Category: reminiscence

This is the First Day of the Rest of My Blog

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Depositphotos_26743721_xl-2015

There was a very popular saying in the early 1970’s, “Today is the first day of the rest of your life.” I had a poster of this adage hanging in my bedroom. It was a black and white fuzzy photograph of a person walking down a beach. The text was swoopy script down one side. I loved that poster and at the age of 11 or 12, I was deeply moved by the saying. No one seems to know who first coined the phrase. Various searches on the internet seem to point to it being the result of the 1960’s drug culture in California, which sounds about right. It is also thought to have evolved into being a quasi religious, spiritualist saying.  At the time, being a 12 year old, I just thought it was BEAUTIFUL and MEANINGFUL and that sensibly, it was basically true. The saying has aged in the same way Burt Bacharach songs have aged, pleasant but syrupy.

I started my blog back in the early 21st century enthusiastically. It was a great way to write things that felt silly to write in a journal. I loved it. No one really read my blog except relatives and some very nice people who found it somehow. I did not care. It was out there for someone to stumble upon. I myself have stumbled upon delightful blogs with apparently few readers. It seemed to be a worthwhile endeavor. I loved spending a Saturday morning putting a post together. I was just a part time blogger.

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As it happens, I was also an early Facebook joiner and loved it as well. Gradually, as Facebook became more and more popular and started behaving like a public utility in my life: turn on the lights, run the water, check Facebook, my poor old blog just drifted away. I no longer spent time on Saturday mornings thinking thoughts about a book I had finished or a movie or TV show we had watched or a trip I had taken and sharing it with the universe. I was busy throwing off what I hoped were clever one liners or pictures or what passes for my achievements on Facebook throughout any given day.

Without going into what I have personally decided are the reasons or psychology behind the Facebook addiction, I made myself stop. It was a bit like going on a diet. I would do really well for a week and then falter and fall back into the habit. I found leaving Facebook was really hard. With much effort, I have gone almost a year without looking. I have deactivated and will soon delete my account. I’m almost a year clean. The final push for me was when a friend died and their page became this maudlin place for people to EASILY give condolences. I stress the word EASILY. Facebook has made birthdays too easy, holidays too easy.  It’s nothing to say Happy Birthday on Facebook. It requires little effort since Facebook has sent you a reminder.

Returning to the friend who died, I noticed something odd. I saw many people condoling who had never, ever commented on this deceased friend’s posts when they were alive. I was a frequent commenter and supporter of the posts this friend made. They had a delightful sense of humor. But the page was now filled with “friends” who I had never seen hanging about. And while it was nice these people seemed moved to add their sympathy, it horrified me. I imagined dying and all the people who I was “friends” with -who never said boo to me year in and year out – suddenly showing up to say what a great gal I was. So I quit. That day.

One day, a while after quitting Facebook, I received an email notice saying I had received a comment on this blog. After I got over the shock of someone actually finding this old thing, it made me take a look at Paraphernalia. As I re-read some of the things I had blogged about and realized I had forgotten I had ever written, I was filled with an urge to reclaim my blogging self. It brought back to me the fact that I had had once mused about all sorts of paraphernalia (hence the name of this blog) and so I decided I needed to try again. I am a bit rusty, but maybe with practice, kind of like doing scales on a piano, I will regain my blogger footing.

This is the first day of the rest of my blog.

I Remember Mama…

Janetoo5 Comments

Songs my mother taught me
In the days long vanish’d
Seldom from her eyelids
Were the teardrops banish’d

Now I teach my children
Each melodious measure
oft the tears are flowing
oft they flow from my mem’ry treasure (Anton Dvorak)

My mom and I used to sing this together. It was a heavily marked song in my great grandmother’s song book. It is an old timey tune, full of pathos and emotion written back in the days when people’s lives were more precarious than our own. It is my favorite.

