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Writer's picturePaula Chapman

Brighton Beach Memoirs

Updated: Jul 14, 2021

Do you remember writing that dreaded, “What I Did This Summer” essay in September upon returning to school?


I do.


As a child, I never had anything good to say.


“I played in the park with my friends.”


“We went to the beach via subway and our apartment was robbed.”


True stories.


None of them interesting, though they welcomed pity, which I did not seek.


As an adult, I made summers more fun for myself, or at least, busier. I went camping, I traveled, I visited my family. As a parent, I get to do more interesting things with my kids in the summer, at least when I have spare time and a flexible occupation. It is much easier when you have the control and choice, but let me tell you, there are times when I miss playing in the park with my friends and going to Sheepshead Bay. It’s probably because I wish I could go back, restore some sense of joy and friendship. It’s probably why I wrote an historical novel based in 1970.


There was some comfort in those times, though they were fraught with uncertainty and pain. Things were not the same when my father passed away, for sure; and the fact that we had little money factored into the lack of vacation, along with my mother’s viewpoint that it might be a waste of time and money. So, Sheepshead Bay it was, and it wouldn’t have even been the beach had it not been for her friends Louisella and Theodora “Dora”, my friend Barbara’s mother.


I remember being embarrassed about myself in a bathing suit when Louisella’s husband came with us once. I guess I had a nice figure back then, but I was shy


about it. Oh, if only I’d realized my beauty when it mattered. If only I’d realized ALL the beauty I had then.


The beach was trash riddled, and the crowds got worse each year. Some told us about Coney Island, but in the same breath, they’d say it was dirtier and even more congested. So, no. Sheepshead Bay became our solace, even though all us kids pronounced it, “Sheepshed Bay”


It was Brighton Beach. I remember when the movie, “Brighton Beach Memoirs” came out I thought, “Wow. Someone else knows about Brighton Beach?” And the old ladies whispering that someone had “cancer” reminded me of my mother, Louisella, and Dora.


In the summer of 1973, right after I graduated eighth grade and looked ahead to high school, my mother decided she did not want to be responsible for Barbara, and we were to lie to Dora and tell her we were not going to Brighton Beach that particular day.


And they found out. How I hated my mother for this. Barbara stopped talking to me until high school, when our mutual friend MaryAnne discovered we knew one another but were on the outs, and she got us back together. And now Barbara and I are Facebook friends, back in touch, as I am with the majority of my elementary school class.


I live on the Oswego River and have visited the Adirondacks, the Gaspe region in Canada, and have traveled by car to Mexico (the country, not our neighboring town Mexico, which I’ve also visited for my son’s sports). I’ve not traveled the world like some of my friends, nor have I ever been to California, a dream I had as an eight-year-old wanting to be a standup comedienne.


But when people discover I grew up in Greenwich Village, they are in awe. They wait with bated breath for me to tell them of the wonder and splendor that is the Village. And it is wonderful.


So why did we escape to Brighton Beach, for crying out loud?


The smell on my skin, the sand in my shorts, and the soft ice cream we’d buy just before getting back on the subway (elevated in that part of Brooklyn) are still in my mind. The memory of the cracked seashells I retrieved and stuck in my pockets, taking them out and displaying them as my brother played the Beatles’ Sergeant Pepper album, will stick in my memory like that horrid mucilage they used to use in school, except it’s a good mucilage, no, it’s a honey. Natural honey that gels my memories in my little head, creating something that perhaps is imaginary? No, it was real. All those times, even the day when some kids started tossing wet sand and we had to scram.


Nothing compares to Sheepshead Bay and Brighton Beach, at least not days like today, when I’m filled with wonder myself. Did I really grow up in New York City? Was there really a time in my life when I didn’t have to make difficult decisions about housing, work, transportation, children, school, and the future?


Do I long for the time when, despite not having the glamour of a vacation in Italy, or even Pennsylvania, that I had the freedom to be a kid, to be with friends in the summer, to just sit and wish, as I admired the “trees” I could see from the rooftops, the trees someone told me were just sumac, a weed. Yes, there are times I long for those days, hands sticky from ice cream, caring for my little sister, sitting on the dirty beach in “Sheepshed Bay.”


Days like today, I miss the beauty I had.

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