Hashtag Throwback Thursday, circa 1980 to the sweet streets of Buffalo's east side. Here I am smoking a cigarette I had pilfered from the purse of my lovely Aunt Laura who kept a canary that was yellower than the turtleneck I relentlessly wore. My Aunt lived above her sister in a spotless apartment. She smoked several packs of non-filtered Lucky Strikes a day and she kept a yellow canary, that sang sweetly, in a cage. She also kept a covered glass dish on her coffee table full of Hershey’s Kisses. There was something about lifting the lid to grab a kiss that made the chocolate seem finer than the mass produced piece it was. But enough of that. Though I didn’t know it at the time, in regard to love, I was some lesser, but no less important, Antoine Doinel. I am with my gaggle of goons. We had been wandering around the neighborhood as we were wont to do in those days, laughing, riding handmade skateboards, playing stickball, gambling, and lighting small things on fire, generally before the street lights came on. This was in the time of tube socks, banana seats, and pay telephones. I was clearly delighted with myself, having just held the sweaty hand of my first love who momentously took her hand from mine to wipe the sweat onto her Jordache jeans before entwining her fingers into mine again. It was then that I realized all things were possible. We broke up a day later via a note passed in music class where my joy of being next in line to play the xylophone was greatly diminished by the words "i’m sorry” with a broken heart in place of the dot over the lowercase i on a sheet of snow white paper folded into eighths. She had found another. The first of many such experiences in my young life. But this was before that note. We were walking our familiar streets. There the barber. There the butcher. There the lot where we played hockey. We were untamed, bodily, and brutal. We laughed with our mouths open, we spit and swore, stumbling towards the things of adulthood. The holding of hands, the kissing and touching. The overwhelming beating of our hearts in our fine, thin, chests that we ignored by making sarcastic remarks or setting small things on fire that belied our true feelings. Those feelings that we felt when we held the hand of the girl in the perfectly blue jeans or when we heard the sound of that bright bird cut through the silence, or lifted the lid of a glass bowl to reveal the treasure of a tinfoil wrapped kiss.

Hashtag Throwback Thursday. Here is a photograph of my childhood home. There were cherry trees in the backyard. The fruit ripening red. We ate them until our lips were stained and then ate more. My father cut them down in the early 80s and that was the end of that. The east side of Buffalo, New York was a neighborhood of nestled industrial vernacular homes, many of them doubles with an apartment on the top floor. It was a working class neighborhood populated mostly by first and second generation Italian and Polish immigrants. There was a bakery. There was a bar. There was a butcher.  There was the church and its school. My street was lined with maples and in the winter the snow was shoveled into mounds at the ends of the driveways. The neighborhood teemed with children. Catholics. They smoked cigarettes and threw rocks. They built fires and poured gasoline on them and watched the flames rise. Their hockey sticks scraped the streets. They rode bicycles in groups and instead of ringing a doorbell, they yelled outside the homes of their friends for them to come out and play. My parents rented out the upper apartment to help make ends meet.   They rented it to a couple. The woman plodded up the stairs in the evening and down them in the morning.  I believe she was a teacher. Her pear shaped husband wore white t-shirts that were washed and rewashed until they were a dull gray. On exceptional evenings I could sit on the steps that led up to the apartment and listen to the woman yell and break plates over her husband’s head. I imagined him just sitting there, head down, aware of his failures and unable to do anything about them. At some point she kicked him out and I never saw him again. Afterwards, she seemed to carry an unknown weight up and down those stairs. Sometimes I would see her at the bus stop shifting from foot to foot waiting. I’m not sure why I remember that, maybe there was something to the image that was universal. A broken woman was waiting while her life whirled around her. But waiting for what exactly? For the comfort of home. For the telling and retelling of the stories that shaped us. In the old houses of my youth were the same old stories. This generation built on the backs of the previous generation. The neighborhood was populated by the past. It stretched both backwards and forwards. In the houses were the old furniture inherited from the death of parents.  Linens, plates, and silverware all seemed to be imbued with a sense of history. The recipes of my grandmother in a tin box on a shelf. These items were the thin threads that connect generation to generation, and keep their stories alive. The houses contain them all. They are etched into the stairs with the weight of the broken tenant and in the yard with the tartness of cherries. The houses windows like eyes looking and remembering. They sit, those houses with their stories, waiting for when the rot of October succumbs to the snow of an unseasonable December which melts again to hyacinth. In the attic where I left my youth, I found my mother in a quiet box-tucked neatly behind the memories of an Easy-Bake oven, Spirograph, and orphaned Legos. Each of which carries their own stories and the stories from those stories. My sister and I were just getting things in order, pulling down my mother’s clothes to pack them in black plastic garbage bags so they could be hauled off to the Goodwill, as you are wont to do after an unimaginable grief, and then, like that, there she was again. Without the port or tubes, in perfect Kodachrome, knee-deep in the lake with her playful smile that we keep with us like the scent of the hyacinth that she planted and still lingers.