One of my favorite old movies is “I Remember Mama” with Irene Dunne and  Barbara Bel Geddes. I have made my own little movie to remember my own mom, Nancy Ann. She was my rock and my best friend. My mom loved the Metropolitan Opera and listened to the radio broadcasts every Saturday. She had a gorgeous soprano singing voice (think Kathleen Battle) and was sunny and bright, always eager to listen to YOUR story and an amazing voice teacher. She was the best grandmother ever and I want to share her with you here. I used music which represented the era she came from, she and my dad loved Andy Williams, hence the Moon River and she enjoyed a classical music career with her wonderful second husband, a composer in his own right, Eloy Fominaya. The final song is Mi Chimano Mimi, her favorite aria, from Puccini’s La Boheme, sung by her favorite soprano, Renee Fleming.  I think the internet is a wonderful way to highlght the lives of people who deserve to be known by others.

Click Your Heels…

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Little Cottage

Sometime in 1898 my great-grandfather, George Ernest and his father in law, my great, great-grandfather (who everyone called Dad) purchased a tiny island on a lake in Northern Wisconsin. On the island they built a small, serviceable summer cottage. We have been traveling there each summer ever since.

Dad in his canoe

Our society has, I think, lost some of it’s grounded-ness; that sort of Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz kind of going home to Kansas-ness, if that makes sense. I guess you could call it the philosophy of ‘click your heels and you are there.’ People who are fortunate to have a ‘click your heels’ location to return to are more than merely fortunate, they are rich.

Now, my little family cottage is not swanky as many modern cottages are. It has been left in the swanky dust by all of the big, peeled log beauties that have sprung up all over the lake. We have bizarre plumbing arrangements, no big screen TV – actually, we do not have TV. It is furnished exactly as my great grandparents left it, complete with their collections of Dickens and selected Thackeray. This last visit, I pulled ol’ George Ernest’s copy of Ben-Hur, A Tale of the Christ from the bookshelf. I have seen the movie many times, but I never read the actual book and the book is wonderful. Lew Wallace, the author, did tremendous research when writing it. He was a bored general in the Middle East when he started writing it.  It is worth reading for the description of the wise men and the cultural conditions of Bethlehem at the time of Christ’s birth. You will learn many obscure anthropological facts. Please visit the website about Lew Wallace  and his ‘study’ in Crawfordsville, Indiana. I did not get there this trip, but I will next time.

Whenever life seems to be over the top, I know I can click my heels and go home again.

I know this will make for a long post, but this next bit is something I once wrote for the possible start of … something, not sure what – I think it is a mystery.  Anyway, it is intended to be fictional … but I used lots of  autobiographical sense memories based on this place I love.

The Indian Mounds seem smaller each year, especially now that I am a grown woman. When I was a little girl the only way to reach the mounds was by boat. We would arrive in the throaty Chris-craft my grandfather had happened upon at an estate auction, throw the anchor into the golden sandy floor of the lake and wade in.  Some years the water was so cold the drop into the knee deep water took my breath away leaving me in a blue lipped state of shivering that didn’t abate until I was able climb into a warm bath when we returned to the cottage.

My grandfather always putted around a bit in search of a rock to latch on to.  For some macabre reason I was always drawn to the mounds. The thought of them silently waiting haunted me from one June to the next and I couldn’t wait for the first sunny day after we arrived at the island to make the trip to the boat beach, as it was known to my family.

I remember my mother taking me by the hand, leading me along the pine needle path away from the sunny stretch of beach and the rhythmic sound of the waves rolling in from the darkest center of the lake.  Here, the forest deepened and the sounds of the woods mimicked the sound of the air after a deep snowfall; an intense quiet suffused with a sense of peace.  I became conscious of the muffled slap, slap of my pink flip-flops against the densely packed pine needles. I was mindful of the sun streaking through the trees in slanting rays and it reminded me of the religious cards my catholic cousins showed me picturing Jesus looking up toward the sky, thin beams of sunlight streaming from a cloud creating a heavenly aura.  Maybe this is how I latched on to the idea that the mounds were a holy place requiring the same reverence reserved for church interiors and the quiet whispers accorded public libraries.

