I was eight years old and sitting on the front stoop, shelling peas into a bowl for Mama, when the radio inside started crackling something different.
I didn't understand all the words. But I understood the way my mother dropped the dish towel she was holding. I understood the sound she made — not a word exactly, more like a door opening somewhere deep inside her.
Within minutes, our street was alive in a way I had never seen. Mr. Abramowitz from the dry goods store was running — running! — down the sidewalk with his arms in the air. Mrs. Deluca was crying and kissing her rosary. Old Henry from the corner lot, who never said much to anybody, was banging a pot with a wooden spoon and singing something in Italian.
My brother Tommy, who was fifteen and always trying to seem older than he was, grabbed my hand and pulled me into the street. We danced in a circle with children we barely knew, dizzy and laughing.
I didn't understand grief yet, not the way adults did. But I felt the release of it that day — the collective exhale of an entire nation letting go of something terrible.
My father came home from the plant early. He sat in his chair, put his face in his hands, and wept. That was the only time I ever saw him cry.
Some moments are too big for memory to hold all at once. I've been carrying pieces of that day my whole life.