I came across this after seeing her introduce her work, making real-time conversation drawing, as the current artist-in-residence for LIVE at the New York Public Library.
“Marooned in Penn Station, Far From Hometown”
by Flash Rosenberg
Instead of being with my family in Delaware as planned, I was spending a miserable Thanksgiving Day stuck in Penn Station.
Trains weren’t departing but people kept arriving until the place was packed with squalling kids and weary parents… and me, strangely envious: Where’s MY husband? Where’s MY kids?
Going home is unsettling. It’s like a visit to the hole where I was supposed to be. Here among my peers in New York City, we’re so busy pursuing our grand ambitions, I hardly pay attention to any latent rumbles about putting together a household. But my trips back to the suburbs are so overwhelmingly about “Family,” I’m forced to question my single life and wonder, How DOES a family happen? Then suddenly, in the voice of the station’s public address system, I discovered the secret: “Will Doris Johnson please come and meet her husband and children at the Information Booth?” Ahh-haa! So I waited all day in Penn Station listening for: “Will Flash Rosenberg please come and meet her husband and children at the Information Booth?” So I could rush over and introduce myself. I always knew I had a family here somewhere. We just haven’t been paged to meet yet.
Reprinted from The New York Times, Sunday, Nov. 24, 1996