Village Babies

Kerry and Madeline were born in 1990. We were living at 18 Grove Street in Greenwich Village.   I had had lived there over a decade, moving in shortly after graduating from college. The studio was on the top floor of an ivy-covered townhouse at the corner of Bedford Street down the block from Chumley’s – then known as a former speakeasy with cheap beer and burgers – and across from the building that was later the opening visual for the TV show Friends.

In 1983 I met Diane Loughran.  She was born and raised in Nebraska. To a New Yorker meeting a Nebraskan is more interesting than someone from Tibet. Diane came east to go to graduate school prior to us meeting on a bus in Russia (another story for another time). After our marriage in 1987 we moved downstairs to the more spacious parlor floor with a garden.

We were excited when Diane became pregnant in 1989 and we spent a great deal of time configuring how we could accommodate the new one – emphasis on the word ‘one.’  We loved the Village and wanted our child to attend PS 3 right across the street. We would make it work.  But fate intervened and at Diane’s first doctor visit she was told there was some sort of problem – possibly a tumor.  Twenty-four hours later that ‘tumor’ was revealed as an additional womb mate.  Fear turned into joyous shock.  We walked the 50 blocks south from the sonogram clinic on the Upper East Side to the Village repeating the word ‘TWINS!’

Kerry and Madeline were born May 29, 1990 in the now vanished St. Vincent’s Hospital on West 12th Street.  Small, but happy and healthy with superior lung power, we took them home and the tenant roll of 18 Grove Street grew by two. As it was summer we spent a great deal of time outside in front of the house. We had a tandem baby carriage that we parked by the steps and hung out enjoying the oohs and aahs of the passing crowd, especially from the many tourists that came by.  We sometimes even displayed them out of the living room window.

Down the block lived the writer Calvin Trillin.  Over the years we had seen him occasionally but in traditional New York City fashion we never spoke to him.  That summer he’d see us with the girls in the front and stopped and chatted with us.  After a few visits he called them the ‘Famous Twins of Grove Street.’  He told us that he was from Kansas.  Diane shared with him that she was from Nebraska.  He once remarked to us that though he bought up his two daughters in New York City he told them that “Despite all evidence to the contrary, you are being raised in Kansas City.”  Later I read that in one of his writings and have always loved and remembered that line.

The Great Upheaval

And so it happened.  Having twin babies is hard enough under any circumstances. Having twin babies in New York City is even harder.  Getting them to a doctor’s appointment took NASA-like precision.  Purchasing and carrying ten boxes of Pampers from the overpriced drugstore on Sheridan Square was a challenge. We needed help – like 24/7 help.  We spent a few weeks with Diane’s family in Omaha that summer.  Her parents were so welcoming and made it known that if we moved west they would be there for us in every way.  They were empty nesters, and though their house wasn’t big, they did raise six children there – it could certainly accommodate the four of us.  And, as Midwesterners they would not interfere and let us be the parents – but they would always be there when we needed them.  In the fall of 1990 when they were almost six months old, we packed up.  Uncles Danny and Mike came with a U-Haul and we loaded up our three rooms of furniture and what may have been a cargo container of baby goods and presto, our home was Nebraska.

The first year in the life of parents-of-twins one can live anywhere as long as there is a washer and dryer.  We could have been in Paris or Timbuktu and would not have noticed anything of our surroundings.  Our world revolved around the constant care of two growing babies: feeding; cleaning; dressing; diapering; soothing; and shopping with a minimum of sleep was all we did.  I have no clue what happened that year.  If I glanced at a newspaper once a week, that was a lot.  We never went to a movie.  Needing a break when they were about ten months old we went out for lunch.  After frantic shrieking, spilling, tossing and two busboys arriving with pails and mops we left in a hurry.  We suspected our faces were on a poster in the back with the heading, DO NOT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES EVER SEAT THIS FAMILY!

Nebraska was so different that anything I had ever experienced. We had a car (when it wasn’t in Cousin Bill’s auto repair), we shopped in supermarkets bigger than a city block, and we watched Johnny Carson at 10:30.  But best of all we had help – we were rarely alone.  Jack and Marge were always there for us.  Uncles Danny and Pat were still in their early twenties and moved in and out occasionally and would play with them and rile them up (but always let us change their diapers). Laurie and Kevin had Ben a month after Kerry and Madeline were born. The three of them became de facto triplets – and his sister and brother, Clare and Matt, became their older siblings.

