I grew up right here on Long Island. Plainview to be exact. It’s been a long and winding road ending up back home.  I know Suffolk is very different than Nassau, differences I now love, but when I moved back to Long Island 12 years ago, this time with my family in tow, that was just one of the many things I didn’t know after moving away 34 years ago.

As a kid in Plainview I never gave a second thought to winter jackets. It was just a given, something you always had. I don’t even remember shopping for them, even though I must have. And I had lots of long sleeve shirts, sometimes sweaters but not too many because when it was cold outside, stores, restaurants, school, wherever you went as a kid, always cranked the heat. You didn’t want to be wearing anything too warm that you couldn’t take off when you got inside.

After graduating Hofstra, with a radio, TV and film degree, not the most useful degree in the world, but it made for a fun four years, I made my first move. North. To Boston. I landed a job as a production assistant/associate producer for a local video station a la MTV called V66 – WVJV-TV. I’m showing my age. This was the mid-80s. It was a world where most people didn’t have cable TV yet, and V66 was on a – wait for it- UHF channel. Does anyone here remember UHF?

Sorry, getting off topic. A big part of my job, was to accompany a cameraman in a van, something I would never let my daughter do today, and take off to all the suburbs of Boston and get “station ID’s.” Back at the station PR people would write “wonderful” alliterations, like Cheeky in Chelsea, Wicked in Wakefield, and Radical in Revere. We would have random people say these “beautiful” phrases while holding up a Peace Sign with their fingers but instead of a peace sign the V your fingers made would stand for V66.

So, my cameraman would set up shop on a street corner or park and it would be my job to walk up to strangers and ask them if they wanted to do a station ID.

Okay, what does this have to with jackets? You might be asking. Well, it’s COLD in Boston, even in the outskirts. I bought lots of thick wool sweaters that I wore inside and out. And, I went shopping for the first time I remember, for warmest, longest jacket I could find.

After living in Boston for about a year, I went to visit my college roommate in The Entertainment Industry’s Promised Land. Los Angeles! I fell in love. Six months later I was in LA armed with thick sweaters and that incredibly warm winter jacket in a place where if it hit 55 degrees in January that was FREEZING.

I got a job as a writers’ assistant on an NBC summer replacement, again showing my age, called “Me and Mrs. C.” After typing up other people’s words for a couple of months I had an idea for an episode. I wrote it up, showed it to the executive producer, and he bought it! It was taped and aired! I wrote an episode of NBC sitcom that was on the air in the summer of 1986! This was going to be my new career! I was overjoyed. I was going to be a TV writer! Life happened. I moved from TV writing to journalism. Which I love and I am doing to this day.  I lived in Southern and Northern California for 12 years. Lots of apartments, lots of jobs, lots of moves. I moved from my 20s to my 30s while moving jobs and apartments. In each of those moves I shed a few winter things. First thing to go was the jacket. The sweaters were replaced with cotton T-shirts, shorts, sundresses and for those very cold 55-degree days, some sweatshirts and jeans.

While working as a staff writer at a community newspaper, I met my husband in Long Beach, California. He was a Naval Officer. A few months after we met he had to move up north to Monterey. We got engaged and I moved up there with him. I worked freelance at the daily “Monterey County Herald” while our son toddled around my ankles.  If you’ve ever been to Monterey you know how beautiful it is, and the climate is perfect. But coming from Southern California I thought it was cold, when it was a bit chilly in the morning and would warm up to 70 in the afternoons.

I was in for a shock. From Monterey we moved to Maryland. By this time our little boy was two, and I didn’t even own socks.  I took my little one to a “Mommy and Me” event at the mall. I was wearing a California State Long Beach Sweatshirt. It was November. A mom sitting next to me said to me, “I lived in California.” I thought she was just making conversation. She said, “That’s the warmest thing you have isn’t it.” I meekly said “Yes.” She emphatically told me I had to get a …. You guessed it… A Winter Jacket.

I went to the Burlington Coat Factory because I had seen commercials for it. I also just saw a Seinfeld episode where Jerry was talking about a new fabric that was really warm, but thin.

So, I tried on a thin coat and asked the salesman if this was the new fabric. He looked at me like I was an alien, which I felt like at that moment. He said, “No! You have to get something thick and warm,” he pointed to a puffy coat that would make me look like the Michelin Man, “It’s COLD here.”

