Time and Geography

I’ve decided there may be a time and a place for everything, but place has a distinct effect on time, and access to the place of a memory only makes it stronger.

Sunday Nostalgia

We unearthed a forgotten box of photographs the other day and I lost myself for a good hour going through them.

Knowing Your Place

          After a wacky air-head hitch in which I went an hour early to pick up my friend R for our Tuesday exercise class, and then had to return one hour later, we finally got to the neighboring town’s Senior Center as people were setting up chairs. The class involves a lot of aerobic step work but uses chairs for some of the weight lifting portion.

          Everyone had arranged their chairs in a big circle, but one woman had pulled hers farther out. R asked her if we were in her way but she said no, she liked to be in the outer portion for more room.

          “Everyone has their favorite spot, don’t they?” commented R.

          We discussed classes we’d taken or seminars we’d attended and how you needed to think long and hard about where you chose to sit on that first day. There might as well be brass plates attached to them the way everyone always gravitates to the same spot on succeeding days.

          As we spoke, I had an immediate flash of sitting in my particular spot at my parents’ dining table in Virginia, my sister always across from me.

Then I was teleported to the dining room in Tulsa, my grandfather at the head, Granny to his left, my sister next to her, and my mother and me on the other side.

My own kids always had their particular side of the dining table across from each other, perfectly positioned for tormenting the other or making him/her crack up and spew milk midway through the meal.

Maybe now this whole concept is probably hopelessly outdated. I wonder how many families really sit down at home and have an actual meal at a table together.

Hearing Voices

Whenever I see an avocado pit balanced on toothpicks over a jar of water I think of my mother. She always seemed to have one sprouting, with its slim green stalk. I think of her just about every time I cut an avocado around its circumference, pull the two halves away, and whack the pit with my butcher knife to twist it out.

          It’s those simple moments that bring long-gone people back into my everyday.

          At least thirty years have passed since I’ve left my toaster plugged in. Back in my television production days at the cable company, my boss Brian’s wife departed for work with her toaster still engaged and somehow burned down their kitchen. Now, after the English muffins are done, as I’m yanking the plug from the wall I think of him.

          My mother may have been a champ with avocados, but she was a bit casual about housework. It wasn’t my mother but my neighbor Nancy, who had obviously been raised better than I had, who pointed out to me the benefits of washing the sink before you did the dishes.

          And just about every time I peel one of those annoying stickers from a piece of fruit I think of Linda. It was lunchtime in the faculty room and I was grousing about the sticker on my apple. When she said that she always removed hers when she washed her fruit, my apple suddenly felt like it had a neon light on it shouting, “UNWASHED! UNWASHED!”

Traveling Through Time

So on the way back from Providence yesterday I whiled away a bit of the hour and a half ride by musing on some of the changes we’ve seen on the road over recent years.

          Here in Massachusetts, all the toll booths – and their nepotistic (today’s word for the day) toll takers – have disappeared. Literally. The actual little brick buildings were torn apart, the lanes paved over, and all you’ll see now is an extension of the off-ramp. Big metal gantries have sprouted over sections of the turnpike to read the transponders in the cars. Yes, there are scads and scads of out-of-staters who aren’t outfitted with transponders and who theoretically are being billed after their license plates are photographed. In reality, a lot slip through the system but I’ll bet the state has rationalized that the loss in revenue is still much less than paying $80,000 for that cousin of the water commissioner or state rep to extend an arm out a window to take our ticket.

          And thank God. I have many memories of mercy missions bringing a spare dresser or care packages to and from Boston while our daughter was at Northeastern. It was usually after I’d left work, which meant a return in the dark and therefore fumbling at 65 miles an hour for that tiny ticket, then the spare change to pay it.

      What about radar detectors? They were all the rage not that long ago and yet they seem to have faded into the ether. As a technical sort of thing, I would have expected someone by now to have perfected better and better versions, ones that were undetectable themselves.

          Also, I wonder if anyone remembers the fine art of passing someone on a two-lane road. It’s a good thing most highways are now at least four lanes wide. With today’s impatient drivers, can you imagine someone waiting behind an overloaded pickup until he’s past the curve or over the hill, and the line in the road is on the correct side?

          And lastly, when was the last time you were on the road and saw a romantic couple in the car in front of you, his arm on the seat in back of her, his other hand on the wheel while her head lay on his shoulder? The demise of bench seats and the arrival of buckets put an end to that.

Fini

So it’s done. The check’s in the bank, the lawyers and real estate agents have gone their separate ways, and our home is being invaded by strangers.

