BABES IN THE HOOD - by Heather McKeown

        Most flight attendants commute.  This is to say, we don't live near our base.  As mine is JFK and I call Vermont home, I do what most of us do; share a nice apartment with five good friends.  We're all different ages and stages but we're great housemates and truly like one another.  Love one another, actually.  I don't know what I'd do without the shared laughter, lessons and lives of these girls as I struggle against fatigue, homesickness and such.  It's a great set up!

        The day I was first invited to check this crashpad out, I was shown the room that would be mine and the kitchen and bathroom.  It seemed nice enough and the other occupants were to become inspirations to me in so many ways.  All that needed doing in the way of getting installed was to load a garbage bag with whatever was in my former abode and walk back to my new home away from home. So, I did.

        The funny thing about Kew Gardens, Queens, New York is that it's population is probably split pretty evenly between flight attendants, pilots and Hasidim with a good number of Russians and a sprinkling of Chinese folks thrown in for good measure.  There are two main commercial thoroughfares; Metropolitan and Lefferts Boulevards. On side streets, there are condos, statuesque homes, apartment buildings and brownstones with the bearing of old wise men.  My new home was to be the first floor of one of these brownstones and a strong, brick facade was the only thing that I remembered in detail following my introduction to the place.

        Garbage bag in one hand and crew baggage tagging along behind, I walked out of one crashpad and headed to my new digs.  I had a smile on my face and couldn't wait to settle in with some of the ladies I'd known for quite awhile and a few I'd never met.  Just as I came close to the line of houses, I saw a door open and out stepped a young Hasidim.  Orthodox Jews are some of my favorite people.  Around here, I love going out and walking among them on High Holy Days or the Sabbath.  It's the sense of family and wisdom I feel as I watch the children buzzing around their mothers and listen in on conversations between fathers and sons.  I love this!  It's like being on stage in FIDDLER ON THE ROOF again!  My children and I spent a summer rehearsing and performing in a stage made village of  Anatevka.  This is Kew Gardens and not a village in Russia during the time of the Czar so everyone's a bit more secure here.  Moods are lighter and children are happier here.  Thank G-d, eh?  I digress.

        “Oh, that man lives in my new building,”  I thought as I approached.  As I took the first step towards the man and the opened door, I said, “Hello!  I'm moving in here, today.”
        Without missing a beat, the young man opened the door a bit wider to accommodate my worldly possessions and offered a nasal, “That's nice.”
        “Thank you, Sir.  I think I'll be very happy in this apartment!”
        Again, “That's nice.”
        I passed him and entered into a living room which looked vaguely reminiscent of the one I'd seen an hour earlier.  There was a young woman wearing a long skirt, long-sleeved blouse and an obviously newly arrived wig,  sitting on a couch.  “Hello!  How are YOU?  I'm so glad to be moving in today!”
        She looked at me and said, “That's nice.”
        I looked around.  The gentleman was standing behind me, his wife on the couch hadn't moved a muscle and the little children that walked out of another room stopped and stared at me.  “OH...do Dee, Bonnie and Heather live here?”
        “No.” said the lovely lady.
        “OH! I'm in the wrong building!  I'm so sorry! I guess we'll be neighbors, though!”
        “That's nice.”  the couple said in tandem.

        I LOVE THIS NEIGHBORHOOD!  I exited and there wasn't a change of expression on one of the little family's faces.  Every time we've passed one another since that mistake, we nod and smile.  Now, that's nice!

        The children in our little nook are always doing something cute.  They have pogo sticks, take tentative runs up and down the sidewalks on little skateboards (usually with mothers watching and giving warnings), ride bikes and traipse along behind and around parental units.  Little boys, proud of their prayer shawls and brimmed black hats, little girls in longish cotton dresses skip along happily.  Schoolyards filled with uniformed boys on one side.  Giggling girls on the other.  Who wouldn't love this area?  Especially healing elements for me during my homesick days away from East Berkshire, are these sights and sounds.

        The other day, as I walked by some of the most beautiful houses in the area, I was picking up on the Sabbath vibe.  People out and about on a sunny summer day didn't know I was living vicariously in passing.  From quite a distance, I noticed a woman pushing one of those two-seater baby prams. I didn't know what it was about her, but the woman, in a long dress with some very big, loud print designs busily jouncing along, was eye-catching and attention-holding.  What was I seeing?  I was about 200 yards away but we were closing on each other and I couldn't take my eyes off her.  She was a mountain of a woman.  No less than six feet two inches and a solid weight about her.    The carriage seemed to be jacked up like one of those monster trucks seen in most rural towns in this country.  It was an odd picture, I thought.  Yet, there was something else that caused me to focus on this woman and her carriage.  As we came closer, I noticed she carried a wide, big white teeth showing smile on her face.  It was not a grin or a coy little curving of the lips.  NO!  It was a big fat half-open mouth pre-laugh happy face!  If I may understate, it beamed and invited all comers to converse.

        Still thirty or forty feet away, I couldn't hold back any longer.  “Hello!  You have two babies in there?  You look so happy!”
        “Come.  Come and meet my babies.  One is fourteen months, the other a month.  Such good little babies, too!”

        Now, the woman was elephantine but extremely statuesque.  Perfect posture, strength from every angle and a great ability to speak and be heard, laugh and be ladylike and chuckle with warmth.  I went to the carriage and she removed the netting.  One little boy stuck a clean, beautiful, semi-toothed smiling face out.  His soft, light brown curls fell onto his wide forehead.  He was perfection and loveable.  The month-old cherub was asleep in his little nest and also beautiful.  As I stared down at the babes, I heard a man's voice saying, “My wife!  She's 59 years old and these are our blessings. 59, I repeat and, yes, the were C-sections but blessings they are.  Yes?”

        I looked behind the proud-to-bursting mother and saw a shortish, grey/black bearded man, brimmed hat and black suit dutifully worn.  He must have been in his seventies but the twinkle in his eyes erased any preconceived notions I'd ever had about aging men.

        “Hello, sir!  The children are gorgeous!”
        “Well, they came as our blessings, yes?  My wife, at 59, look at her!  And such a mother!”
        I looked back to the face of this Jewish Madonna (yes, it could happen!) and said, “I'm going to be sixty and I'd love to have more children!”
        She said, “We married late in life and we're now parents.  Who knew?  Our blessings!” she laughed out loud and finished with a soft, knowing smile as she looked down at me.  “It could happen.”
        “I'm afraid it can't, actually, but I'm so inspired by you!”

The names of the children were rife with the cchh sound, but I've forgotten their monickers now.  I thought I would remember them forever.  I guess I have to be satisfied with the permanently ingrained impressions of that new mother's smile, the father's chest-bursting pride and the faces of their two wonderful, beautiful, much-loved blessings.  Mazel tov!

        I'll walk on that street every chance I get, the Sabbath or not, in hopes of meeting this little family again.  Their joy, their bliss was visible, tangible and contagious.  When far away from Vermont, even if living with friends, flight attendants need booster shots of family life to survive.  Kew Gardens has it.  Who knew?

Thanks Heather