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One of my clearest and funniest memories from first grade--the 1983-1984 school year for me--is the morning I skipped into class with a book from home in my hands and bragged to my teacher that I'd read it all by myself the night before. This teacher, Mrs. G, was so sweet and pretty and encouraging--I just loved her--and she oohed and ahhed over my accomplishment and asked me if I'd like to read my book to the class. Oh, yes! Pride overcame shyness that morning, I guess, because soon I was sitting in The Teacher Chair with my book with all my classmates fanned out around me as I began to read. The book had a How-I-Spend-My-Day theme, and its final page showed the narrator settled into bed for the night. My classmates looked awed by my reading skills--"Wow! Val can read a whole book! Just like the teacher!"--and I, who had decided as soon as starting kindergarten the fall before that I wanted to be a teacher when I grew up, was having a ball. The last sentence of the book was something like, "As I fall asleep at night, I hear the owl" or "Outside my window sits an owl." Since I hadn't read the book out loud before, I hadn't known until reaching the final word on the final page that I couldn't pronounce "owl." I stumbled and stuttered and "oh-orrrr-ahhh-owwwwrrrruhhhlllllll"-ed as I tried to shape the letters into a word with my mouth, but no. My teacher, looking puzzled, came over and gently whispered, "Owl. Owl," but I still couldn't pronounce that word. ("Horse" was another word that took me awhile, for whatever reason.) My classmates didn't laugh and didn't seem any less impressed, and I remember nothing else about the experience except how baffled I was by what had just happened. If I was already, at six years old, as hard on myself as I would be decades later, I likely focused more on the one missed word than the fact that I'd just gotten to "play Teacher" and read aloud to my entire class. :) In any case, I have been trying for ages to figure out what that book had been, and I thought I'd finally found it last week. The book above looked so promising: The koala bear character takes us through his/her day, and the final page even ends with an illustration of the bear in (a darling patchwork) bed. Alas, though! The story ends without a mention of the owl that tripped me up, and the search continues. I know, we're all thinking, wouldn't it be funny if this IS the book and I'm just not remembering its final page accurately after all these years, but I really don't think so. :) Maybe one of these days, as I hunt down and research 80s trivia like this for the memoir, I'll solve the mystery--and send a copy to sweet Mrs. G, as well. ♥
As I mentioned in my birthday post in May, I decided awhile back to buckle down and really dig into the 80s childhood memoir I'm writing. And so I have. Most days/nights these past few months, I can be found for at least an hour--usually more, because I'm truly loving the whole process and am just determined to keep at it this time until a book comes out of it--sitting here at my green gingham tablecloth-covered table with my seemingly-endless piles of notes, my 1980s diaries, all sorts of memory-jogging ephemera my mom and I have saved all these years, hometown maps, old photos, packages of blank index cards--Mead-brand 3" x 5", and as with the green gingham tablecloth, and my usual black Bic-brand pens and ever-present glasses of iced tea, I'm almost afraid to shake up my routine now by changing any of these details, so I buy these index cards a few packages at a time--and a wide assortment of spiral notebooks--one for each year the final memoir will cover, plus one for family recipes I think I'll be including, is the plan--writing and remembering. I've never enjoyed writing anything more, which is saying something for this one who has always loved finding the words.
The old diaries mention all the personal girlhood and family memories, of course--Christmas wishlists, what we ate for dinner, who got in trouble for what, first bra, first deaths, school assignments, school book orders, Papa and Grandma's 50th anniversary party, Dad's local races, Mom's country decorating magazines, my younger brother's new stuffed "Pound Puppy," my older brother's new "Miami Vice" poster, and my proud "I learned how to do a front walkover today!"--
--but also record the drought and scorching temperatures during the summer of 1988, former First Lady Nancy Reagan's mastectomy, and that Michael Jackson's video for "Bad" is really more like a movie. :) Diaries are such treasures, and mine are, for this project, a most-amazing resource.