I bought the jacket and wore it for years. I was a weekly contributor to “The Baltimore Sun,”  while my little boy went from kindergarten to fourth grade, my beautiful girl toddled around my ankles and eventually started full-day kindergarten. After eight years in Maryland my husband retired from the Navy. I told him that if I had to deal with the weather I wanted to go home. So, here we are, many jackets later, on Long Island. My kids are in college now. My son is in Boston, with lots of warm clothes. He is headed to Melbourne, Australia next semester where it is warm and he won’t need them at all.  My daughter is in her freshman year at Ithaca, just beginning to accrue her winter attire. I’m still writing. I just had an essay published in the new “Chicken Soup for the Soul: My Crazy Family.” It’s winter on Long Island and we just had our first snowstorm. I do believe it’s time for a new jacket. Any suggestions?

My sister’s story was, when her older son, Ben, was five years old he asked for a dog. Frustrated, and thinking he would quickly forget, she told him when he was ten they would get a dog. Well, you know the rest. He turned ten. And he did not forget. Her husband and her younger son are both severely allergic, the deadly asthma kind, not the annoying itchy eyes kind. So, it took some research to find the right kind of dog for their family. Ben turned 11 and the big day arrived.

By the time Bandit was four they knew all the hypoallergenic dog types and they thought Bandit was lonely so they got another, Cody.

So, now both my sisters had a least one dog and my daughter Sophie was dying for one. She’s been asking, okay begging, for a dog since she was six years old and we bought our first house. Really, she’s been begging since birth, but didn’t understand the rules of a rental house. My excuse was always with two kids I had enough poop to clean, mouths to feed and toys to clean up. But now my kids were 14 and 17. My son had one more year until college. If not now, when.

We made plans to go the shelter.  I was looking for a 30-40-pound dog, hopefully a Cocker Spaniel mix, over a year old, house broken, and female.  Sophie wanted a Beagle mix so as far as size we were on the same page. Bryan didn’t have anything in mind, more of a I’ll know it when I see it kind of guy. My husband wanted a German Shepard but we nixed that. So, with four completely different ideas we schlepped to the North Shore Animal League, an hour away, because it is the largest no-kill animal shelter in the country.  Nothing grabbed our fancy. Sophie was more than a wee bit disappointed. We went the next week, I saw a couple I liked but no one else did. In between weeks two and three I changed my mind. I didn’t want a dog, but how could I say anything. Everyone was all set for a dog. So, it came to week three. I wasn’t concerned considering the last two weeks were a bust. But the last two weeks we went on Sunday and missed all the new dogs that arrived on Friday so this time, we went on Saturday.

Again, I saw a couple of older dogs, age two or three, on the small size, female that I liked, but I got nixed every time. The story goes (I don’t know because I was far behind the rest of my family) my husband saw a dog in a cage and said, “That guy’s kinda cute.” Then Sophie laid eyes on him. It was love at first sight. In her eyes, he looked like a giant Puggle one of her favorite kinds of dogs. He was a little over 30 pounds and five months old. Yes, you heard right, he was male, a puppy and not housebroken. To me he looked like a boxer, cute, but not exactly my type. At the shelter, the procedure is if you see a dog you’re interested in you get to take him out of his cage and play with him in a big playroom. So, Sophie got her dog out to play with him and I got my dog out. Everyone ignored my dog, and I don’t even remember what she looked like. But the 30 pound five-month-old was a hit. He was licking everyone’s faces and playing and just being cute. They brought him over to me. I was stand offish. He was nothing I was looking for. But I picked him up in my lap and he just kept licking my face. He didn’t bark when other dogs came out and he was just so playful. So, we asked the volunteer how big he would get and she said, get this, oh about 80 pounds. 80 pounds!!! What? Bandit was 50 pounds and I thought he was was too big! My other sister’s dog was a boxer and she was 60 pounds and she was way too big. 80 pounds! Are you kidding me?!

But look at their faces. They love him. Sophie couldn’t stop playing with him, Bryan was smiling and laughing, even Paul was having a good time. So, what could I say. Sophie gave me an out. She said, probably 100 times,”If you don’t like him Mom we won’t get him. Mom be sure. If you say no, it’s no.” She said this in between being licked on the face and giving him hugs.

So, I said., “Only if we call him Sammy.” I always wanted a dog named Sammy. Okay, so I wanted a little black Cocker Spaniel female dog called Sammie, but at least I got the name.

So, we asked the volunteer to get the paperwork. Oh, my God. What am I doing? I can’t believe this. Well, Sophie had a party to get to and we brought two cars, so the kids left. Paul and I were left in the waiting room, while all the references were checked. I was so nervous. It was like having another baby, without the labor.

They brought us back, put Sammy on a leash and handed him over to us. He was cute, but still not my type.

