; she’ll have her first birthday, her fifth, her sixteenth. David’s date will be static, slowly fading into the past, but never forgotten.

    Xiomara and I stroll with the grandkids to Wave Hill, a public garden in Riverdale west of Van Cortlandt Park with greenhouses, lawns, two historic homes and spectacular views of the Hudson and the New Jersey Palisades.


The sheer brown cliffs of the Palisades, with their strong vertical lines, remind me of Devils Tower (click on the first image for a slideshow) in Wyoming (featured in Close Encounters of the Third Kind).

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    It’s been a beautiful long autumn. The reds and fiery oranges have fallen on my favorite stretch of Mass. Ave, where Route 2A splits off from Routes 4 and 225, across from Tower Park. In Walgreens’ parking lot, young trees, spectacular in the bright sunshine, seem like flaming torches in between the parked cars.