It makes me happy every day to be getting somewhere with this. I have a number of other writing projects here that I've started and stopped, and re-started and set aside again, but I'm in such a beautiful groove with this one, it just delights me.
My parents have been answering the most random questions--"Where did our neighbor Paul work?" and "What model of car was that beige-ish one we had that had the backseat that folded down?" and "By ANY chance, do you guys remember who lived in our house before we loved in? You DO?! Oh my goodness!!"-- ♥
--and I have been in touch with others recently who have helped me piece a few more memories together. When I was three or four, I would spend the hours my mom worked outside the home at sweet fifty-plus-year-old Bobbi's house. This heart-of-gold had been recommended to my mom as simply the best with children, and she truly was. I loved my days with her. She had Raggedy Ann and Andy dolls and a big jar filled with marbles, but it was Bobbi herself I most enjoyed. "Maybe the two have nothing to do with each other," I prefaced a query with a few weeks ago, "but I always associate the smells of lumber and manure with her home. I've always liked the smell of manure! It's a good memory for me." My former babysitter's grown daughter--I am now in touch with this woman's daughter! I'm having a blast, I tell you! ♥--responded that this all makes sense because they had, after all, lived on a farm. And her dad had owned a construction business. :) When I reported this to my parents, they immediately said, "Well, yeah. We could have told you that." They hadn't known that I'd been wondering all these years. In this case, though, both the memory-confirmation and the contact with Bobbi's daughter were more than worth the research.
Bobbi's daughter actually remembered me and my family, it turns out. I hadn't known until I started looking into it that my dear babysitter had even had children of her own--let alone that her children had known my family--so this was all news to me. "I remember you and your brother as well as your dad, can't remember your mom," Bobbi's daughter wrote in one of her emails last month. "I sold the family farm to a couple from New Jersey. It is something else now. My mother is 87 now. . . .I remember your curly hair." Ha! ♥ This woman I'd gotten in touch with online not having realized we'd ever met--and until finding her name online I hadn't even known existed--remembers my hair! I laughed out loud when I read that, and I alternately smile and shake my head at the wonder of it all.
Picture me at my gingham table, then, with a full-to-bursting heart and ever-growing stacks of index cards as I make notes on 1977-1980 and recapture my memories of 1981-1989.
One of my earliest memories has always been that of my maternal grandmother's asking me a day or so before my birthday party in 1981 if I was excited to be turning four. The more I think about it and write about it, the more it's struck me how poignant it is that one of my first memories is of being asked if I'm excited about something--and such a celebratory something. ♥ A most-beautiful beginning to the lifetime ahead.
I write, and I write.
The days/nights that I don't write, though, I read a little more and listen to extra 80s music--"extra" because I'm all about the 80s music, anyway :) --and just let myself think.
I can't attend this one--most unfortunately for me, while I work on this--but my twentieth high school class reunion is this summer--so this is very much a season of nostalgia here.
Many of my former classmates will be hearing from me in the days ahead, of course, even if I can't join them for drinks and dinner just yet.
And I intend to be at the twenty-fifth reunion, whether I attend it with research questions to ask or a finished book to share. :)
I have been in touch with a few favorite former teachers recently too, and each bit of contact means the world to me. Sweet Mrs. T read Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH to my class during second-grade afternoons. Mrs. R, Kindergarten Teacher to Beat All Kindergarten Teachers, would remember me and my mom even when we'd run into her in town when I was in high school. And wonderful Mr. V encouraged my artwork and turned me on to science too. I feel so much love for these gifts of people.
There has such a blessing of love in my life all along, and I feel more grateful for it all the time. To connect all the dots now, page by page, and note by note, is pure joy.
The recipe for Grandma's fudge--or "Gramma's," as I spelled it in February 1988--mentioned two photos up is here, by the way. "Yum!" is right. And Paul Simon's video for "You Can Call Me Al," one of my favorite songs from the 1980s, noted in the photo above, can be seen here, (speaking of pure joy). :) ♪ "A man walks down the street, he says why am I soft in the middle now, why am I soft in the middle, the rest of my life is so hard. . . ." ♫ Ahhhhhhhhh, the 80s, truly! Love, love, love.