Christmas in Arlington

My childhood Christmas recollections are less memories than moments, like someone shining a flashlight briefly on a scene and then extinguishing it.

Cold Memories

Mamie and I went to town yesterday, which means we drove one mile to the little village center for a walk. I thought it would be a nice break for her from the Mobius strip of sidewalks in our condo complex.

           As usual, we parked in the small shopping area that’s made up of a bank, a pizza shop, an insurance guy, and a hairdresser, and then we walked from there to the library in back to drop off some books. She was thrilled to have new places to sniff and pee and trotted ahead of me, tail in the air.

          Through the park with the Civil War statue, past the village coffee shop, and we were on the grounds of the private academy. It was a beautiful sunny day and the students were out in force, passing us on the brick sidewalks. A group of three were paused in front of one of the dorms and they caught my attention because two of the three were wearing camel hair coats, something I don’t remember seeing in a while and particularly not on 16 year-olds. An ankle-length version passed me a few minutes later. All I can figure is this is one more fashion trend I’ve missed, although it could be limited to the stratospheric income range of these students’ families.

          These coats reminded me, though, of a conversation I had with my son-in-law over Thanksgiving. We both remember winter as a time when you just resigned yourself to being cold.

I have a good twenty years on him, but we both grew up in the pre-puffy coat, pre-Thinsulate eras. As a general rule, you only had one layer of wool and a shiny rayon lining between you and old man winter and you would just deal. That’s the way it was - of course you were cold; you were outside.

 Maybe being cold from November through March toughened us. What with the need to get through the cold from point A to point B as quickly as possible, we might have even been in better shape since everyone probably walked faster then, too.

Memories for Sale

     

My grandparents’ living room in Tulsa was long, with French doors leading to the screened porch at one end and a floor-to-ceiling window at the other end, all the better to catch those elusive breezes in pre-airconditioning Oklahoma.

A Disappearing Skill

Back when the earth was still cooling, I signed up for driver’s ed class at Washington-Lee High School in Arlington, Virginia.

The Purge Continues

As we try to clear the decks for The Big Move, some furniture just needs a home other than our basement 

Before Nutrition

 I remember my grandmother telling about her shame at school in Mangum, Oklahoma when she had to take “dirty bread” out of her lunch pail. Even back then my forward-thinking great-grandmother Lucy Wilson had already figured out the benefits of whole wheat bread.

And I like to think my mother approved of watermelon for breakfast because of its antioxidants and amino acids. (In reality, a grumpy kid in the blazing hot Virginia summer mornings could have been a factor.)

But John Gray’s recent post at Going Gently about his sheep and their love of white bread triggered a couple of memories from the 1950s food pyramid.

It’s been years since I’ve had one, but every now and then I’m tempted to pick up the ingredients for a baloney sandwich: spongy white bread, Miracle Whip, and the ultimate illicit pleasure, a big pack of baloney.

Granted, your peanut butter and jelly sandwich was usually bleeding grape jelly through one side by the time you opened your metal lunch box in the cafeteria, but the bread itself was great for wadding into grey balls and flicking at your neighbor.

And in spite of my mother’s offerings of a crunchy peeled white turnip or celery sticks with peanut butter and raisins for a snack, just as common as an after-school treat at our house was white bread spread with margarine and a generous sprinkling of white sugar.

Claim to Fame

I checked in on Going Gently, my favorite blog in the ENTIRE WORLD (and judging by the numbers of comments, the favorite of the entire world) and was intrigued by his topic for today.

A new routine

We’re settling into a new normal here.

Heaven in a can

After all that virtuous talk of vegetables, it’s only right that I own

up to a few guilty pleasures.

Art Ownership

          Today’s morning visit to blog land left me thinking about the impact of art on our lives. Thank you, Steve, at Shadows and Light .

Horror in the dentist's chair

You could say last week was a festival for my head: first the ophthalmologist, then the dentist.

Blonde Determination

We’re being stalked by my husband's grandmother. She may be gone these thirty years, but she still reappears with each generation.

Worlds I'll Never Know

One of the initiations into the world of adulthood is the realization that it's not what we had thought it would be.

Word Power

(Pangloss – a fictional character in the novel Candide by Voltaire)

          A February issue of The New Yorker magazine brought back thoughts of my grandfather, not the likeliest combination. My parents were long-time subscribers, but my grandfather Sam Woods was more of a Time or Saturday Evening Post kind of guy.