Hashtag Throwback Thursday. Here is a photograph of me in a square of light from the house I grew up in on the East side of Buffalo, New York. It is a curious thing what photographs do. How they stop time, edit a life to a fraction of a second, and then disappear, only to reappear again many years later, and in the instant of the seeing bring you back to those moments you thought you had forgotten.  On the back of the photograph, in the cursive of my mother’s hand, is written “David in golden light, 1979.” I am struck by the ordinariness of the image. I have come from the adventure that was outside. I am as usual lost in my thoughts and watching the dust particles float. I am with my friend whose hair was fire. We have caught salamanders in a cup, or potato bugs, or beetles. I have no recollection of the day of this particular photograph to which I attribute to the long languid summer days that bled from one to the other without regard to time. Mondays were Wednesdays and Fridays were Mondays in those days. So this photograph is a photograph of all of those days when we hunted snakes and put them in Folgers cans with air holes poked into the plastic lids. In the mornings after breakfast, our mother sent my brothers and me out into the neighborhood. We ran the streets. Threw rocks until we discovered kissing girls, but this was before that. This was when I went out into the world and newly discovered it. Everything was a revelation.  Each day held countless epiphanies. We jumped off of garages into pools. We ran and tripped and gashed our knees. The blood ran red and thick. We spit on it, wiped it off, and ran again. Our bodies glistening with sweat. Life and death were entwined. There was a yew bush in our yard with plump red berries that our mother told us were poisonous. We mashed them in a bowl with a stick and some mud that we had made with the garden hose. We crushed the berries into a fine paste and then the game turned, unbeknownst to me the youngest. My brothers, who smelled of gasoline, threatened me with the death berry paste until I cried. This was known as love. But here, in this photograph, I am thinking thoughts I thought I had forgotten. I am bright with the newness of discovery. I am figuring and searching, amazed with the wonder of it all. The salamanders with their flat tails. The thickness of blood. The juice of the deathberries. The ash smudged fingers of my brothers. The spokes of a bicycle wheel.  The safety of light through a window. The pop of a ball in the mitt. We were baseball players in the World Series. We were gangsters. We were explorers and scientists. We were thinkers before final thoughts. We were feral and free. Until we weren’t, until Mondays actually became Mondays. Until death became real. Until we learned time.  But for a brief moment this many years later, in the rush of what constitutes life now, through a photograph I am there again in the golden sunlight imagining the countless universes in the dust particles that float through a shaft of light from the window of my childhood home.