The process--or at least, the process so far--is to gather all the 80s-related memories and thoughts I've jotted down onto scrap paper, in my diaries and journals, here on the blog, and sometimes even quickly onto paper towels fast-before-I-forget-this and transfer them to the index cards. This has taken most of the past three months, and. . .many notes to go before I sleep. A few years ago, before I'd really declared my intention, even to myself, to write this book, I was jotting down memories onto scraps of paper and saving them--thinking, I suppose, that I could elaborate on them here on the blog or at least transfer them into my journal to record them, so now I have a huge number of scraps and pages to sort through--and in some cases, decipher, if I scribbled the notes too quickly--and rewrite onto the cards. When I know which year--between 1977 and 1989--the memory is from, I write that onto the index card. Eventually, I'll rewrite all the "1987" index cards into the "1987" spiral notebook in a more organized way, for example. And then it will be more writing and rewriting to turn each year's notebook into "Real" Writing. The 1981 index cards' notes have almost all been transferred into the 1981 notebook now, which is encouraging to me.
And yes, the (twelve?) spiral notebooks are all different 1980s-themed ones I've been collecting at thrift shops and online. Mike thinks that's excessive, but why not have 80s supplies around me while I'm otherwise so immersed in the era, says I--and "You're not the one writing it, so what do you care!?" I retort as I return to my Care Bears and Lisa Frank rainbows and Mrs. Grossman stickers.
I'm still aiming to have a finished draft by my next birthday. And then the work of submitting it to potential publishers will begin.
In the meantime here, it is index card-by-index card and a decidedly enthusiastic Val . ♥
Monday morning, Mom and I drove out to see the house we lived in in the 1980s and the one I always dream of and tend to remember as Home. What to say except that upon returning here Tuesday, the hometown city council received a note from me with mentions of "houses that look like they should be condemned," "trash and BLIGHT," and "the worst-looking street in town." Oh, my heart!
There are only seven homes on the tiny sloped street I grew up on, and mine was the house at the very top. This Monday, by the time Mom and I reached the house Mom's great-aunt Clarice once called "a doll house--just a doll house, Christine!"--I was so shocked by the appearance of the state of the first six houses, the current condition of my own former home barely made an impression. Mom didn't even feel safe the few minutes we spent on the street before walking back to where we'd parked the car.
I have already dreamed of it twice since then: In one dream, there was a sense of danger in the air and I knew something bad was about to happen somewhere on the street, and in the other, Mom and I were sitting where we'd parked the car Monday and seeing our former street as it had looked when the town was first founded. In that gift of a dream, what is now the literal junkyard at the foot of the street was still all meadow, and part of the creek that winds through town opened onto a pond.
Seeing it again has made my beautiful childhood there seem even more incredible. "When my family lived there in the 80s," I recounted to the city council, "It was such a pretty and well-kept little street. Good people, nice neighbors, pretty houses and yards, roses and Lilac bushes, clean porches. . . .Seeing it this past weekend was truly saddening. If I had the money to throw at it, I'd love to buy it all up and completely restore it to its 1980s sweetness. It really used to be a charming little family street." Oh, truly! What fun--what glorious FUN--it would be to play Daddy Warbucks and bring the street back to life. . .repair and repaint the houses, remove all the trash and junk cars, redo the landscaping, fix all the broken fencing, replant the roses that used to separate a couple of the yards. . . .Ah! I had expected it to look different, of course--twenty-seven years have passed since we lived there--but not dilapidated and depressed. Maybe someday, it will take a turn for the better. I have been telling my parents since I was a kid that if our former house ever came up for sale and I had the money to buy it, I would really be tempted, and oh my, yes: That one and all the rest, by God, so that someday another almost-five-year-old girl could move into a blue "doll house" and sit inside one of her neighbor's heavenly-smelling Lilac bushes with her new friends and use another neighbor's fallen rose petals as faux makeup and pretend her parents' blue and pink gingham front porch is the judges' station she needs to acknowledge before beginning her Olympic gymnastics floor routine. Oh, beautiful days! And poor little street. ♥
I continue to write about it all, still sharing the table with Stuffed. While home, I told my parents about the memoir project, and they answered a bunch of questions I had about those years. We laughed Monday night as I read aloud a few of the entries from diaries I'd kept as a nine, ten, and eleven-year-old in that dear little house. Dad especially enjoyed 1988's mention that "I gave Dad some 'Almond Joys' for Father's Day!"--since I had just, twenty-seven Father's Days later, given him the same thing for the same occasion. Ha! Sweet family, year after year.
