Tag Archives: NYC

Father’s Day: Experiencing Poetic Role Reversal

by Woody

This Sunday will be my son’s third Father’s Day and one of my own greatest joys as a dad has been watching him as a dad.

Truth be told, I actually got a glimpse of my son as a father a decade ago when a line of poetry by William Wordsworth – “The Child is father to the Man” – played out when I was visiting him, then 27 years old, in New York City.

I embraced this turnabout as happily as I embraced him at the airport. In fact, his surprise greeting at baggage claim was the beginning of our role reversals.

I had planned to take the subway from JFK and meet my son at his apartment in Lower Manhattan. Worried about me navigating the subway system, he covertly trekked out to meet me. A very father-like thing.

This played out again and again the rest of my visit: my son insisted on carrying my luggage; gave me his bed; lent me the jacket off his back when the night air turned cold.

Father and son-turned-father and his son…

The most dramatic way my Child was father to this Man occurred when, in similar fashion to how I used to take him to Ventura’s now shuttered H.P. Wright Library, he took me to the venerable New York Public Library.

On the way there, I was jostled in a rugby-like scrum getting on a crowded subway car and my right index finger got sliced open, as if by a long stroke of a potato feeler, by the closing door. Firm pressure with a napkin largely stanched the bleeding.

We exited at the next stop and my son located a pharmacy and bought Band-Aids and tape. But when I removed the napkin the red floodgates reopened.

“I’m taking you to get stitches right now,” the Child-turned-father-of-the-Man demanded.

At Urgent Care, my son signed me in and did all the necessary paperwork. He even accompanied me into the treatment room as had I with him numerous times long ago.

The first anesthetic injection made me curse and the second was even worse, bringing tears to my eyes. The whole while my son held my other hand and told me how brave I was being. He then distracted me with laughter – kept me in stitches, if you will – as I received 18 sutures.

To be honest, the painful mishap was worth the experience of seeing this side of my boy-turned-man.

For the remainder of my visit he kept the tables turned. He changed my bandage. He focused our itinerary on me. He led and I followed.

At a jazz club one evening, my son and I arrived early and were rewarded with the best table in the joint. Moments before the performance began, however, the manager asked if we would consider changing places with an elderly couple too feeble physically to sit on tall stools in the rear of the room.

Because my son and I are tall, the manager felt we could still see the show but emphasized: “You really don’t need to. I just wanted to ask.”

Without a beat’s pause, my son replied with enthusiastic sincerity: “Of course they can have our seats.”

We went from first row to worst row – and I could not have been happier or more proud.

Wordsworth’s poem also includes this stanza: “My heart leaps up when I behold / A rainbow in the sky.”

So, too, does my heart leap up beholding the kind of Man my Child has become, and the rainbow of a father Greg is to little Jayden and his big sister Amara.

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Essay copyrights Woody Woodburn

Woody’s new novel “The Butterfly Tree” is now available in paperback and eBook at Amazon (click here), other online bookstores, and is orderable at all bookshops.

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Woody writes a weekly column for The Ventura County Star and can be contacted at WoodyWriter@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram at @woodywoodburn.

9/11: Yesterday, a Lifetime Ago

by Woody

Where were you when you learned the world stopped spinning twenty years ago today? If you are older than 25, I’m certain you remember as clearly as if September 11, 2001 happened yesterday.

For my wife and me, it was a typical weekday morning rush helping our daughter and son get ready for school and ourselves off to work. In the midst of our familiar routine the phone rang. My brother-in-law was at the other end: “Turn on the TV.”

“What channel?” my wife asked.

“Any channel,” he said gravely.

The surreal images were beyond imagination: One of New York City’s iconic Twin Towers was billowing black smoke after being hit by a jetliner; then a second plane, seemingly flying in slow motion, slammed into the bookend skyscraper; thereafter the North and South Towers both collapsed, also as if in slow motion.

In all, four hijacked passenger jets were turned into terrorist missiles with the other two crashing into the Pentagon, and – as a result of heroic passengers putting up a fight with their lives – a field in Pennsylvania en route to its target in Washington D.C.

Today, we pay remembrance to the nearly 3,000 lives lost in the horrific attacks. The truth, of course, is that the loved ones and friends and co-workers of those victims have remembered them every single day for the past two decades.

Nine months after the infamous event, I was in New York City covering the NBA Finals of which I remember nothing specific. But I cannot forget my visit to Ground Zero, which by then was a deep, steep-walled, square hole that looked like a giant grave being dug.

I have toured Gettysburg’s battlefields and cemeteries; visited the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall with more than 58,000 names etched into the black mirror-like marble; and seen the USS Arizona Memorial that marks the resting place of 1,102 sailors. The sight of a canyon-sized hole at Ground Zero squeezed my heart ever as tightly.

The devastation that had been cleared away was numbing: 200,000 tons of twisted steel wreckage, 600,000 square feet of shattered glass, 425 cubic yards of concrete, and even 40,000 doorknobs that had all come crashing down from 110 stories high, entombing more than 2,600 innocent victims.

Left behind were shattered hopes, wrecked lives and broken hearts – and also, at a nearby makeshift memorial site, countless notes and cards. One hand-written message I saw read: “You will always be remembered as heroes” in honor of the 344 FDNY firefighters and 71 police officers who lost their lives after courageously rushing into the burning buildings trying to save the lives of others.

Another note, this one from a young schoolchild who wrote in her best printing: “Dear Firemen, THANK YOU for everything you did for our country. Love, Jodi.”

