Every time I visit my nieces or spend time with Patti and Peter upstate, or have dinner with Tessa, I’m reminded of how many quality people, who I love dearly, are in my life because of Charles.
By the time I’d met Charles, he was an IT office drone just like me, but he’d spent his young adulthood working as an actor (when he could) and otherwise working in the restaurant biz. As a very young man, he found himself managing the restaurant at the Mayflower Hotel on Central Park West. This led to many celebrity encounters, like him delivering room service to a naked Robert DeNiro, and of course the three years that Ann Miller stayed there while starring in Sugar Babies. (I think I still have the bottle of cologne she gave C as a Christmas present.)
He moved on, while going back to school, to waiting tables at various restaurants, where he met some of his closest friends (and had further celebrity encounters). The stories from that period of his life were fascinating and hilarious and I’m still mildly annoyed that I wasn’t around for that.
Anyway, one of our dearest friends from that era was Nancy Lindeberg. Nancy was an actress of the typical NYC sort, filling in the employment gaps with temp work and dressing models for Fashion Week. She was an avid runner (today is Marathon Sunday here in NYC, and yes, she ran it back in the day). She spent at least one summer at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, where we saw her as the Third Witch in an outdoor site-specific Scottish Play back in 2003.
Unfortunately, she was diagnosed with a rare form of abdominal cancer. It was the sort of thing that could have taken her out in months, but she did everything she could to fight it and lasted over two years. I was lucky enough to be able to take her and our good friend Tony out for lunch just a few months ago, on one of those days she was together enough to leave the apartment. I will say that she actually seemed pretty good, and her attitude was tip-top – she was as bubbly and charming as ever.
She was a longtime member and chorister at St. Peter’s Lutheran, that church that’s right outside the 53rd and Lex subway stop. Her funeral was last Saturday. It was lovely. There was a pre-service concert of folk/rock-type music – like James Taylor, her favorite. And they had a full orchestra and chorus, which performed quite a lot of the Faure Requiem throughout the service. Fun fact, which I’d been unaware of, and which puzzled me – the scoring is light on violins. They had actually a quite large viola and cello section, two basses, two horns and tympani, plus organ – but only one solo violin in one movement.
Nancy’s ashes were interred in the columbarium right there in the church, in the back wall, as part of the service. That was something I’d never seen before.
It was very clear from the service and the attendance that she was very loved by her community. I only knew Tony (who I sat with) and one of the singers. There was a collation afterward, but I didn’t eat anything, I just introduced myself to Nancy’s brother and otherwise sat with Tony.
And that pretty much took care of Saturday – I spent the rest of the day reflecting, pretty much, and taking care of myself. Oh! but I voted on the way home – walked by the library, which is our early voting station, and the line wasn’t bad and I got in and out in 20 minutes. Even though my real polling place is just across the street from where I live, and I don’t really expect any trouble on Election Day in Jackson Heights, I figured better safe than sorry, right?
Sunday was Charles’s birthday. The plans to celebrate that specifically had dissolved, and I needed to get my weekend stuff that should have happened on Saturday done, so I did that. But I’d been invited to a free orchestra concert by my buddy Carol. It was conducted by longtime Blue Hill Troupe music director Zac Schwartzman, and the orchestra was made up of very talented Bard grad students. They were doing Debussy’s Nocturnes, which in the “Sirens” movement, features a wordless women’s chorus and Zac had drafted a bunch of our BHT friends to sing it.
I don’t usually take myself to concerts (I’m more a theater person) and I’ve had an anxiety-connected aversion to going into town to do stuff on the weekend, which I’m trying to break. But this was delightful! The program started with Scherzo No. 1 of composer Herman Whitfield III, a Black man who died in April 2022 after he was restrained by the police when his parents called 911 because he was having a mental health crisis. His parents and friends were in the audience, and were recognized. The piece itself was very exciting and very worth programming. The Debussy was glorious, of course – I realized I was reasonably familiar with it, even though I’d never played it.
The second half was an assembled collection of movements from the three Prokofiev Romeo & Juliet suites. Again, I was reasonably familiar with these. As I ended up telling one of the horn players later (the lady who had to play the screamingly high stuff, and nailed it), I got pulled into a Columbia orchestra concert years ago to play 4th horn. The only piece I played was the Prokofiev suite (and I don’t remember which one we did) and I had so little to do I don’t remember a bit of it. We did the John Williams Raiders march as an encore and I had more to play in that one piece than I’d had for the whole program. Anyway… they really nailed it, and Zac was so joyful and happy throughout the concert it’s clear that that’s really the kind of stuff he likes to do.
I thought a bunch of us would go out afterward for dinner, but we all split up. I don’t even remember what happened after that.
So I didn’t really do anything for C’s birthday, although I did end up having a midweek dinner at Uncle Peter’s, so I guess that was it.
I can’t even remember the week. I did have some productive days – booked the flights for my trip with Dad, booked Thanksgiving flights too. There’s still a ton of work to do on the Dad trip, but I have time. I’m finding that doing the Jane Fonda video regularly on weekday mornings, and also the fall weather, is giving me a lot more energy than I usually have – in other words, it’s making me feel NORMAL for the first time in a long time.
And I went out last night – went into town and managed to get a seat at the bar at the The Monster (can’t remember the last time I’d been there) and had a couple of really good cosmos, and a really nice time. I still resent having to make travel time and effort to go to the Village, and then do it all again to go home when I’m tired and tipsy, and I have that anxiety/I doan wanna thing to combat, but mayb practice will make perfect.
I’m seeing BHT’s Cinderella this afternoon, and VLOG’s Baker’s Wife next Friday, and my niece is coming in next weekend. I have to figure out what fun things we’re going to do.
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