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The computer went kaput before I could share my birthday cake here a couple weeks ago. I seem to be regressing regarding birthday cakes, getting more of a kick out of them--my own and others'--the older I get: Deciding on flavors, decorations, candles, and tablecloths for my birthday is a small thing I look forward to every spring now, although I didn't seem to pay much attention even in my early thirties. The past few years, it's become a fun and reflective time for me, just as setting the table for Christmas breakfast before I go to bed on Christmas Eve has. ♥
The high temperature on my birthday this year was a humid 84°, so I decided just to mix up some pink buttercream and frost a ready-made ice cream cake. And after a few minutes of wandering the store with my why-did-I-take-it-out-of-the-freezer-case-before-I-finished-the-rest-of-my-shopping cake, I finally hit upon what I wanted to use as this year's cake topper: A truffle decorated like a nesting doll. Her dreamy expression and heart-shaped lips charmed me and seemed appropriate for this birthday.
While the newly-frosted cake was refreezing, I used pink acrylic paint, a light coat of glue, and a sprinkling of white sanding sugar to doll up a couple grocery store candles. I only keep candles in cakes long enough for the pictures anyway, so why not jazz them up for the few seconds they'll last. I stuck toothpicks into the candles' bases to make it easier to poke them into the frozen buttercream.
A few hours later. . .eating and wish-making with Mr. Mike. Ohhh, I want to have driven a lot more before my next birthday, although without owning a car, the amount of driving practice depends on how often we rent one. And I hope to remain in good health and get back into running shape in the next couple years. My biggest goal and dream for the year ahead, though, is to have finished writing a full first draft of the memoir of my 1980s childhood that I've been working on rather sporadically the past few years. Memories of my family, house, friends, street, neighbors, pets, and teachers from those years make me light up like nothing else. The more I write, the more I remember, and while my family and I have many old photos, I've also kept all the diaries I've written since the fourth or fifth grade, and they are detailed treasure troves of memories: TV show theme songs, conversations with my parents, class projects, Christmas and birthday wishlists, first-day-of-school outfits, board games played with my brothers, paperbacks ordered from the school book order flyers, the athletes that thrilled and inspired during the Olympics, the first cassette tapes I ever owned, even a drawing of the view from my bedroom window circa 1987. It is time to put all my notes and paragraphs together and get a rough draft finished. At least a few of you here are published writers, and I hope my own dream of getting the memoir published as book comes true before too long.