Similarly there was a picture of seven firemen in uniform, young and handsome and in the prime of their lives, with these words: “Thank You, Seven In Heaven, Ladder 101 FDNY.”

And this: “To Daddy, We love you, miss you and you’ll always be in out hearts. Love, Gyasi and Craig.” My heart aches for them growing up without their Daddy and all the milestones – graduations, weddings, perhaps the birth of his grandchildren – he missed.

At Ground Zero that day, I also met a woman whose husband died in one of the Towers. Cradling an infant baby, she tearfully shared this: “Her father never met her.”

That baby girl is now 19 going on 20, and to her 9-11-2001 does not seem like yesterday. It was her lifetime ago.

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Woody Woodburn writes a weekly column for The Ventura County Star and can be contacted at WoodyWriter@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram at @woodywoodburn. His SIGNED books are available at www.WoodyWoodburn.com.

Personalized Signed copies of WOODEN & ME: Life Lessons from My Two-Decade Friendship with the Legendary Coach and Humanitarian to Help “Make Each Day Your Masterpiece” and  “Strawberries in Wintertime: Essays on Life, Love, and Laughter” are available at WoodyWoodburn.com

Wowed in Person and in Marble

by Woody

1StrawberriesCoverWooden-&-Me-cover-mock-upFor a Personalized Autographed copy of “STRAWBERRIES IN WINTERTIME” or “WOODEN & ME” mail a check for $25 to:

Woody Woodburn

400 Roosevelt Court

Ventura, CA 93003

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Inspiration in Person and in Marble

Fourth in a series of columns chronicling my recent father-son road trip to the FDR Presidential Library & Museum in Hyde Park, NY, and more.

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The New York City theater was, quite honestly, underwhelming.

Located in Hudson Yards, SIR Stage37 seems more like a warehouse than an event site for the prestigious The New Yorker Festival. The ceiling is lofty, but unfinished; the floors, cold cement; the stage, temporary. Seating consisted of a few hundred folding chairs fastened together in rows with plastic zip ties.

As a word to the wise has it, however, don’t judge a book by its cover.

"The Thinker" in bronze by Rodin

“The Thinker” in bronze by Rodin

Or a book talk by its digs.

“Book talk” is actually a misnomer. This was a moderated conversation with three authors. Specifically, two winners of the Pulitzer Prize and this year’s honoree of the esteemed Man Booker Prize.

Indeed, the timing of my trip to visit my Manhattanite son was explicitly chosen so as to attend this discussion featuring Colson Whitehead, Jennifer Egan, and George Saunders. The trio did not disappoint.

To the contrary, I dare say this was the most enjoyable, most enlightening, most inspiring talk by an author – or authors – I have had the privilege of attending. And I have been to dozens.

Lacking the space to delve into their discussion, here are some book jacket-like blurbs about the event’s three protagonists.

Whitehead’s newest novel, “The Underground Railroad,” is the most compelling book I have read this year – perhaps in the past few years. Without question, it merited its 2017 Pulitzer honor.

But here is what really struck me: Whitehead seems as splendid in person as his words are on the page. He was immensely interesting and authentically charismatic, and also humble, seated on stage.

All of the same can be said of Egan, who won the Pulitzer in 2011 for “A Visit from the Goon Squad.” Her new novel, “Manhattan Beach,” is on my to-read list.

Saunders, meanwhile, recently won the Man Booker Prize for “Lincoln in the Bardo.” It is one of the most innovative novels I have ever read.

Saunders, who teaches at Syracuse University, came across as Everyone’s Favorite Professor. He was warm and humorous, affable and insightful. After answering questions posed directly to him, Saunders would engage his stage mates for their thoughts, no small thing.

I am certain that writers and non-writers alike left the warehouse theater feeling inspired to be better at whatever they do, be it selling insurance or playing the guitar, gardening or performing surgery.

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“The Tempest” in marble by Rodin

I am confident of this because while I am no artist, I left the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art, a half-hour subway ride from Sage37, feeling as buoyed as I had been by listening to Whitehead, Egan, and Saunders.

Most especially, I was inspired by two temporary exhibits: “Leonardo to Matisse” and “Rodin at The MET.”

The former features approximately 60 magnificent drawings, in ink and pencil and crayon, by Leonardo da Vinci and Henri Matisse and a handful of other virtuosos. It is difficult to imagine a better example showing that masterful things can be accomplished with the simplest of tools.

Marking the centenary death of Auguste Rodin, more than 50 bronzes, marbles, plasters, and terracottas by the French master are on display. “The Thinker,” in bronze, is an iconic masterpiece in the show but I favored his works in marble.

In “Orpheus and Eurydice,” the ancient Greek lovers emerge smooth and luminous from the raw and rough white rock that remains behind and below them. It is a striking example of Rodin’s words: “I choose a block of marble and chop off whatever I don’t need.”

“The Tempest,” meanwhile, seems to release sound from stone. Rodin sculpted a shrieking woman, her face and shoulders surging forward from the marble while her streaming braids anchor her – or even pull her back – to the stone. Imagine a female Olympian coming up for a gulp of air while swimming the butterfly stroke.

Conversely, my breath was taken away. Gifted artists, and authors, do that to me.

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Woody Woodburn writes a weekly column for The Ventura County Star and can be contacted at WoodyWriter@gmail.com.

Wooden & Me Kickstarter Front PhotoCheck out my memoir WOODEN & ME: Life Lessons from My Two-Decade Friendship with the Legendary Coach and Humanitarian to Help “Make Each Day Your Masterpiece” and my essay collection “Strawberries in Wintertime: Essays on Life, Love, and Laughter” …

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