“If we only knew the real value of a day”
I’ve lost count of the number of consecutive rainy days. The weatherman said sun today. He was wrong.
My mother divided the family pictures and made the four of us our own albums. I am the star of my album just as my sisters and brother are the stars of theirs. A few of my pictures have all four of us and some have my parents, but they are mostly just me on our family vacations, at Christmas, Easter, my first communion and confirmation, all the holidays and all the big family events. Every now and then I look through my album. I did that yesterday and realized I need to go back in time. The biggest chunk of my life is not there. The every day is missing from my album. It was never captured by a camera. No one realized that every day memories are the ones we hold and keep.
I would take pictures of my mother doing dishes, of her bent over the sink with her hands in soapy water. I remember her standing there every night. I ‘d be at the table finishing my homework while she washed the supper dishes. I have a picture in my head, but I think it’s a combination of memories. She is wearing a white blouse and ladies’ dungarees, the kind with the zipper in the side pocket, and the dungarees are rolled up to her shins. Her hair is damp from the steam of the hot water. She puts the clean dishes in the strainer then does the pots and pans. I look up every now and then, and my memory takes its own snapshot.
I’d take pictures of my father working in the yard. In the summer he wore old pants and a white t-shirt. He’d mow the lawn then get on his hands and knees to trim the edges of the garden and around the trees. In the fall, he’d wear a red jacket, a hand me down from his father, and he’d rake the yard then burn the leaves. I remember him on the ladder putting on the storm windows. I stood below and watched and remembered.
I’d take pictures of the places where we roamed all over town. Most of them are gone now, even the railroad tracks. I’d take pictures of the field below our house in summer and in fall and of the swamp in all seasons. The winter pictures would include the back paths of the swamp where the ice was so clear I could see branches. The spring pictures would be of the tadpoles and the summer pictures would be of the frogs.
I wish we realized back then the importance of every day.
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keepthecoffeecoming.blog 
October 7, 2010 at 11:50 am
With no KTCC, I sat at my desk yesterday eating lunch and reading the Wall Street Journal….and here was this special article. I hope that you dont mind that I post it
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703859204575525991305561822.html?mod=WSJ_WSJ_US_News_6
October 7, 2010 at 12:15 pm
My Dear Hedley,
No, I could never mind. That brought tears to my eyes.
October 7, 2010 at 1:43 pm
Kat, I had the same reaction, I was eating my sandwich and tears were rolling down my face. God Bless the Dunhams and Gunner.
October 7, 2010 at 8:33 pm
thank you so much for sharing this hedley:), it is good to hear of happy endings.
October 7, 2010 at 9:01 pm
Absolutely, splendid!
October 8, 2010 at 11:19 am
Splendid – thank you. Truly a story of our times.
October 7, 2010 at 1:47 pm
You are so right!
I made my own photo album when I was rather young but I have almost no photos of myself. I´ve never liked to stand in front of the camera, only behind it 🙂 But I do have a couple of photos of my grandparents and aunts drinking coffee and my mother having a a break in hanging the newly washed clothes to dry outside and her weeding at our summer house. I think I have one photo of my father leaving one of the ships he was working at.
But I do wish I had more of those photos! They show our real life something a vacation photo never does.
Warm here today, but now the sky is cloud less so I think it´ll be a cold night.
Have a great day now!
Christer.
October 7, 2010 at 9:03 pm
Christer,
I have me with my first bike and at Christmas but none sledding down the hill or walking to school, all that stuff that made up my life. I wish I knew then.
Rain then sun then rain then finally a nice day here.
October 7, 2010 at 5:32 pm
Mom in the kitchen, Dad mowing the yard, or fixing something on his boat, what was captured doesn’t do justice to what we experienced. But it is at least something to hold onto. Life is so short. Not when you are a kid and playtime is so loosely defined. I know kids who loved science so much that was their playtime even in summer. I predicted on kid Courtney for sure would find a cure for cancer. I often wonder where he ended up. I would like to know where all my school mates are, the ones who survived, and even those that didn’t live to a ripe old age or even the age I’m at. But parents hold such a special place in most childrens hearts that no amount of photography could ever show the true feeling experienced at that special time and place. I often makes me wonder why we are here? Now you got me going.
October 7, 2010 at 9:04 pm
Z&Me,
You always seem to find your connection to similar memories. That’s a good thing. It keeps the past alive and lets us see where we started and hoe far we’ve come. I too often wonder about my classmates.
I found out one of my high school friends had died, and I was sorry we’d lost track of each other.
October 7, 2010 at 11:30 pm
Hey Kat – this goes in your book. 🙂
s
October 8, 2010 at 10:52 am
Thanks, S!
I always keep track of the book suggestions!
October 8, 2010 at 5:44 am
The importance of every moment comes, I think, when we become aware of our mortality. That fortunately comes only later in life, when hopefully we are better able to relativize this given.
Nature was always far away for us, considering I grew up in the heart of Amsterdam. We caught stickelbacks from the canals and once we left a box of caterpillars on the landing, to find it empty the next day. And one day we discovered a whole new species when we met our first enormous slug. Basically I never got much closer to nature than that.
Still, I have a small garden and it never blossomed more beautiful than this year. Through my enormous windows I still enjoy the sight every day.
You take me back in each post and I realise that we as kids were not allowed to do half of what you could obviously do without punishment. I recall vividly the strict regime of my mother, whom we feared. Corporal punishment was always on the brink of our thoughts in all enterprises.
October 8, 2010 at 11:05 am
Bert,
I find how much we hold in our memories amazing. It was writing Coffee which gave me the chance to go back and pull out those memories, ones I hadn’t thought about in years.
The wood and field behind our house were giant playgrounds to us. I remember my mother saving jars so we could catch grasshoppers, fireflies and tadpoles. We camped out in the backyard and in the woods near the house during the summer.
We didn’t do anything which would have made my mother mad. All of it was just part of growing up in a small town in the 1950’s.