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Keep Walking: 40 Days to Hope and Freedom After Betrayal

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Lynn Marie Cherry

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“I am not defined by what tried to break me—I am defined by the woman I chose to become.”

“Wir setzen uns an einen Tisch unter dem Platanen auf den alten Platz. Hier haben die Griechen einst die Agora der Stadt erbaut, die Akropolis. Heute steht an dieser Stelle die Église des Accoules, deren Name entweder von Anchovis, anchois, abgeleitet sein soll oder von den encoules, den kleinen Bögen, die die Kirche stützen. Die Historiker behaupten, dass die Kinder hier früher nach der Messe eine Pastete oder eine Wurst bekamen. Man sprach sogar von Unserer lieben Frau der Würste”

“Marseille ist keine Stadt für Touristen. Es gibt dort nichts zu sehen. Seine Schönheit lässt sich nicht fotografieren. Sie teilt sich mit. Hier muss man Partei ergreifen. Sich engagieren. Dafür oder dagegen sein. Leidenschaftlich sein. Erst dann wird sichtbar, was es zu sehen gibt. Und dann ist man, wenn auch zu spät, mitten in einem Drama. Einem antiken Drama, in dem der Held der Tod ist. In Marseille muss man sogar kämpfen, um zu verlieren.”

“He was tall in the bed and I could see the silver through his eyelids. His soul sat up. It met me. Those kinds of souls always do—the best ones. The ones who rise up and say, “I know who you are and I am ready. Not that I want to go, of course, but I will come.” Those souls are always light because more of them have been put out. More of them have already found their way to other places. This one was sent out by the breath of an accordion, the odd taste of champagne in summer, and the art of promise-keeping. He lay in my arms and rested. There was an itchy lung for a last cigarette and an immense, magnetic pull toward the basement, for the girl who was his daughter and was writing a book down there that he hoped to read one day.”

“Depending on your point of view, Jersey City was the rose, or possibly the thorn, of the Garden State. It is so far back that my memories are rather vague, but they were my first memories, and this is where I have to start. We lived at 77 Nelson Avenue, behind my parents’ German-style delicatessen, in three Spartan rooms counting the kitchen. Supermarkets were not yet prevalent and the neighborhood general store, grocery store or delicatessen was where most folks shopped for food. It was during the pre-World War II years, when very few people owned cars and the general public did not have the modern means of travel, which we now take for granted. Every item people needed came from a different store, so to go shopping was a daily task of which people were not even consciously mindful. Even if they had a car, they would have to deal with constant breakdowns, poor and frequently unpaved roads, and tire problems. Garage rentals were crowded behind and between buildings. Parking on the street was limited and most people respected the concept that the parking space in front of a dwelling was for the resident who lived there. It was much easier to use the available mass transportation or endure long walks.”

“My parents had to work on most weekends, and thus were infrequent visitors to Admiral Farragut Academy. However, on those Sundays when they could come, my mother would bring a cake and some cookies from the bakery. Of course, the cookies and the cake were past their prime, but that was just the way I liked them. I really don’t know how happy my parents were to see me since most of the time they were there; they would talk to my teachers in conference, and then tell me all the things I had supposedly done wrong. Sadly, I would always wind up with a lecture on how bad I had been and what was expected of me. It was something I had grown to expect, but more importantly, I was grateful for the cake and pastries. I have no idea why, but they also brought me cans of condensed milk. I can only guess that they believed that the thick syrupy milk, super saturated with sweet, sweet, sugar, would give me the energy I needed to think better. After one such visit, I made the mistake of leaving my cake unattended. It didn’t take long before it grew legs and ran off. I couldn’t believe that one of my schoolmates would steal my cake, not at a Naval Honor School! Nevertheless, not being able to determine who the villains were, I hatched a plan to catch the culprits the next time around. Some months later when my parents returned to check on my progress, my mother brought me a beautiful double-layer chocolate cake. This time I was ready, having bought all the Ex-Lax the pharmacy in Toms River had on hand. Using a hot plate, I heated the Ex-Lax until it liquefied, and then poured the sticky brown substance all over the cake in a most decorative way. With that, I placed the cake on my desk and invitingly left the door open to my dorm room. I wasn’t away long before this cake also grew legs, and, lo and behold, it also disappeared. The expected happened, and somewhat later I found the culprits in the boys’ bathroom, having a miserable time of it. Laughingly, I identified them as the culprits, but didn’t turn them in. It was enough that I caught them with their pants down!”

“The Hoboken waterfront was still familiar to me from earlier years when I walked this way to catch the trolley or the electrified Public Service bus home from the Lackawanna Ferry Terminal. Remembering the gray-hulled Liberty Ships being fitted out for the war at these dilapidated piers, was still very much embedded in my memory. Things had not changed all that much, except that the ships that were once here were now at the bottom of the ocean, sold, or nested at one of the “National Defense Reserve Fleets.” Many of them were moved to the Reserve fleet located on the western side of the Hudson River, south of the Bear Mountain Bridge. I vividly recall seeing these nested ships when I accompanied my parents to visit my Uncle Willie and Tante Martha at their home in Towners, New York.”

“Indeed, some of the buildings were gargantuan: Greystone Park State Hospital, which opened in 1876 as the New Jersey State Asylum for the Insane at Morristown, was purported to have the largest continuous foundation in the United States, surpassed only by the Pentagon some seventy-seven years later.”