My mother wove her own version of an old legend that loosely resembled the official history of the area. She told a story about a final battle fought by the ancestors of the Ojibwa Indians who, as recently as 100 years earlier, had been the original inhabitants of the boat beach.  Her voice barely above a whisper, leaning down to reach my ear as we walked along,  she told how the feuding tribes finally culminated their bitter warring by burying the Tomahawk on the shores of the boat beach. My mother was a bit of a history buff and while she had read the scarce amount of scholarship which existed about the mounds, like a true story-teller she used the best bits from both the legend and the research to create a romantic portrait. In hushed tones she told me the brave warriors of the feuding tribes are together, their blood cleansed in the cool lake waters, ceremoniously layered in peace. Their numbers are recorded in the mounds rising gently from the ground, a visible mingling of souls for all eternity.

It was a fairly brutal tale to recount to a four-year old, but her descriptions of the blood running into the lake water like satin ribbons blowing in the breeze made it tantalizing romantic. All the Braves were handsome, all the women Indian princesses.  In my mind, I pictured those handsome young braves lying entwined after the final battle, the tears of Indian princesses cleansing the blood from their wounds, (my mother’s description) and secretly dreamed of finding the tomahawk that had finally put an end to the brutality which lay beneath the fern covered mounds. Later in life I tried to find out the details of these Indian battles, as if by confirming them I could prove that the Tomahawk legend was true, but the great Indian battle remained shrouded in mystery with only the silent mounds providing exculpatory evidence of the grain of truth contained in the legend.

All of this was before the State cut a road in behind the forest which was the Indian’s sepulchral ground…before the campers came with the kids eager to scamper on the mounds, causing them diminish in a manner quicker than anything the previous 500 years had accomplished. This was all before the state sold the land to developers. It was before the full force of civilization arrived in the Northwoods.

My Very Own Mad Man

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A bit of a diversion. I started watching Mad Men lately.  It begins in 1960, which is only two years after I began.  Watching Mad Men has made me long for my dad. The world the show portrays is the world my Dad lived in; that snap your fingers to the music, sexy smoker, wink your eye kind of executive life. Yes, oh yes, my dad was suave.

While most people write about how their dad’s built them a fort or took them fishing, my dad simply made me swoon. When we went on vacation, as we drove across the plains, he taught us fraternity drinking songs. On summer evenings, while fire flies twinkled in the growing twilight, my dad chipped golf balls in the back yard and asked me to hand him his high ball in between shots.

I sat and watched adoring as he shaved in the mornings before driving off to the city and into his mysterious work world.  On the weekends, after he got home from golfing with a client,  I combed his thick black hair and planted kisses all over his face on the couch while we watched Arnold Palmer win Master’s tournaments and U.S. Opens.

I knew by the time I was five that my dad had a beautiful golf swing, that he was a six handicap, that he loved the track (he took me when I was seven) that he was a smooth salesman, one of the best for Uniroyal the maker of Keds tennis shoes.

When I was older, after my parents divorced in a 1970’s ‘it will be better for the kids’ kind of divorce, he took me out to expensive dinners and after our meal, we would dance. My dad was a very good dancer. He would twirl me around the dance floor and I always, always felt like I was five again, swooning in the bathroom while he shaved.

There was more to him than golf and work, naturally. He read. He was a great reader and conversationalist and he loved opera. Tears would form in his eyes when he listed to Nessun Dorma. Jussi Bjorling was his operatic hero and later he became a Pavarotti fan. He could sing along to all famous tenor arias as well. He had a lovely tenor voice.

He died too young. All those cigarettes, smoked so suavely, caught up with him. That life, that snap your fingers, listen to Andy Williams, make a business deal, wink at the secretary kind of life, was like a fuse lit on a stick of dynamite – flash!  boom! it’s over.