Hashtag Throwback Thursday. I want to go way back because I am feeling nostalgic for the days when people read actual newspapers that stained their fingers with ink.  Here is a photograph of me when I was three or four. I am on the east side of Buffalo, New York. The east side of Buffalo, New York in those days was teeming with children. The children on the east side of Buffalo carried sticks and rocks and chestnuts. They smoked non-filtered cigarettes and were routinely sworn at in German, Italian, and Polish by old women in babushka’s who sat staring with bad eyes on crooked porches. I was a taciturn child, wholly unremarkable. I am the youngest of five. I am being watched by my brothers who are clearly nowhere to be seen in this photograph. I am certain they are on the train tracks lighting things on fire or throwing rocks at the girls they like. My sister, were she to find out that they had left me, would have grabbed them by the scruffs of their necks and banged them off of a radiator, but she too is missing. She is probably eating sponge candy at the Garden of Sweets on Bailey Avenue. In any case, here I am, alone and observing the world. It is a common theme in my life. I distinctly recall this day, it is one of my earliest memories, perhaps made concrete by the existence of this photograph which must have been made by my grandmother before she retreated inside to listen to polka music on her little transistor radio. I am alone and watching the neighborhood unfold around me. Everything is a wonder and bathed in light. I remember thinking: Buffalo is no resort town. It is the sorrow of one thousand storms and a monument to the perseverance of people. I thought to myself: not far from here, the water rises and falls with a slap like a sigh on the beaches of Lake Erie. The gulls circle overhead, and the canadian geese fly in formation, as the wind comes rushing down from the arctic, carrying the whispers of goodbyes from arctic villages like Kivalina, and then hurtles down what has become the saddest of streets of leaning victorian houses. All peeling paint and cracked porches. It occurred to me, as I stood there alone, how much we lose with every extinguished life. The rotted porches can only hint at the rocking chairs and the chipped lipped pitchers of iced tea of its past. The chair will be chopped up for firewood and the pitcher sold and collecting dust in a secondhand store. I remember thinking about my mother and what would happen after she goes. Those memories of hers as she walked this same street held tight behind her eyes. Who is left to write the history of what took place here? The power of her memory will never be heard again, and it retreats into the leaning houses which creak to get our attention, then stand mute under our gaze. It was with these thoughts that I made my first attempt at drawing the figure. At making a mark that might be left when I too grew old and died. I was at the beginning of my life and saw how it was attached to so many other lives. I saw myself stretching backwards in time in the eyes of my grandmother whose eyes resembled her fathers who I never knew and it went further into a past I would later find hints of. I saw it leap out towards the unknown of the future, at things I was too young to comprehend but still somehow felt. I bent to my task with a piece of rock that when pressed into the concrete made a white line. I drew myself and in drawing was trying to make meaning of my life.

Hashtag Throwback Thursday. Here is a photograph of me and my sister taken about six years ago on the east side of Buffalo, New York. I want to praise my sister. There is much to praise. Her toughness and overwhelming kindness. Her heart, which is all encompassing. Her love. Her love. Her love. I am getting ahead of myself. Six years ago was a year of relentless rain in my life. One of those years where the 1% probability of a 100-year flood occurring actually does occur. I was wholly unprepared for the deluge, without raincoat, umbrella, or galoshes, but still, that rain fell and fell. It fell so much that it saturated the ground and crumbled foundations and swept them away. In wet shoes and wind I gathered up the pieces as best I could, but the whole of everything I knew was gone. In that storm my sister came out in a thin coat and tied a rope around my waist so that I should not blow away and disappear. It was an incredibly long rope. She was in Buffalo and I was in Texas. It was in that storm that I began to see my sister, who is considerably older than me, she being the oldest and I being the youngest in the family, in a way I had not seen her before. I will try to be clear. As my world was falling apart our mother was diagnosed with ovarian cancer. So the storm continued in a hospital near Christmas where we gathered around my mother. My brothers, my father, my sister. All of us talking in that quiet way when the person you love is resting but needs you all there, needs you to be all around them. In that quiet, a group of carolers came to the door and asked if they could sing. My sister said yes. Yes. The carolers sang Silent Night with its sleep in heavenly peace and unknown to them it was my mother’s favorite and that made my sister cry who had said yes. I had rarely seen my sister cry and that made me cry. In the room that night I saw the old Polish kindness, love, and toughness that was my grandmother and my mother come into the heart of my sister. I saw it extend further back to my grandmothers mother and then to her mother, both of whom I never knew, and then I watched it come back to settle in the heart of my