Landmarks Of My Father
The Places That Hold What Our Hearts Can’t
I grew up on an unremarkable dead-end street in the Bronx. But its end wasn’t dead to my father and me: It was a place where the world came alive.
A crooked metal guardrail barred cars from crossing, but every Saturday, my father would lift me over it. On the other side, the grass was tall and frayed and flowering at the top, like a field of old toothbrushes. The landscape was sprinkled with red, rusted cars that resembled the empty clams you cast aside in seafood restaurants. We’d wander past …
