September 3rd, 2008
Every Wednesday, my friend Carmi invites us to participate in his photo meme, Thematic Photographic. Here’s my interpretation of this week’s theme.
I snapped this picture a couple of years ago, on a chilly October day in South Dakota. It was my husband’s last visit to the farm house where he’d grown up, and while “dirty” or “rusty” may seem like more appropriate words for this picture, it means “faded” to me because, like an old photograph slowly losing it’s tone and color, it symbolizes the waning of a lifestyle.
(Also, this isn’t just ANY old tractor, it’s a Co-Op, and the original color was bright, bright, bright.)
Categories: Nostalgia, thematic photographic |
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July 27th, 2008
Somewhere in a box there are pictures of me as a young girl, when my hair was still more gold than brown, and my mother made most of my clothes. I’ve never really cared for pictures of me, but suddenly I want the one of me and a childhood friend in school girl costumes - you know, like when you put the hood of your sweatshirt over your head, and tie the strings under your chin, but slip your arms from the sleeves so that it’s a cape, and your ruler is a ray gun, and the cheap mask leftover from Halloween turns you into Supergirl or Wonder Woman or whatever.
Somewhere in a box there’s a picture of me and a boy my age dressed up like superheroes, with blankets and towels tucked into the collars of our t-shirts.
We were superheros who fought against JAWS because it was the ’70s, when the movie was new enough, scary enough, to keep our young toes on the sand when we went to the beach, and instead of pretending to fight with plastic light sabers (because they didn’t yet exist) we argued about who’s house the radio guy meant when he said, “Coming soon to a theater near YOU!”
Somewhere in a box there are pictures, but in my heads are the movies and the memories and the taste of innocence that lingers at the back of my mouth and the scent of childhood that wafts across my dreams.
Categories: Nostalgia |
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June 14th, 2008
I have a long memory that is at some times vague and at others very specific.
My earliest specific memory is from when I was two or younger, and involves my grandmother’s back door, with the gauzy translucent curtain that veiled (but did not completely obstruct) the view through the heavy glass of the door, and their black dog, Misty. There are no details, beyond the presence of the dog, the fact that the door was closed. I think she may have wanted to go out, but I was far too little to even reach the doorknob.
It is somehow appropriate that I remember this dog in soft focus, as she was to fade from life before I really had memories of interaction before.
I wonder if I was born a “dog person” or made one, later. I’ve always responded more to canine pets, even before cats began to make me sneeze.
Categories: Animals, Dogs, Nostalgia |
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April 15th, 2008
A box of birthday invitations I saw in the grocery store the other day has been haunting my brain, looking for something to connect with. My birthday is four months away, so it wasn’t anything literal.
I cast backward into memory searching for the relationship, and found a birthday party for my friend Joy that I attended when I was eight or nine. I don’t remember the party; I do remember the lights being turned off, all of us being sacked out around the dining room and living room, and her older sister telling ghost stories, the kind that involve hooks in doors and young girls being attacked by madmen (general escaped criminals) on their way to parties just like this one.
One such story ended with the young girl in question having her hands and feet cut off, climbing the stairs as best she could, with the party invitation gripped in her mouth.
Thump, thump, draaaaag.
From this grim tail, I remembered a later evening, also dark, when my mother, step-father and I sat around the dining room table and listened to a science fiction radio drama while a storm blasted icy rain at the windows.
For all the blood, guts, and gore that movies show, I believe that radio, and now pod-cast dramas, are scarier, because what you imagine is so much worse than what can be shown on screen.
It is because of this that when someone mentions Bill Cosby, my first connection isn’t Jell-o or his television show. It’s Chickenheart.
Categories: Music, Nostalgia |
Tags: birthday parties, ghost stories, radio | Comments Off
December 18th, 2007
We lived in Georgetown, CO that year. I was seven, and had never lived in a small town before.
It was the kind of place where it was safe for us to go skating on the frozen-over baseball diamond, and walk home after dusk in the yellow glow of street lamps, without having to worry that we might be snatched from the street. We would laugh, and sing, and scare ourselves imagining horrible creatures in the shadows, but it was “good” fear, the kind that energizes the imagination, and gives you just enough of an adrenaline boost that you can walk home briskly, even though your toes are numb from skating too long in the December chill.