sister. I remember feeling a sense that everything would be okay. In some quiet way my sister made me see this, made me see the bright sunlight through the storm. The wall of grief and uncertainty that had been built around my heart seemed to weaken. The waiting and wanting seemed to drift away. There was a brightness of my heart, and a calmness of my mind. I felt as though I could see myself from a great distance. Surrounding me was the quiet, the beauty of work, the lake, and all of the moments of those who had come before me and who had brought me to this place and then would carry me forward. The connection to everything became concrete again. There was a lull in the storm. As my mother slept, my brothers and sister and I walked through the old neighborhood of our youth where we had been formed. My sister told us the story about how she had dressed me up like a girl and then paraded me around the neighborhood. This had occurred when I was just a milk-bellied toddler with huge blonde curls. I was ringlets of golden sunshine on a glowing head that smiled and smiled at the attention and she had walked me around the block waving to everyone, showing me off. A spectacle. This was during the time of tube socks, rock and roll, and buttons. I didn’t have a clue, the only thing I knew was that my sister made me feel special and important and beautiful. At the telling of the story, she stopped and looked at me there on the street in the old neighborhood. Battered and stooped, she saw me, and I straightened up. We all stopped. She gave one of my brothers a Kodak camera, the rest she told to get the hell out of the way. We had not made a picture together in many years, but she held me like she did when I was her babiest of brothers and I put my arm around her, and in that moment I knew everything would be okay and then the camera clicked and I went back to Texas where the rain continued to fall in that odd year. Still the rain wouldn’t cease, and just when it seemed like the sun would never shine, my sister sent me mail and inside the envelope was the photograph she had made.

Hashtag Throwback Thursday. I was leafing through photographs last night, you know just going through moments in my mind like I do on any given evening and was struck by this photograph of my brother Michael and myself circa 1979. It is significant for many reasons. One reason is that this is the only known photograph of the famed banana whiffle ball bat that is central to many early Gianadda boyhood stories, culminating in its destruction by gasoline and a match from a box stolen from my Aunt Laura, who, you might remember from earlier recollections, smoked several packs of non-filtered Lucky Strikes a day. I hit a record 362 home runs pretending I was the great New York Yankee, Thurman Munson, with that bat. This photograph is also significant in that this is the only known photograph of my brother Michael between the years 1972 and 1989 where he is not wearing a black leather jacket. This was in the time of tube socks and showing your love by beating someone up with your fists. For instance, some many years before this photograph was taken a bully poked me and poked me and poked me in the chest with his big dirty finger and said "wah, wah, did I break your lil’ chicken bone chest lil’ chicken baby," and then poked me again with his grubby finger and pretended to cry like a baby hoping it would solicit in me a rush of tears like the great cataract that is Niagara, “wah wah.” We had been standing alone by the funeral home on the corner. I was 3. I was given the task to go buy cigarettes for my mother who was cooking gnocchi, but had been waylaid by the brutalness of language that was transmitted from the stench of the mouth of the bully. Out of the blue, my brothers, who had been setting small things on fire on the train tracks came over and waved their fists at the bully. They said, "you got something to say?" and then they waved their fists again and demanded the bully say it. They said: "say it!, say it!," but the bully cried and ran away. This was known as love. In any case, this photograph is also significant because it shows the first car my brother owned. Many girls liked my brother because he was well known around the neighborhood for the enormous amount of love that poured out of him and into the faces of bullies. He took up for the underdog and was also polite to the elderly which earned him the moniker "suchagoodboy" by many of the mothers of the girls that followed him around doe-eyed. I believe he kissed many of these girls behind our garage. But on this day, in 1979, which I remember with a clarity reserved for photographs, Karen Brzenczyszczykiewicz and Donna Kleszczynska (names have been changed to protect the innocent) were hanging around as he fiddled with his car. They were whispering about his hair, and buttocks, and making signs of the crosses on themselves as if that would help. It would not. He would kiss both of them before the end of the summer. One of them he would kiss directly inside that holiest of places in our neighborhood, the church. But this day, he talked to them softly, The love pouring out of him in a different way. It was so different in fact that it left an indelible mark on me. Karen had had her Kodak Brownie camera strapped around her neck that day, and he said "why dont you take a picture of me and my little brother?" She lifted the camera, focused, and snapped, and that is really why this photograph is significant. It is significant because instead of fists he used words to tell me he thought I mattered and was proud that I was his brother.