My family moved out of my childhood home in late 1988, when I was eleven-and-a-half, and I feel drawn to it like a magnet lately. I haven't visited it since the day we moved, and I've always dreamed of it almost abnormally often, but even more-so this past year. The night of Mike's dad's funeral in March, while we were staying at his parents' house, I had what began as a beautiful dream that my dad and I had gone together to visit our former street. Oh, how I loved our little street! It was a short no-outlet hill of a street hosting only seven homes. And our former house! I have loved few things in my life the way I loved that house. I was so excited that I was about to see it all again, and Dad was humoring me. As we turned the car up the short little hill, I was horrified to see that the street now looked like London's after the Blitz. There was just enough of each house still standing to make it clear which one was which. "My God," Dad kept saying, and remembering his voice even now hurts my heart. I told him I wanted to walk around what was left of the house, and he said he'd seen enough and would wait for me outside. I made my way into what had been our kitchen, and the dream got worse from there and soon ended, one of the worst nightmares I've ever had. I was shaking when I awoke, and I'd somehow woken Mike with my fitful sleep during the dream. "Tonight of all nights," I asked him, "Why would I have to dream something so horrible?" Because his dad had just died? Because I was thinking of my own? Because with the death of one parent, that 80s childhood seemed especially Long Ago and Far Away and finishing the memoir felt that much more urgent? All of the above, I'm sure, but the timing was cruel. It took a long time that night to shake the feeling that I really had just been on that ravaged, silent street with Dad. Four days after the funeral and nightmare, I dreamed that a woman asked me if she could publish my memoir. "Yes, PLEASE!" I practically shouted in response. Yes, I'm paying attention, Universe, and I'm connecting the dots.
While I was home a couple weeks ago, I told Mom how much I wanted to visit "our" street, but from the glimpse of the house visible in the distance as we passed the hill, we could see the current owner in the driveway, and that wasn't the visit I wanted. I will explore it all on my next visit, home, though, Current Owner in the Driveway or not, because it feels more necessary all the time, like I'm being pushed or pulled there.
Before I left this last time, the subject of my sixth-grade science fair project came up while I was talking with my dad, and he said again, as he did a couple years ago, "I think now that those were the best years. All you kids were still little, and Mum and Dad were still alive, and we were going to Ocean City every summer. . . ." And this time when he said it, just like the first time he'd said it, I choked up at his words, and I wished more than ever that I could whip a hardcover copy of my memoir out from under the picnic table and say, "I think those were the best years too. Here's a book I wrote about it." The memoir really is, after all, a love letter to my parents. Thirty-eight begins, then, with not only dreaming, but also writing. What else could have topped my cake this year but a dreaming brunette with love on her lips?! Surely, things are unfolding just as they should here, with death, nightmare, dream, conversation, and cake topper each showing up as they did. Surely, my dream too can come true. By the time I share my next birthday cake, I hope to tell you that I have a finished piece I can start submitting--however-many submissions it takes--for publication. And oh! Please, please let me have my handing-Mom-and-Dad-their-copies-of-my-book moment.
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My mom began oil painting when I was about five years old, and when I would return from school in the afternoons, she would be in the process of finishing a piece and arranging her makeshift kitchen table/studio back into its usual red or blue gingham tablecloth-covered self. The smell of the turpentine she used to clean her paintbrushes instantly transports me to those afternoons, as do the voices of painting show hosts Bill Alexander and Bob Ross. Their "happy little trees" were such a part of my childhood. I can still hear the whippa-whippa-whippa as Mom's wide brush slapped back and forth against the canvases with the oils. And how many times did I hear her comment that the only thing about oil was, it took the paintings forever to dry. . . .
Mom painted mountains and rivers and forest scenes and bodies of water. Much later, by the time I was in high school, she would prefer painting in acrylics and would be selling her artwork--mostly landscapes and wildlife--in local shops and in both Farmington and Mystic, Connecticut, as well.
While home a few months ago, I lamented that I hadn't saved any of her old paintings. She had always sold them or given them as gifts, and it seemed such a loss that we had none of them--and not even pictures of any of them. "Oh," she said looking pleased to have been asked, "I still have one canvas somewhere in the basement. I don't know if it's in your colors, but you can have it if you want it." She rummaged around downstairs for a few minutes before handing me this orange sunset.
I treasure it, of course.
