Publications

I was born marooned on that island. My earliest thoughts, ones of escape. The hum of tires on the metal roadway leading up to the bridge. The flicker of light through the latticework of steel. The spine-tingling freedom as the land fell away, and the water appeared.

I remember the leaving, but not the returning. I guess I’d assumed the bridge would always be there, even years later, after I’d moved away.

But this morning, as I steered my car onto the bridge, there was a sturdy red and white barrier with a ROAD CLOSED sign across the entrance. And another, newer sign, this one flashing NEW BRIDGE OPEN, and directing me towards a wide, asphalt-covered roadway.

I shouldn’t be surprised. For nearly two years, massive barges have stood in the river, and on them, floating tractors and spindly cranes. Still, it seemed the new bridge had emerged all at once, like Aphrodite from the sea foam. A sleek structure with soaring twin V-shaped towers and white diagonal cables, vaguely reminiscent of those doomed trade center towers.

This new structure was taller, to accommodate freighters passing beneath. As I ascended, I could see the old bridge below me. They’d begun un-building it, section-by-section, starting at the ends. Now only the center span remained. Detached from the land on both sides, the football field-sized span stood alone in the river. The bridge, not much more than an outcropping of steel and concrete, now an island.

From this view, I could see the rust stains running down the steel girders, the red-orange-brown patches of disintegrating metal against the dove-grey. Funny how I’d never noticed that before. How only now – the bridge nearly demolished – could I see how rotted out it was. Like my old VW Bug, the rust beneath the floorboards only apparent after the battery had fallen through to the street.

I kept my eyes on the wrecked bridge, trying to recall what it looked like before. How had it attached to the Staten Island side? Where had the exit ramp been? How had it wound down the ramp and onto the streets?

This is how memory is. We assume that the everyday details will always lay just below the surface, needing only nudge to free them. But time erodes everything, even steel and concrete.

Maybe I don’t remember those return trips because they were so fixed, so unrelenting. But the bridge to my childhood is disappearing, bit by bit, like this old structure. Hidden from view, rust is eroding its joints and undermining its supports.

Soon my connections to the past will be unsteady. The steady ravages of time – the rust, the rot, the weakening of those nuts and bolts – will break those ties. Any attempt to return will be too costly, too dangerous, to undertake. When that happens, I’ll be alone, like that old bridge is now. But still, I don’t think I’ll ever forget how thrilling the leaving was, and how certain, the return.

*****

The Words in Please See Me

*****