Hashtag Throwback Thursday. Here is a photograph of me in the golden moments of my youth on the east side of Buffalo, New York. I am rolling a tire I found in a vacant lot because my brothers had set fire to my Big Wheel on the railroad tracks by my grandmother's house off of Olympic Avenue. The burning of my Big Wheel had occurred several weeks prior to this photograph being taken. The matches which set fire to the gasoline that had been poured on my Big Wheel had been stolen by my brother from my Aunt Laura who smoked non-filtered Lucky Strikes. My brother will remain nameless, because I swore to him at the time of the theft that I would never tell, otherwise I would receive a fat lip administered by a knuckle sandwich. I did not know what the matches were to be used for at the time I had agreed to the pact. I am eight, still wearing the milk fat of my baby years, and wearing my favorite socks. I am shirtless because I loathed the feel of the hand-me down polyesther shirts of my brothers. I am trying to impress my first girlfriend who lived on Roebling Avenue and wore Jordache jeans. Her eyes shined like smooth wet stones and I longed to hold her hand, but her hand was held by another, and so I rolled my tire like an innocent Sisyphus. Up and down and back again. Over and over. This is what I like to remember. Not that my Big Wheel was melted on the railroad tracks by my brothers who enjoyed burning things and kissing girls behind the garage. Not the smooth wet stones that were the eyes of the girl who lived down the block and would eventually become my first girlfriend. Not the Lucky Strikes of my aunt who is a photograph now. Not my grandmother, that hero of a woman who made the love that was my mother, both of whom who are no longer. No. I like to remember the overwhelming joy and beauty of those moments. The truth and simplicity. A tire lay in a vacant lot and I rolled it. I was glad to be in the world with the air rushing over my slick summer body, full on my mother's potato pancakes. Intimate with everything I wanted. Laughing with my friend. The dream quietly waiting for the taking. The smooth wet stones still somehow shone on me. The way it was and the way it could be all wrapped up together neatly in a circle that I rolled and let go and watched as it went on and on - down the street, and then further and still somehow continues on.

Hashtag Throwback Thursday. Here I am on the east side of Buffalo, New York with my first girlfriend who lived a block away from me on Roebling avenue. I would walk the block to her house, yell her name, and she would come out. We would hold hands until they got sweaty and then we wouldn't. We would play tag. We would dance. This was before I knew anything about Emmett Till, or Trayvon Martin, or Michael Brown, Jr. This was before I knew about war or death. We were just riding bicycles and smiling. I remember once going back to that old neighborhood on a visit. This was when my mother was still alive. Several years ago. We drove slowly to the neighborhood through deep snow on side streets. We were pointing out houses where our old friends had once lived. She pointed out important houses of her past. They leaned into the wind or were boarded up, their paint peeling. We kind of floated through the neighborhood. I am sure that each of us were remembering lazy summer evenings. The adults sitting on lawn chairs in yards, drinking beer, and playing euchre while their children ran along perfectly clipped lawns shouting. She said, “that empty corner lot there used to be a clam stand. Your father and I used to go on dates there.” Where the clam stand once stood had become an abandoned lot. The lot in the snow became a white square with several scrub trees poking up out of it, but it was beautiful. We drove past the library and the decomissioned church to the main road, which had been plowed. We stopped at the intersection and paused, taking in the scene. The snow and the gloaming had obscured the decay of this forgotten part of the city. It looked like it did when I was young. It looked like it did when everything was easy and carefree and the only problems children had to deal with were the streetlights coming on and taking baths.