Life Outside Camp Smith

GREAT AUNT MOLLY DROVE A RED VOLKSWAGON Rabbit. She was cool. Grandma Sutyak lived across the street from her and had a huge rock occupying most of her basement. Two houses further up Sandy lived, sometimes. Aunt Molly was Sandy’s grandmother. Grandma Suityak was another grandmother to Sandy but fun to visit, mainly because of her rock. 

Aunt Molly and her clan lived in New York. I lived in Connecticut. Yet the distance didn’t seem too far. I can drive the route in my sleep. I know where all the shortcuts are. Aunt Molly and my grandmother, Margaret, were best sisters. Sandy moved in with Molly when she was in middle school. I moved in with my grandmother when I started college. We both stayed a long time.  Great memories. A better understanding of caring and love for others to this day.

Sandy’s family owned a print shop on Washington Street, in Peekskill, New York. When I was a child, my family would drive one weekend a month to drop my dad off across the street from that print shop, at the New York Army National Guard. Literally, right across the street. We would stay the entire weekend with Aunt Molly. Armed with pillows and sleeping bags, we would rush into her house before the crack of dawn and claim our spots in her living room. My favorite memory of Aunt Molly? The glass-covered pedestal where her prized sponge cake would be, or, if she was short on time, glazed donuts!

I remember we would go later in the day on Saturdays to the print shop. I would dash past Buttons, the cockatoo, saying a quick “hello,” to go see my cousins designing and printing.  There were two buildings. One where all the ink and paper were, and the other one where the stat machine and my cousin, the designer, were. It was at that print shop where I experienced my first smell of ink. It was exciting. Then there was the drive home, back to Connecticut, with a trunk full of the best paper ever. It was an artist’s dream.

The bond between the smell of ink and myself is still as strong as the bond between Sandy and me. We are like mirror images of each other, even though there are a few years between us.  We do not feel the urge to contact each other on a regular basis. Our minds are one and the same. We each know where the other is and how the other thinks. She is the one person I call “family” these days. We are tight.

My mother and Sandy’s father, Lorman, were best cousins. You could always find him dining at a quiet table at Jeremiah’s, now NY Firehouse Grille, when not at the print shop. From what I know, they were always together growing up. Best buddies, like Sandy and I. I remember, when my mother passed, Lorman was quiet, quieter than he normally is. Sad, lost. As if a piece of his life was removed. It was moving to see how much my mother meant to him. 

I would feel the same way with Sandy. I can’t bear the day when one of us departs. This brings tears to my eyes.

AM – Visual Storyteller / Moments Told