Mom's paintings were beautiful, both in what they captured and in what they represent to me now: My young mother--just-turned thirty--only thirty! almost a decade younger than I am now--became
interested in something, set out to learn how to do it, did it, and
managed to do it without a proper or permanent work-space and while busy raising three young children. My younger brother was only a newborn when she started,
I was in kindergarten, and our older brother was around eight years
old. I think of my mom, getting us off to school, taking care of my
then-baby brother, doing everything that needed to be done around the
house, and still carving out the time to set up easel and paints in our little kitchen,
only to disassemble it all each afternoon so she could be ready for us
by the time we got home--and simply because it made her happy and she
loved it. It mattered to her, and so, she made the time. Beautiful.
Happy Thanksgiving to you all. I head off to work soon, so my own Thanksgiving dinner will be tomorrow evening. Love and blessings--and a rich and deep awareness of your blessings--to you all, and prayers for all who are struggling with the loss of loved ones. Dear Mr. M, one of my favorite elementary school teachers, recently and quite unexpectedly died, and his life and what I admired about it and hope to emulate of it have been very much on my mind and in my heart the past couple weeks. His kindness and enthusiasm for life are the first things that come to mind when I think of him, and he and all the other good-hearted Mr. M-sort of souls who have come into my life over the years are always chief among my blessings. Love and thanks to all of you. ♥
It is funny the material things we consider our treasures. I imagine it is true for everyone from the poorest to the wealthiest amongst us that when asked which belongings we would save from a fire, we would answer with descriptions of our family photos, our love letters, our journals, and as many of those important-to-us-and-unrecognizable-as-riches-to-anyone-else items as we could gather: Well-worn stuffed animals. Stones. Driftwood. Handmade afghans. A chipped tea cup. Her berry-picking hat. His soft blue shirt. When my grandparents were moved into a personal care home a few months before their deaths in 2001, this metal can that Grandma had always kept crayons in was one of the things I wanted from their house and was immediately relieved to know that I had saved.
There is nothing obviously exceptional about either its exterior or contents. It is a Folgers-brand coffee can with a handful of crayons, crayon-pieces, and crayon-niblets inside. I don't remember ever seeing the can with the Folgers label still on it. Like meals and decor and most everything else at my grandparents' house, the crayons were not fancy. No glitter-filled crayons here, no crayons that change colors, and no leftover crayons from a highly-coveted 120-pack. "Burnt sienna," "copper," and "Carnation pink" are as newfangled as these crayons' names get. I learned this week that the stub of "green-blue" is a collector's item of sorts since the color was retired in 1990. And because these things were also in the bottom of the can when I salvaged it from Papa and Grandma's house, I consider them equal parts of its sentimental wonder: A rusted pair of scissors, a couple scraps of Crayola wrappers and once-clear tape--and a folded paper piece, which I would bet good money was from a cut-out heart.
But the smell! The crayon smell inside this can! I take off the plastic lid, and the decades-old crayon scent works like the magic of an uncorked genie: It is again a Sunday afternoon at Papa and Grandma's gray-shingled house outside of Punxsutawney, and while they, still safe and vibrant with good health, visit with my parents and aunts after dinner, I sprawl out on their moss-green living room carpet and color pictures. Sometimes the scent takes me back to the late 1970s and early 1980s and I am doodling on the scrap paper Aunt Vee brings from her secretarial job to their house for just this purpose. Other times, I open the can and find myself a little older, but with the crayons and scissors still around me, designing cards out of the pages of the Sharp's Penn wallpaper catalogs that Grandma saves. Sometimes, of course, the scent just takes me back to childhood-in-general, and I can't tell what grade I'm in or whether I'm coloring a Christmas decoration or the blues and greens of water and land on a state map for a homework assignment. Then there are the times the crayon can's scent sends me straight to Papa and Grandma's foyer to look for a not-yet-colored-in page of one of the few coloring books they keep under the crayon can on the tiered brass shelf beside their front door. Or the times it takes me back to a summer week I am spending at Papa and Grandma's house, and my childhood Beagle is panting beside me while I draw his portrait on the couch. There is so much going on inside this metal can, you see.