He didn’t walk on a leash very well and you pretty much had to drag him. They had a little shop on premises where you bought necessities, food, leash, and a crate. They said the people in the store would know what size crate to get him. Well, Sammy couldn’t make it up the steps to the store, so I waited outside with him while my husband went in to get him his stuff.

The crates were outside. There was a little tiny crate that he was already too big for, and they progressed to get bigger. Then there was a huge crate that had to be for huge dogs. My husband and a store clerk came outside. My husband had the dog food and the leash. The store clerk led him over to the crates. He looked at cute, little 30 pound Sammy and walked right passed the tiny crate, all right we knew that. Walked by the small crate, kept walking, walked by the midsize crate which I was sure would be Sammy’s and walked right to the huge enormous crate and said something like, “Folks, you must use half the crate at first, then he will grow into it.”

I must have misunderstood. This giant crate?! He will get big enough for this giant crate?! This just couldn’t be right. Could we bring him back? I don’t want a dog that big?! My husband just looked at me. What could we do, we promised.

We loaded everything, including Sammy into the car. I sat in the back with him, just like he was one of my babies.

We brought him to see the world’s biggest dog lovers, my parents. He was a big hit, but they couldn’t get over that he was five months old, because he was already so big.

We brought him home, and showed him around. The kids came home, everyone was thrilled.

The next day hubby left on a business trip, to Hawaii of all places. I had a part time office job, so I was off to work and the kids had school. Sammy went in his crate.

I walked Sam at 6 am. The kids took turns walking him when they came home from school, then few minutes later I came home.

The dog peed on the floor. We yelled at him and took him out to the unfenced in yard. Then brought him in. Then, guess what, he did it again. And again, and again, and again, well you get the idea. And to top it off, at the shelter they told us he was having a digestion problem and sent us home with medicine. Well, “digestion problem” translated to diarrhea everywhere!

He needed constant attention. In addition to working part time, I was freelancing when I got home, which means interviews over the phone. The dog would have none of this. He would jump on me, chew on my shirt and rip it while I was on the phone. Days went by, not getting any better. I realized if I gave him a rawhide bone, I would get about 45 minutes to work.

I was done with little kids; I couldn’t believe I did this to myself. Poor Sophie was frustrated too, but so in love. Bryan would just toddle off to the gym for two hours. My husband came back from Hawaii four days later, but a regular work day for him is 6 am to 8 pm. No help there.

Even my mother, who always puts me first, wasn’t very helpful. I would call to complain, and she would say, “He’s nothing you wanted, bring him back to the shelter.”

I couldn’t do that. My family would hate me.

We hired a trainer to come to the house. He told us to change his food. Which cured his diarrhea!! It was a miracle. He gave us tips on house training. Give him a treat every time he goes. He taught us ways to get him not to pull on walks, which to this day, three and a half years later, we haven’t mastered.

He grew, and grew, and grew. We had to go to PetSmart every week and we would weigh him every time. Every week he gained 2 pounds, when was it ever gonna stop? He got up to 40, 50, 60 and kept going!

We signed up for Puppy Kindergarten. He loved it because of all the other dogs. He was already too strong for me to control. My husband handled him. I guess he learned something there, but I couldn’t tell you what.

And he kept growing.

At the shelter, all they told us was that he was part Bulldog, they didn’t know what else he was.

Bryan looked at pictures online and found a breed we had never heard of. Bull Mastiff!!!!!!!!! He looked just like them! The problem was small Bull Mastiffs were around 150 pounds and large ones were around 200. No, stop, this just can’t be.

Well, after around 4 months, he was house trained! We fenced in the yard and even trained him to ring a bell whenever he wanted to go out. The fence made all the difference, because you could let him out by himself.

We would put him in his crate whenever we went out because he was still chewing and he slept in his crate.

One day, he was about a year old, I let him stay out of his crate when I went out for 15 minutes. He destroyed a couch pillow. We called the trainer at the shelter. She suggested putting change in a can and shaking it whenever he nipped or chewed. It worked. He was afraid of the noise! It worked!

I stopped giving him rawhides because I was told how unhealthy they were. And, look at that he settled down when I was on the phone.

When he was about a year old, he started laying around during the day, instead of being Mr. Crazy. I was so worried we took him to the Vet. She said he was just in a new stage.

Now at three and a half, and 100 pounds we never use that crate anymore. He has the run of the house when we’re out and he doesn’t chew a thing. He sleeps in our bed at night.

