“Leftovers in their less visible form are called memories. Stored in the refrigerator of the mind and the cupboard of the heart.”
The last two days have been magnificent, coffee and papers on the deck mornings and lazy in the sun afternoons. This morning two nuthatches reprimanded me. They weren’t at all pleased to find the feeders empty. Feeling guilty, I went to the car, brought in the new bag of seed, filled the feeders then cleaned and filled the birdbath. The birds arrived in droves, and I went back to my coffee and papers.
I have odd memories of events which happened when I was really little. They seem to have no context and stand singly. One memory has to do with a pond and a half submerged row boat. I remember water lilies and leeches and my mother screaming. I can still see white Adirondack chairs standing by the water, and I have a hazy memory of my father’s aunt. I don’t remember my great-grandmother, on my father’s side, but I can still see the narrow wooden stairs in her house which connected one floor with another. I do remember my great-grandfather, on my mother’s side, who used to sit by the giant heater in my grandmother’s living room. He scared me, and I’d run by him as quickly as I could. I didn’t remember why I ran until my mother told me he once took my Easter basket away.
At 37 Washington Ave., the stairs had a landing. I remember playing there with my dolls. I was probably no older than five or six as we were still there when my sister, five years younger than I, was born. 16 Washington Ave. was where we moved shortly after that. I always think it funny that the houses are remembered by their numbers.
I have tons of memories of Christmas though most of them have jumbled together over the years. For some reason, though, I remember the ice skates. They were old ones, the kind that buckled to your shoes. When I first woke up, they weren’t under the tree. Later that day they were. When I asked my mother, she told me I must have missed them, but I knew I hadn’t.
My last memory stills make me laugh. I wore braces for years, including the ones where tiny elastics were stretched from my lower to my upper braces. I remember sitting behind my father in the car and talking when one elastic flew out of my mouth and hit him in the back of the neck. He swatted his neck like he’d been bitten by a wasp. I suppose I must have said something, but I don’t remember it. Maybe I just laughed.
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September 23, 2010 at 11:57 am
It´s fun with those memories 🙂 I remember lying on a floating bridge looking down in to the water seeing the fish swim by and hearing my mother saying that she wouldn´t pick me up if I fell in to the water 🙂
I also remember the first christmas I met Santa Claus. I was terrified of him from that day 🙂 I was so happy when I found out he wasn´t real 🙂 🙂
I also remember when we bought our first Volkswagen Beetle and how I sat way back by the back window. It was some kind of hole there where I fitted well 🙂 🙂
Frost here yesterday, but today has been rather warm.
Have a great day now!
Christer.
September 24, 2010 at 10:27 am
Christer,
I laughed. Every other kid is upset to find out Santa isn’t real, and I bet your mother was using one of those threats parents always say to keep us safe.
I love remembering.
September 23, 2010 at 1:33 pm
Great Minds Think Alike
spent the morning with my mom and we talked of memories when we were both very small:
her’s was of her Aunt li, whose house always smelled of kerosene, but she kept bees in the back yard so she liked to go there because of that in warm weather, mine was of my great aunt hilda, who was very mean, but she lived in the country and had an outhouse and double glider swing, which i adored!
September 24, 2010 at 10:28 am
splendid,
Smells seem to be the best memory keepers. They always bring us back in a flash.
Good think your aunt had a swing so you wouldn’t have to spend much time in the house. Aunts should never be mean.
September 23, 2010 at 5:53 pm
Funny how some memories stay forever even though, over the years, they get a little watered down. I’ve had the dream of putting up the huge Army field tent my Dad brought home from the Army/Navy store when I was 12 and the girls 15 and 19. The boys played in it almost all summer. It was where I learned to play chess. We kept one game going over three weeks. Even today I have dreams of that old tent and the work it took to pull the lines tight, keep it taught, and make sure the main beam stayed balanced. But it slept 10 kids and you can imagine the summer parties we had. Moms in the neighborhood would check the tent first to find their kid.
September 24, 2010 at 10:31 am
Z&Me,
That would have been so neat spending the summer in a tent and even sleeping out at night. I would have felt a bit like Robinson Caruso.
My friend had a tent his family used to put up when they went camping. It was enormous and held my friend’s whole family, all eight of them. After the kids grew up, the tent went up in the backyard for overflow guests. It always brought me back to camping at Nickerson State park when I saw it.
September 24, 2010 at 6:08 am
Reading you always takes me back to my own past. That too is fractioned, probably because we forget the routines.
I never learned to skate properly. First, till my ninth, we lived on a canal in the jeart of Amsterdam. It was still the time whem the sewage went straight into the canals, so they were mostly too warm to freeze over.
When we moved to the suburbs (our first shower!)my elder brother and I got 1 pair of skates together. Since he was stronger I got little time on them. Nowadays I don’t skate at all anymore. But I don’t really regret it. The ice is such a slippery place.
September 24, 2010 at 10:34 am
Bert,
You are right about the routines. Sometimes I think they cloud the past because they happened every day, and we never gave a thought to remembering them.
Skating was something we did every winter on the swamp near our house and at the town’s park where they put up a rink every year. I too found the ice slippery and ended up on my butt a lot.