The Beauty of Breezy Point
There are times where the lines between reality and imagination are blurred, where we are not sure what was really happened and what we spun off our mind. Maybe it’s also because it happened long time ago and my mind plays me some tricks. But let me try to recount the events that don’t want to stop hammering against the inner walls of my head as if they desperately seek to be released and relieved. It did happen not too many weeks after the Great Pandemic, and even though the scars ran deep, wounds still healing, and the earth on many graves still loose, there is nothing that can take New York down.
How I missed to stroll the wideness and beach around Breezy Point, so close, yet still so far to Manhattan’s bustling city life; it has been years since my last visit there and I have longed for nothing more: The beauty of Breezy Point. There is no point in telling it, you just must experience it for yourself. But let me do my best to get you as close as possible.
Down from 81st Street to the Rockaways it’s a long but basically direct ride, right into another world. I found myself deepened over some sheets of papers, scribbling down my thoughts of last night’s dream, knowing that I wouldn’t need to raise my head for at least another 45 minutes. The rustling of a few newspapers, a Spanish-speaking mum rather singing than talking melodically on her phone, and the repetitive rattling of the train itself formed a harmonic melange, a happily moving place.
I didn’t notice the young woman sitting across me until we were crossing Jamaica Bay, the late low afternoon sun shining through the milky and scratched cabin glasses. She had no smartphone, but a well-worn, moss-green hardcopy of Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe in her hands. It caught my attention right away. I had a similar copy as a child, with a finely gold-engraved Robinson Crusoe on the front cover; what a memory reading it throughout sleepless nights with the flashlight on, joining Robinson and Friday on their adventures, I carried it around for months. What a coincidence I thought; us passing Jamaica Bay in a rusty train few hundred years after Defoe’s tales may have happened earlier around the real Jamaica itself. How books can take us to any place and any time.
She wasn’t reading, or maybe not anymore, but watching me writing closely and curiously, rather my pile of papers, as it seemed. The moss-green Defoe and her pastel brown clothes formed a symbiosis and it seemed as if books were a natural part of herself. Her jade-green eyes were sparkling so full of life, and even though she wasn’t moving at all, one was confused for a moment as to whether it wasn’t she who caused the train to rattle. Or she got superpowers!
Merely a few seconds passed on the clock, but it felt as if an invisible power was gently lifting me off the ground and out of the presence, making time lapse. All there was were sun beams, rattling trains, sparkling jade-green eyes, and adventures in the South Seas.
Sometime after we reached Rockaway Park Station and with that, I put that memory in my mental treasure chest, packed my pen and papers and got off the train. Just when I walked out of the station towards Rockaway Beach Boulevard, I did hear a woman’s voice behind me.
“Hey there, excuse me. What are you writing about? It was the women from before, walking with firm steps towards me.
“Oh, hey there. Just a story.” Not sure what to reply.
“What is your story about?” unsatisfied with my answer.
“It is about two people stranded on an island, figuring out…. the circle of life, love, purpose, solitude, togetherness, each other, themselves …. I guess.” Feeling bit embarrassed sounding cheesy, not knowing exactly what to say, but quite happy she asked.
“Hm, I see.” She paused for a moment, blinking and breathing gently. “Can I tell you a story!? I think it’s about that, too” she continued candidly. By now we were walking in lockstep next to each other. I looked at her, captured even more by her calm though vibrant aura.
I wanted nothing more than hear more from her, and before I even could have said anything, she continued. So she told me the story of her grandparents.
“It’s a story about my family; an impossible love story, it seems. But more than that it is story that shows that no matter what… love and life itself can change and overcome anything and anyone. Empower to do better, to give, to forgive, without to forget. And thanks to this strange but wonderful love story and turn of events, I am” she said.
So, there were we, her and me, two strangers, walking towards the tip of the peninsula bonded through my dream, her family story, and a fondness for Daniel Defoe. Paradoxically it seemed like my dream was more real than her story.
Her family on maternal side, was from Montgomery, Alabama partaking early in the civil rights movement. Her grandmother came up northwest to study medicine at the New York Medical College. Her plan was to return to Alabama and open a clinic there. Ambitious and strong-minded she was passionate about a better tomorrow and she didn’t want to leave that to men and hope.
Her family on paternal side, descended from a proud Prussian military family, having fought all the way, starting from the American War of Independence under Baron von Steuben somewhen around 1780, generation after generation until World War II, when it all changes for her grandfather. Being sickened with all the military monotony, the killing, and bragging about medals and honours. He wanted to heal and cure instead and broke with his family traditions.
And he did shock his family even more by leaving New York and accompanying his African American love of his life back to Alabama, supporting her to realize her dream with nothing else than each other, few months’ worth of savings and two medical degrees. How rare and bold back then! And still way too seldom nowadays. The male partners being super-supportive should be the normal.
“Did they both meet as students at New York Medical College?” I asked, half rhetorically and overwhelmed by the story and herself.
“At college?” she asked surprised “Oh, sure, one might think so, but no. Not at all.” She smirked with her jade-green eyes sparkling even stronger than before.
By now we had reached Breezy Point Tip and were walking, our shoes in our hands, sands drizzling through our toes and a warm mild breeze lifting our hair.
“They did meet right here at Breezy Point. And it was love at first sight. At least that’s how grandpa always told the story…. And that I got her eyes.” Now glancing thoughtfully across the Lower Bay into the horizon.
And only there I fully realized that we, two strangers two hours ago walked together side by side the past 7 miles. And all had changed and as if I had known her from beyond our times, even though I didn’t know her name.
“Excuse me please, but what is your name?” feeling silly, not able to think of a better question, yet unable to take my eye of her jade-green eyes. “Jane. Jane June.” She smiled in the most beautiful smile I’ve ever known. Just then a gust of wind came up letting the sand pattered on our legs and lifted us, blurring my sight.
And then I woke up. And for some moments I didn’t know where I was, in the New York Subway, in Manhattan, or somewhere else, or between the dunes of Breezy Point with Jane.
I have longing for you Breezy Point. I love you Jane June wherever you are. My senses still blurred, but all was well. Whose story was it? Hers, ours, theirs, mine, or all just a dream? It is us to choose.