He is the biggest mush in the world. Bryan is off at college in Boston, Sophie, now a senior, has a million after school activities and stays late, and hubby still comes home around 8. I no longer have a part time job. It’s me and Sammy all day. We both love being outside so we spend hours in the yard. He watches TV with me, and doesn’t bother me on the phone. He loves being pet all day long, and now I’m the one getting kisses all day. He has a special relationship with each family member for different reasons and everyone loves him. Especially me. Just like one of the kids, he is the love of my life.

We met when we were 19. I was a transfer sophomore and she was a freshman. We were training to be Crisis Counselors at the college crisis hotline called “Outreach.” We thought we could save the world.  We became fast friends. The following year we were roommates. That didn’t go so well. We were the original female version of Oscar and Felix. You guessed it, I was Oscar. I knew I was in trouble when I saw her neatly arranging her earrings in her earring tree. But we had things in common. We named our rug after one of her ex-boyfriends so we could walk all over him. We had tickle fights because she reminded me of my sisters. But, we had our misunderstandings. Well, okay, we fought like cats and dogs. We tried to use our Outreach reflection skills to ease our arguments. “So, what I hear you saying is you think I’m a slob and I make noise at 3am when your sleeping.” “Yup! You heard correctly!” The reflections didn’t work so well. We didn’t think we would make it. But the little things held us together. Each of us would hold the other’s hair when we were drunk and praying to the porcelain God. We held each other when we cried over break-ups.

The next year I got a single, knowing I was not roommate material. She moved into a suite and somehow we made it through. We both graduated with Radio, TV, Film degrees, in the mid-80s. Her dream was the music industry, mine TV. She was the brave one. She moved to the Promised Land, Los Angeles, not knowing a soul. Me, not so brave, moved to Boston to follow a boyfriend. I worked as a production assistant at a small music video station a la MTV, she worked at an audio duplication company. Long before the days of Facebook and email, we kept in touch the old fashioned way, letters and expensive long distance phone calls. After said boyfriend and I visited Margie in the Promised Land, where I had a few informational interviews at my favorite TV shows, and saw the famous gates at the Paramount Lot, I was hooked. I left the boyfriend behind and followed her out there. We were smart enough not to live together, but we saw each other nearly everyday.   I even honed in on her job at the duplication company as a night job while I worked as a temp at a television studio during the day. She didn’t mind. At least if she did she never said it out loud.  She lived with two roommates in a two bedroom apartment in West Hollywood.  I lived in a studio in the Valley.

Things were going well for both of us. At least, so I thought. At some point, Margie decided that she was tired of being broke and working at a dead end job. So, she made the tough decision to move to Florida and stay with her parents for a little while, save up some cash and come back to LA. I stayed in LA and went through a series of jobs and apartments. Always broke.

In Florida, Margie temped in a number of places and was fortunate to be placed in the video department at the electric company. Always planning on moving back to LA.

Unfortunately, life got in the way. Her wonderful father suffered a heart attack. While in the hospital, he was given a drug called TpA which was supposed to have allowed him a faster, fuller recovery. Instead, it triggered a debilitating cerebral hemorrhage that left him with right side paralysis, in a wheelchair and able to say only three things coherently; yes, no and son-of-a-bitch. He needed a great deal of help with daily living activities and was forced into an early retirement.

Margie’s loving mother took the roll as lead caregiver. Margie’s overwhelming love for her parents meant she could not leave Florida and she selflessly stayed to help care for them. Talented as she was she was  promoted to Video Producer and bought her own condo, still planning on returning to LA someday.

Years went by. I met my future husband. Margie was a bridesmaid. My husband was a Naval Officer and we moved to Maryland, we had two kids. Many friendships wane when one has kids and the other doesn’t. But she was always supportive of the trials of a mom with toddlers. In some ways we could relate, she taking care of her elderly folks, me taking care of two little people who couldn’t pee in the potty or dress or bath themselves. She had a couple of boyfriends but nothing serious. She always said jokingly, that there wasn’t a large pool to pick from as the average age of people in her neck of the woods in Florida was half dead.

The loving person that she is, she attracted a lot of people to her and had many close friends, but never connected with Florida. She lived there for 20 years. Her mom passed on first. I made the trip to Florida to support my friend as she has always supported me. A few years later, her Dad joined her Mom.

Margie tried on LA for a month, before selling her place and wisely decided after so much time passing this was just not the place for her.  At this point my family and I had moved back to my home in New York.

She moved back to the west coast that she loved so much, but it was just a little bit north of L.A.- like 900 miles north – to Portland Oregon. Like her move to LA, she went there not knowing a soul, but at least was now in the same time-zone as her sister and family.

She took to it like a duck to water. A very young, vibrant city, with beautiful mountains and greenery. Just the opposite of Florida. The climate was much more forgiving than a summer day in Florida. Like the greenery surrounding her, Margie bloomed.