A Midwest Life 

What we didn’t have was much money – but hey it was Nebraska – not New York City!  In 1991 we bought a 1920’s wood frame house for $62,000.  Located in the lesser part of the Dundee neighborhood it had seven rooms, an illegal apartment in the basement that could provide an additional income and an overgrown backyard. It was as urban a neighborhood as one gets in Omaha.  We could walk to a grocery, an old fashioned drugstore with a soda fountain, a decent restaurant and a bookstore.  4911 California Street was to be the biggest home we ever lived in (subsequently we have paid much more for proportionally smaller homes).  The only downside to moving to our own home was leaving Kerry and Madeline’s grandparents and uncles (though they were only a short drive away – everything in Omaha is a short drive away).  Our first night on California Street the girls insisted in putting on their coats to go back ‘home.’ They wondered where all the live-in help had gone and were confused at being stuck with only two inept caregivers as far as they were concerned.

We joined the Jewish Community Center. To my surprise Omaha had a small but thriving and prosperous (except me) Jewish community.  We joined not for religious reasons but because it had two pre-school classes.  Each Friday we had to do the Shabbat prayers and eat challah from Bagel Bin.  The JCC also had a wonderful pool (I had to get swimming in here some way!) and being mostly unemployed I became the swim Dad at Friday morning swim lessons for the class.  The main concern was making sure no one’s swimsuit had too much sag in the rear.

Our house was centrally located between grandparents and cousins – we hosted many events and entertained guests from all over who came to visit.  It surprised us how many people wanted to see Omaha.  In the kitchen we had a map with push pins indicating all the guests that came through. We enjoyed making pesto dinners and elevated the art of the proper New York brunch.

In that way Madeline and Kerry experienced a very different childhood than I had.  Family and our friends from both coasts, diplomats from Israel and artists from Moldova came and amused them.  It expanded their world which was important to us.  While most of our friends and family had the same world view and politics as us, we knew we were usually in the minority within the greater Nebraskan community.  The editorials in the Omaha World Herald were often to the right and local TV news was bland – lots of stories about cats in trees being saved and high school football.

Career wise Omaha was a challenge.  I bounced around and had a number jobs including selling overpriced tchachkas at Brookstone (I was asked to consider the regional training program – if I played my cards right I could have managed the central Midwest) I did site selection consulting for telemarketing centers and even wrote a local newspaper column entitled A New Yorker’s Nebraska (which looking back on it was pretty snarky).  Diane did much better heading up the Omaha Organ and Tissue Donor Foundation.  But in the end our main occupation was raising two very active children.

Kerry and Madeline thrived in their toddler and early school years.  We made the most of living in the Nebraska and took them to see the migrating cranes in the Platte Valley and drove to the Black Hills where we visited the Badlands and Mount Rushmore.  As soon as we pulled out of the driveway for the journey Madeline yelled, “I see them! I see them!”  Sure enough eight hours later she was the first one in our car to see the Presidential faces and was vindicated.

One hot summer day I was invited to join some other Dads and tykes to go fossil hunting. The site had a large ‘No Trespassing’ sign and some quicksand warnings but the Dad leading the expedition told us to ignore them (some Nebraskans consider those kind of signs as ‘suggestions’).  But the scariest part of the day was when the organizer invited all of us – about five Dads and fifteen kids – back to what he said was his house for dinner. His ex-wife showed up at what was clearly her house after what must have been a very nasty divorce as he was about to fire up the grill. She was not amused.  We ended up eating tacos at the best Mexican restaurant in Scribner, Nebraska and come back home with gassy stomachs, sunburns and ill-gained fossils.

