Signs

Warm. Sublime. Glorious. Splendiferous. Signs of the coming summer. What else can I say about the weather on Sunday? It was the kind of day that every day could be--if I lived in La Jolla.

But this was a Spring day in Brooklyn, and I was walking with Mom down Carroll Street toward the new building in Gowanus. Although she's lived in Brooklyn for 67 years, she'd never been to this area. With almost 2.5 million residents, covering 71 square miles, Brooklyn would be the fourth largest city in the U.S. if it were not part of New York City. New Yorkers take great pride in their neighborhoods. I know people who've never ventured outside a nine-block radius. New Yorkers can be just as provincial as anyone else.

As we approached the building, my eyes lit up. There they were, sitting outside in deck chairs. The mayors of the block. The old Italian ladies. The ladies who've lived on this block for generations, when this neighborhood was known as South Brooklyn. The ladies who know who comes home late at night, who watch out for your car, who have keys to each other's homes. They're the ladies you want to know. And I had Mom with me to validate my Brooklyn pedigree. I was in.

I knew they saw me walking down the block. They have eyes like flies, taking everything in all around them. "Hi," I said, looking at the oldest woman, who I assumed was Rosie. The ladies muttered a half-hearted hello. "I'm Kieran, one of the new owners of the building a few doors down." Suddenly their demeanors changed. "Oh, hi!" they said, almost in unison.

You can't miss Rosie's three-story frame house. It's adorned with a large, eponymous awning, and her door has a bumper sticker that says "I [Heart] Someone with Autism." Every time I've gone down that block, there's Rosie, like a sentry, sitting or standing outside.

The new building has a curb cut, which we own. The front part of the building was designed as a garage, and we park our cars in it from time to time. The building's been vacant for about a year, and local residents have been parking in the curb cut, not knowing the building has changed hands. Now, everyone knows, thanks to Rosie.

"Your friend Louie was here the other day," Rosie shouted, though I stood less than five feet from her. "I told him he has to get a sign."

"I know," I affirmed. "We have to get a sign."

"Because these people around here, they don't know," she said, "so you have to put up a sign."

"We've been trying to tell people," chimed in another lady, Eleanor, who looked to be in her 50s.

Rosie cut her off. "The ice cream trucks park here late at night. They don't know anyone's there. If you had a sign, then they wouldn't park there."

I was beginning to see her point.

Last week Luis went to get his car from the building and found our curb cut blocked for the second time. The rolltop door at the entrance, emblazoned with a giant yellow "NO PARKING," had not deterred people from parking in front. He knocked on Rosie's door, found it open, and heard a throaty, nicotine-rich voice from within yell, "Come in!" He followed the voice to the kitchen, where Rosie and her friends were sitting around in their house dresses having coffee.

"Who are you?" Rosie demanded, like the Wizard of Oz when Dorothy and Toto appear before him. When Luis explained, the ladies sprang into action. "You don't have a sign up," Rosie said. "That's probably Joey's car. Go next door and ring the bell."

But before he could leave, the Brooklyn production of Desperate Housewives, led by Rosie, whisked him next door. Luis couldn't find the bell, and never would have, since the bell was inside the front door.

"JOEY!" Rosie shouted, almost shattering Luis's eardrum. "Move your car!" A minute later Joey came down and moved his car.

Luis thanked everyone.

"But you gotta get a sign," Rosie said.

We surmised that Rosie was used to torture uncooperative informants by nagging them.

All the ladies seemed thrilled that we want to make our building a residence. Community approval is critical to getting our zoning variance. Part of the BSA process involves notifying all neighbors within a 400-ft radius of the building of its intended use, to give them a chance to object.

After I finished chatting with the ladies, I saw Mom bonding with Eleanor, who was selling Avon products on a table next door. Mom's a big Avon fan, so of course she bought some hand cream.

"This is a lovely block," Mom said. "It's a real old Brooklyn crowd here."

"Yeah," Eleanor said, "there's not much of us left. Everything's changing so much."

"Oh, I know," Mom said. "I live in Sunset Park, and now it's all" --Mom lowered her voice as she always does when mentioning a different ethnic group-- "Chinese."

"You know, I love everyone," Eleanor said, putting her hand on her heart, "but the Chinese are so rude. They push their way onto the subway and don't say excuse me or anything."

"I know," my mother said, nodding and puffing on her cigarette. "But where are you gonna go?"

"Well, that's the thing," Eleanor said. "You can get a lot of money for your house, but then what can you buy? You have to go to Staten Island. I'm not going to Staten Island."

"And now all the Yuppies are buying everything up," Mom said, oblivious to the idea that her son might be perceived as one of them.

It's not uncommon, this kind of nostalgic banter among die-hard Brooklynites of Mom and Eleanor's generation. When first- and second-generation children of immigrants fled in droves to the burbs after World War II, those who stayed were left to fend for themselves in a treacherous, decaying urban jungle. Irish and Italian Catholics especially, who like having All The Answers To Things, don't know what to make of this maelstrom of economic development in their borough. Over the past 20 years they've been forced to coexist with people completely unlike them, some from places Americans only knew as enemies during the Cold War. Yet the people who came to this country did so for many of the same reasons our ancestors did, for opportunity. Mom tries her best to embrace the new times, but when she glimpses her past she holds tighter to what she knows, even though what she knows has long faded into memory.

After showing Mom the building, where our architect Kim was taking measurements, she and and I walked half a block to the Carroll Street Bridge, one of the five crossings over the Gowanus Canal, and looked out over the water. Community development groups have dredged the waterway to the point where marine life is once again viable, but much of the sediment at the bottom is too costly and too caustic to clear out. This day the canal reeked faintly, but the water looked clear and calm as the sun beat down on it.

Mom looked around, confused, trying to get her bearings. "It's so nice around here. You know, I have no idea where we are," she said. "I've never been here before."

I pointed out landmarks that might help her, the Williamsburgh Savings Bank, the Smith-Ninth Street bridge, the BQE. I told her a little bit about the canal, how it was widened for commerce and used to transport stone from New Jersey to build brownstones in Park Slope and Carroll Gardens.

"I feel like I'm on a tour," she said. "You must know every inch of Brooklyn. How do you know so much about it?"

Her question took me aback. It seemed only natural to be curious about where I started life, where I grew up, where I returned after being away for much of my adult life, and where I love living now. I knew when I came back to my hometown that I was coming back to a Brooklyn substantially different from the one I grew up in. But I've relied on that bridge to the past to help me make the transition.

"I don't know," I shrugged. "I guess I just love Brooklyn."

"Well, I'm glad you love Brooklyn so much," she said, looking out at the water. "Honest to God, I really am."