Still Remains

It was summer, maybe it was the first summer after we moved to America, maybe the second. Public television was airing the miniseries The Octopus late at night. My mother adored it and would stay up to see it. I was never much for mafia dramas, but I also never could go to bed on time, and an entire summer passed with us keeping company in the basement of our old house. She would clean--she was always cleaning when she got the chance--and I would build fantasy worlds out of LEGO blocks, knowing full well I was too old to be playing with them still. When the latest Octopus episode would be done, we would turn on the Simon & Garfunkel concert in Central Park CD a little too loud, and I'd sing along as she vacuumed the books one by one. I didn't understand why people booed as they thanked Ed Koch, I didn't know why the guys who were selling loose joints would donate half of their proceeds to the city that night, but I always smiled when they mentioned how nice it was to do a neighborhood concert. When I hear studio versions of The Boxer, I miss Art Garfunkel's misstep in the beginning, and I always hear 500,000 people cheering at the bit in the Sound of Silence about seeing 10,000 people maybe more. To this day, those are some of the best times I've spent with my mother. I think she knows.