It was the year that my friends and I wanted leather: equestrian riding apparel like boots and tack (even if some of us didn’t own horses, we loved the smell and feel of tack), and more froufrou leather goods like designer boots from Frye and leather visors. Siobhan’s parents owned the leather goods store and we would all go hide in the back where the big coats were, and pretend it was a leather forest. Oh, the smell of new jackets: smooth leather, yes, but also buckskin (hey, this was Colorado in the seventies after all. )
I remember having to warm my poor dog’s toes to get the ice out of her matted poodle fur after walkies, and I remember sitting on the couch watching bad Christmas movies and how her white ruff made her look like she was wearing a turtleneck, and I remember her warm furry body pressing close to me in bed at night.
Mostly, though, I remember itchy mime make-up, being asked to “go steady” by Gil (who was NINE), and coming home on cold afternoons to sip cocoa in the vault-cum-office at the back of the store, where I would be lulled into sleepy bliss by the whirring of my mother’s ancient black Singer sewing machine.
Categories: Holidailies 2007, Nostalgia |
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December 17th, 2007
I used to be very much in love with my grandfather’s watch. It wasn’t a pocket watch or anything unusual. Gold face, gold band, analog, not digital - he liked the weight of real workings inside the case, I think - wrapped around his sturdy, tanned wrist like something precious.
My thumb would brush across it sometimes, when he reached down to hold my hand, crossing a street, or walking down the beach. It would catch my attention and I’d look up at him and ask, “Let me hear it tick, Grandpop,” and he would patiently remove it from his wrist and hand it to me, and I would hold it up to my ear, and listen to the steady ticking sound.
Tonight at a dinner party I watched an old woman go from giddy to weepy, overwhelmed by friendly faces, and sad for all the things she doesn’t have, and while I completely empathize with the friend who is her house-mate, and bears the brunt of her many sour moods and bitter words, I also understand the sense of loss she probably feels every day, and can’t adequately articulate, and so gets angry and cruel.
There is no time limit on grief.
There is nothing more beautiful than making someone smile.
Right now, I’d give anything to sit with my grandfather, and wait for him to give me his watch.
I want to hear it tick.
Categories: Holidailies 2007, Nostalgia |
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December 3rd, 2007
In a box of family pictures, one always makes me smile. It’s a rare picture of me that I like. I’m about four, bundled in a lavender snowsuit with gray and white faux fur trim, and I’m lying on my back on a field of snow, making a snow angel. It’s a scene re-enacted on lawns around the world, whenever the snow is clean enough, deep enough, fresh and white and compelling. On the surface, there is nothing exceptional about this picture.
Except for the blue at the edge. Blue-gray, really. It’s the Atlantic Ocean, winter cold, colored that slate color that means instant heart-attack should you go in, and it’s lapping at the shore of my snow field, because I’m a beach baby from a long line of beach babies, and even in winter the sea draws us to it’s edge, calling our names with the foghorns and the sound of wind and surf, wooing us with the thought of a steaming mug of cocoa or hot tea afterwards.
It has to be tea if it isn’t cocoa, you see. The basic black Lipton stuff, with the word BRISK on the label, or G. I. tea (when I was that age my grandparents still did all their shopping at the commissary at Fort Monmouth), is actually welcome after a day at the snowy beach, but Earl Grey is acceptable as well. (Irish Breakfast and English Breakfast are not, they are too soft - Earl Grey is a sturdier blend.)
I’m not a particular fan of Norman Rockwell, but I remember a painting in his style, if not from his hand, of an old sea-captain type with his weathered, thick fingers wrapped around a mug of tea. My grandfather was Army, not Navy, but he loved the sea, as did my mother, as do I, so even though he wasn’t a sea captain in life, in my head, he fills that role. He snapped the picture I mentioned, and my mother stood by, and watched me. She’s in the picture too. There’s a second one, from the same day, with me, walking hand in hand with my grandfather. I’m tiny, still sporting snow on my pants, and he’s wearing his fisherman hat an a great pea-coat that looked like the word “warm.”
In my heart, he’s still sheltering my hand in his.
Categories: Holidailies 2007, Nostalgia |
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