I keep the crayon can on a hall shelf with other treasures, and it surely mystifies most who see it, dinged and unlabeled as it is. As is true for us all, its magic lies inside. Lately I find myself opening it more than usual as I pass by, breathing in deeply and eventually replacing the lid quite reluctantly, wishing its scent could keep me in its hold a little longer. May I be granted one more day, please, when sticks of wax are all it takes to make my life colorful and pressing down too hard is my biggest concern? Life has a way of demanding a wee bit more of us than that, though, and perhaps especially for those of us who began it in awe of these boxed rainbows, it is only natural that we sometimes grow frustrated as we figure out, over and over, how to grow up without losing that sense of enchantment. No worries, Papa and Grandma, your girl is determined to get it right. The crayon can holds not only the blue-green and green-blue of the wild seas I intend to learn to surf someday, but also the pinks and reds and yellow-oranges of the roses I want to grow around my home. I will find the balance, I remind myself. I will try not to worry as the years unfold. And I will hope that my grandparents say an extra prayer every time they see me reaching for the lid.
While I was home last month, my aunt Heidi passed around a folder full of old family photos, and one of them was this treasure from 1980. I had never seen it before, and I'm still transfixed by it two weeks later. This is one of the only candid shots of me and my mom that I've ever seen, and it's also one of only a few pictures of my mom from this time period, since she was almost always the one behind the camera. Look at her looking at me: Sweet Mama! ♥ (She was probably just wondering what she was going to do with her crazy-haired three-year-old, but we'll imagine that she had more poignant and profound thoughts at this moment.) And we are sitting in a gingham kitchen, of course. So dear!
My younger brother's first baby is due any day now, and the rest of the family daily guesses names and marvels at the idea that there will be a whole new person with us very soon. The day my nephew was born, I wondered aloud to my mom how strange it was that I had just met him and already loved him so much. "I'd never even laid eyes on him until today, and now it's hard to remember the family without him." My mom replied with something along the lines of "Well, of course," but it was stunning to me how the heart instantly expands. It's a girl, my brother and his wife have already announced, and I'm eager to feel, for the third time now, that rush of auntly love and surely-you've-somehow-been-here-with-us-all-along when I hold my new niece the first time.
"Thirty-six," largely due to my younger brother's news, has been a year of nostalgia so far for me. Each year now seems to fly by faster than the one before, and maybe because 2013 has had me looking both forward and backward even more than usual, I feel like I've lost track of this one somewhere along the way. While I was home for my birthday in May, my sister-in-law announced her pregnancy. When I went home in September, it was for the autumn-themed baby shower. And next month's visit will find my younger brother now a parent. I remember riding the hopital elevator up to the maternity unit the day he was born in 1982. The next time I was visiting my hometown hospital's maternity unit, it was 2004 and my older brother had just become a dad. And didn't all these things happen just yesterday? No, really. I don't understand anymore how time passes. Lately the scene in Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little Town on the Prairie keeps coming to mind in which Mrs. Bradley makes everyone in attendance cry on musical literary night by singing "Backward, turn backward, Oh Time in thy flight. Make me a child again, just for tonight." Picture me here pulling out my handkerchief along with Laura and Ma. My younger brother is days away from being a dad. Those who served as my former elementary school's principal, custodian, and secretary while I was a student there have all died this past year. And all of this while I continue write, little by little, a memoir of my 1980s childhood. "Those were nice years," my dad said of that time while I was home in September. "You kids were all still pretty young, and Papa and Grandma were still alive. . . ." My heart was almost too full to respond to him then, and it feels full-to-bursting now as I picture my once-Pound-Puppies-and-Connect-Four-loving brother with his wife and baby beside him this Thanksgiving. "They were such good years," was all I managed to get out to Dad, and I want to pause here tonight and just sit quietly and look at my favorite pictures from this fall before any more of it passes passes and say "Thank You." Because these are good years too.
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