A few years later we were told about a campsite where one could stay in old train cars in a town with the aspirational name of Venice, Nebraska.  The brochure (this was in the pre-Google days) looked nice enough – happy blonde families toasting marshmallows in front of a gaily painted caboose.  We drove out there and found a desolate collection of decaying freight wagons that had been ‘refurbished’ with bunks and two inch moldy foam mattresses.  The ‘campgrounds’ were mostly mud and tumbleweed surrounded by drainage ditches (hence the name Venice?)  Charlie Starkweather would have felt right at home.  We went into town that evening and ate at Venice’s only restaurant. It specialized in terrible chicken-fried steak.  That night we tried to sleep in the train cars but it was unsettling to say the least. Spending time in what appeared to be cattle cars brings up bad vibes for Jews.

The girls entered Dundee School for kindergarten, a short walk from our house.  They made friends and were the ‘twins’ in their grade.  One of Kerry’s classmates was Max Larson.  They may have finger painted together or shared a PB&J. Max went on to Central High and became a friend of Cousin Ben. Almost twenty years later he re-introduced Max to Kerry and they resumed their courtship.

Never Far From a Farm

Our connection to farms in the Midwest is through my in-laws.  Both come from families of farmers – as do many people in Nebraska.  Shake most Midwestern family trees and you will find a farm. Diane’s father Jack grew up on a farm in Neola, Iowa.  When his father died they rented out the land and moved into Omaha.  Jack has no illusions of life on a farm and was happy to make a career in the city.  Marge, Diane’s mother, was from Kansas. Her family left their small town during the hardships of the depression.  They too moved to Omaha.   But the idealized farm and stories of small town life still conjured up good memories that were passed down to later generations. Diane’s family has a lake house that they built about twenty miles south of Omaha. Everyone gathers there each summer.  When it was built it was one of the largest and most nicely designed homes on the lake. I affectionately call it the Penthouse on the Prairie. Over the years many other homes have been built that dwarf the Beaver Lake house, but Jack and Marge wisely purchased additional lots on either side so there is ample room to spread out for all the grandchildren – and rent a few RV’s when everyone is in residence.

On the way out to the lake we pass by farms and fields.  It’s very pretty.  Despite the reputation of Nebraska as being flat, the Missouri Valley is hilly and as such very picturesque – especially when the sun is setting and the wind is gently blowing making the crops wave.  There’s never much traffic on Highway 75 and one can admire the views. When we are at Beaver Lake we’ll go into Plattsmouth and have breakfast at Mama’s (which does a much better chicken fried steak than the place in Venice) and get ice cream at Dairy Queen.  Or we will go south to Nebraska City and visit Arbor Lodge (home of the Morton Salt Company and some great apple pie stands).  Close by are other small towns and villages such as Murray – home of the annual July 4th Pancake Feed at the firehouse.

Many of these places suffered terrible damage this spring when the frozen Missouri River melted and water flooded farms and towns along either side.  It happened within hours and without much warning. Farms that had been in the same families for generations were in ruins and fields were saturated right before the planting season. The news came out over a few days and eventually made the bottom fold of the New York Times.  As natural disasters go it was serious – but because it was in Nebraska it did not generate the type of coverage, that a wildfire in Malibu or a hurricane in Miami Beach would have gotten.  And because it was Nebraska those impacted reacted differently.  One thing I learned about Nebraskans is they don’t whine or complain. Generations of prairie hardships are in their souls.  They do what they have to do and move on – not the navel gazing and woe-is-me you find on the coasts.  It should also be known that while Nebraskans always offer help to those in need (having been stuck on the side of the road with my lemon of a Mazada I can attest to that), but they are hesitant to ask for help or a favor – part of that pioneer thing I surmise – best to pull oneself up by one’s own bootstraps.

We left Nebraska in 1997 for career reasons.  I was offered a job back in New York City in my field of economic development and we knew that there would be more opportunities for Diane there too. It was difficult to uproot Kerry and Madeline but as all evidence has proven they’ve adjusted.  I think back to our neighbor’s adage about raising children. Despite the big city upbringing their Nebraska roots – entirely through DNA on Diane’s part – were hard wired into them.  And that makes us very happy.

I hope you can support Kerry’s initiative at The Blasket 1085 Second Avenue on  Monday April 15th at 7PM.  The Blasket is our go-to pub in the middle of Manhattan – friendly, cozy, great barkeeps. It might as well be in a small town in Nebraska.

https://www.nefbfoundation.org/ways-to-give/disaster-relief-fund