DON’T LOOK UP
Don’t look up, they’ll think you’re a tourist! That’s what my mother told me. We were in New York City, on our way to Boston by train from the Poconos. We had a few hours in the city before our next train departed.
Mom lived in Manhattan when she was eighteen. She quit high school a month before graduation. She shared a tiny apartment above Carnegie Hall with her “crazy” sister Alice, who moved to the city to become a showgirl in the Ziegfeld Follies. Mom went there to get away from their crowded house back in Gloversville, and for adventure.
I didn’t understand what she meant at the time, “don’t look up”… but later realized that it was the buildings, don’t look up at the buildings, the tall buildings, the skyscrapers, the majestic towers above me.
But, it was exciting. How could I not look up, everything was zooming by like a blur of sound and color and vibrations. It was beautiful, the city, like stepping into a movie. There was so much energy, so much movement, flashing theatre marquees, strobe lights, yellow cabs speeding by, car horns, and a state of constant movement and urgency.
The sidewalks were full of people, rushing by as if they were all late for something very important. Beautiful women in tailored skirts and fitted jackets, hats and gloves even in the middle of July and dapper businessmen with their suits and fedoras. Yes, it was just like in the movies. I expected to see Judy Garland or Robert Montgomery at any moment.
I had never experienced anything like that. I wanted to follow them, find out where they were going, I wanted to be a part of it. The energy filled me with feelings of joy and anticipation I’d never felt before.
But mom was afraid. Don’t look up, she said they’ll think you’re a tourist. Who were they? Why was being a tourist making mom afraid? Growing up in the Poconos, we saw tourists all the time!
It was 1962 and I was ten years old. This was my first big trip out of our little community. Our street had no sidewalks, no flashing lights, no traffic, no yellow cabs, no beautiful women with hats with matching gloves, no tall buildings, just trees and kids riding bikes in the middle of the street.
We had traveled by train, from Mountainhome PA to New York City. That was another first. We ate in the dining car, apple pie topped with a piece of cheddar cheese! I savored the pie, and stared out my window watching the world rush by.
The landscape changed from country to farms and fields to small towns and finally the patchwork of train tracks as we approached the city, full of concrete and stone and steel, and people!
Suddenly, we were in midtown Manhattan. Mom and I walked from the station to the Taft Hotel at 7th Ave. and 50th St. Mom worked at the Taft in the 1930s, when she was still a teen herself. She was a cigarette girl, that alone sounded glamorous to me!
The hotel had tall ceilings, marble columns and floors, overstuffed chairs, polished wood and huge potted plants on giant credenzas. Everything was big and beautiful and exciting. I was on an adventure to another world, another place and time.
Mom took me to the restaurant at the hotel and introduced me to her friends who still worked there. They remembered her! Was she famous?
After our visit and a bite to eat, we were back on the street. She repeated the warning, “don’t look up,” and held on tightly to my hand. We moved quickly, keeping up with all those busy New Yorkers, now we had a place to be! We ran all the way back to Penn Station. I don’t think she felt safe until we were in our seats on the train.
When mom lived in New York, it must have been around 1936. She wasn’t afraid then. She’d go out with friends after work, making her way home to 57th Street, sometimes at 3:00 in the morning. She told me about an encounter with a policeman on horseback. Mom said he asked her why she was walking alone at that hour as he guided her the few blocks to her door safely.
Another time she was approached by a talent agent during her shift at the hotel. She was told to go to a modeling agency for some test shots. They offered her a contract, which she turned down since they couldn’t guarantee her a regular paycheck. I still have one of the photographs.
Mom was practical, a little cautious, even at that time, when life was an adventure. Over the years caution gave way to fear. I don’t know what happened exactly, but something changed.
What was it that made her so afraid? Was it motherhood? Was it being responsible for another life? Maybe it was losing so many people, including her brother and first husband to the war. Maybe it was finding herself a widow, and raising my oldest sister on her own after the war, before she met my father.
Or was it something more specific? Did someone or something change her? When did she give away her power?
I never wanted to live that way, in fear. In fact I resented her for being afraid, and instead, I rebelled. I was angry with her until many, many years later when I began to understand what my mom lived through and how strong and brave she really was.
Don’t look up! Her advice was to blend in, be one of the crowd, so as not to be noticed.
Over the years, I can remember many of mom’s special nuggets of knowledge and pearls of wisdom; “You have to suffer to be beautiful, don’t fall in love with a man who is better looking than you are, marry a man who loves you more than you love him,” and, the all important, never call attention to yourself.” Those were things she said to me when I was old enough to hang on her every word and young enough to trust that she knew everything.
Bio:
Celeste M. Walker, recently moved to Bethany Beach, Delaware from Philadelphia. She has an MFA in Acting from The Actor’s Studio Drama School at the New School University in New York. She is a lifetime member of The Actors Studio and a member of Actors Equity.
OVUNQUE SIAMO 