Her thick, dazzling dark braid rests on her back, while she bends over her homework sheet, and after a brief thinking spell, sets her pencil back on task.  I watch her write a number in the right column, after she tests it out on me first. “14?” “Exactly right,” I spring back. I smile at her success and even share a piece of her victory. It’s so nice, I comment, while she plants her 4 in the ones column, that there’s a right answer … a perfect solution that works.  She pencils a small 1 on top of the next column and politely nods at my non-digital...

Before I get to our lemons — those nice juicy seedless fuits that wait for our tug … and not the kind that I pick up with gardening gloves after they drop on the ground and splatter — just  a little about blushing mangoes.  And how on the mainland, I gasped at their price and foolishly left them alone… It was my dear pal Yinan, who showed me just what a mango can do.  A while ago, (too long, as far as I’m concerned), I sat close to one of her big bowls, while she expertly sliced a mango and detailed her salad.  Yinan’s salad, like the rest of dinner, not to...

If we could just have a quick peek at the cards we never touch,  I’m almost positive that our best of anything would be the hardest to find.  It would be someplace waiting.  On top?  Never.  How can the best ever come first — before the rest?  Impossible, incomparable, right?   Let’s stop here. You see my best boss did come first.  Peter Lacey by name.  Peter Lacey was my first boss,  just a couple of weeks after the diploma was all mine. He was exactly twice my age and somehow found stories of my college life as engrossing as the little captions and checked facts that I...

I started out with some promise. I knew Fifth Avenue, Madison Avenue, Park Avenue, Lexington, all the way to 1st, and could thread my way from Azuma to FAO Schwarz, early on.  I also showed an early streak of geographic aptitude by navigating the IRT subway line — even before I could say the whole name.   (It had nothing to do with rabbits in transit…) Then, just  as my orientation skills began receding, along came my pal Evelyn, who knew her way around even in the dark and could always find the best buttons in the Village.  And, when it came to guessing which bus stop was coming up,...

Precisely what he shouted to somebody who was still on dry land.  Somebody he was hoping to recruit. With perfect ease. For a second, that lasted longer than a second, with my eyelids blocking out the sun, it felt like I was in a paneled board room with a meeting about to start.  Not at all  — I was just an “extra” floating on my back in the Pacific Ocean, and he was executing his strategy for a spontaneous merger with  … Peter…  That’s who called back to him. “Peter, I’m Nicholas.”  And then they both launched their boogie boards into a...

Most likely, the approach of Thanksgiving was just enough to throw our turkeys a bit off balance.  We couldn’t help noticing a recent uptick in pre-Turkey Day drop-ins.  One of the “kids” even climbed up on the patio chair right outside my window and struck a pose that I read as  “I’m in command now.” Maybe I  just misunderstood his friendliness. Or possibly he wanted a heart-to-heart chat  about whether I was planning a holiday menu… Marian’s right — from the start, she told me that these fairly drab-looking non-native turkeys would stand in...