She joined Meet Up Groups, took classes and met friends. She landed a good job at Portland State University. Then, as fate would have it, one of her new Portland buddies dragged her kicking and screaming to her not second, not third, but fourth Speed Dating event.

That’s the beginning of this lovely story. The fourth time is the charm. Speed Dating is where she met the love of her life. Margie has found her joy. She and her lovely man are getting married!!

Mazel Tov my old friend. We raise a glass to you!!

Where was this when my kids were toddlers? Those Barney songs were mind numbing. AAAHHHH….It’s incredible to me that after 50 years Beatles music still lives on and will be important to yet another generation.

The Beatles have been a part of me my entire life. I have been a fan since 1974 – when I was 12. I can’t point my finger to any one singular event that led to the obsession. As a matter of fact I was four years too late, as everyone knows they broke up in 1970.  But the obsession was strong. My tween room was covered in Beatles posters. I took my birthday and Chanukkah money and bought every Beatles album, on vinyl in those days. I wore Beatles T-Shirts to school, which may be cool now, but in those days on Long Island, not so much.

My favorite was George. He was the cutest, of course. But his quest into Indian religion seemed to have all the answers for a kid who was always searching. Like I said, I’m from Long Island so I was brought up Jewish. Well, somewhat. We always knew we were Jewish, for all the holidays the family would get together and have big meals starting with Matzoh Ball soup and Gelfite Fish. But we weren’t religious. We didn’t belong to a synagogue and my sisters and I never went to Hebrew School or became Bat Mitzvahed. So, as I teen, I was searching for answers.

I thought George had all of them. I loved, “Living in the Material World.” And my friends thought I was “out there.”

When I went to college I put my Beatles obsession on the back burner. Tired of being teased for it in High School. I didn’t wear any t-shirts and there were no tell-tale signs on my walls. But those closest to me knew about it. My college boyfriend’s obsession was The Doors so he didn’t think my obsession was weird at all.

The first time I saw Paul McCartney in concert was when I was 26. I was living in LA. It was a miracle we got tickets. I still don’t know how it happened. So two friends and I trekked to the Staples center or whatever it was called in the 80s and there was a tall jerk standing in front of me and I couldn’t see. I cried. Both out of happiness for actually hearing Paul McCartney in person and out of frustration because of the jerk in front of me.

I saw Paul a few more times after that. In different cities. With different men.

I went through hard time in my life. I was engaged and living in San Francisco. The engagement broke up and I moved back down to Los Angeles. I was bitter. About a year later a friend tried to set me up on a blind date. I refused to go, being put off by men in general. It was the mid ‘90s, I was in my early 30s and The Fab Four was a distant memory.

Our friends tricked us into a double date to the Nutcracker Suite at Christmas time in Long Beach, CA. At intermission they ran off and left us alone. Tired of all the first date questions, I thought I would throw some at him. I crossed my arms and said to my blind date, “Who’s your favorite band.” And you won’t believe what he said. “The Beatles and The Grateful Dead.” I didn’t believe him. I thought this was part of the set up. He said, “It’s true. I have every Beatles CD.” Well, looky here. I had them all on vinyl but what good was that in 1994. Here’s a man who has them all on CD. It must be a match made in heaven.

A year later we were married! Our wedding song was, of course, “Till There Was You.” We had a boy and a girl. I used to tell my kids white lies to keep them innocent. When my son’s fish died I told him he went to his cousin’s house. I also told him when people turned 100 they started all over again at age 1.

When 9/11 happened my son was 6 and my daughter was 2. My husband was a Naval Officer. This was the first time we told them about evil in the world. Two months later George died. It was an awful day for me. My husband called me from work to make sure I heard it from him first. That was when I told my kids about death. I explained to them that people don’t really start all over again. We were all heartbroken.

One of my favorite memories with my son is when he was about 8 years old. We were sitting at the kitchen table, just the two of us, playing checkers, he was winning of course, and we were singing Beatles songs.

When I would take him to his various sports practices, wrestling, lacrosse, baseball, we would play Beatles music and sing along.

My daughter never got the Beatles bug. But now, at 17, she has learned how to play “Here Comes the Sun” on her Ukulele.

My son, now 20, and in college five hours away, has seen Paul McCartney twice with his friends, spending hundreds of dollars on tickets. Hopefully, as he sat in those arenas he had a warm feeling and remembered spending time with his mom. And when my daughter leaves next year, I hope when she takes out her Ukulele she still plays “Here Comes The Sun” and thinks of me.