He was my  oh, so handsome, dad. He was my idea of what a father should be: swoon worthy.

I miss him on father’s day.

“There is one day that is ours. Thanksgiving Day is the one day that is purely American.” O. Henry

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Pilgrims - An illustration for an old children's book

I love Thanksgiving. I love stuffing the turkey, making the pies, deciding how to prepare the sweet potatoes…I have a couple of recipes one old, one new. My daughter was born the night before Thanksgiving and her birthday falls every so often on this best of family holidays, in fact her birthday is today! I have so much to be thankful for… My husband, my darling, beautiful daughter, the life of my mother, my sisters, my gorgeous nieces, nephews, beloved first cousins a surviving uncle and his dear wife, the wonderful men I work for… I know there are more who should be on the list… like… my friends, near and far. What an amazing country we live in…

I hate to read stories about school districts and municipalities which are suppressing the traditional story of Thanksgiving such as this one. Making construction paper pilgrim hats, or drawing turkey feathers by tracing my little girl hands provide an especially strong memory of my little girl grade school years. The religiosity of Thanksgiving is part of our heritage, the relationship with the Indians, the Native Americans the Pilgrims encountered and were assisted by, can and should be told romantically. I am weary of political correctness. Let’s retain SOME of our traditions.

One of my favorite books from my girlhood was “Constance, A story of Early Plymouth by Patricia Clapp.“ I think I read it in fourth grade, but it gave me a firm foundation in understanding the Pilgrim story and the challenges they faced their first hard winter here in the New World. Naturally, it was written to appeal to a young, romantic reader such as myself. There was a a wonderful mix of romance and the hard realities of life experienced by those early Pilgrim souls. For years after reading the book, I wanted to name my child Damaris – the name of Constance’s younger sister. I checked “Constance” out of my public library in Naperville, Illinois in 1969 or so. Later, when Amazon came around, I ordered a used copy, so I would always have it, to share with my grandchildren someday.  I think it is out of print, which is a shame…

Apparently, the author is a descendant of the real Constance, who left the Pilgrim colony with her family to farm independently. The book is written as a diary and it is compelling reading, even if you are all grown up.

Have a wonderful, wonderful Thanksgiving….

Do you have Idylls of the King? By Alfred, Lord Tennyson?

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My family is blessed to own a small cottage on a postage stamp size island in Northern Wisconsin.

The Island
The Island

As a child, there was no television or telephone and because there were no distractions we did all those kid things: swim, catch frogs, swing, play in the woods… on the sunny days. Rainy days, however, were a different story. On rainy days, after we finished moaning and whining about having no television, we headed to the game drawer and started in on Monopoly marathons and my favorite game “Authors.”

We played ‘Authors’ day and night. We made fun of some of the authors’ portraits and we concocted jingles out of the titles. My favorite jingle was the one we made up for “Song of Hiawatha,” sung to a familiar theme played in all Cowboy and Indian movies of the 40’s.

Over the years, the stack of cards dwindled down to a mere shadow of its former self. Eventually, there were no more than a dozen. When I grew up and started taking my own daughter and nieces to the cottage, I mourned the missing ‘Authors’ cards. But, as fate would have it, while reading a magazine, I happened upon an article announcing a re-issue of the popular children’s card game. I ordered two sets and now I keep one in my dresser drawer and one is always in my purse. We never go to the cottage without them. Everyone asks as soon as we get in the car before we pull out of the driveway, “Do we have ‘Authors?” My girls love ‘Authors’ as much as we did as children.

My personal favorite card from the deck is “Idylls of the King.” As children, we often mispronounced this. My mother would smirk each time she heard one of us ask, “Do you have Iddles (rhymes with skiddles) of the King?” Finally, reluctantly, she decided to correct us, but we went on asking for Iddles, guffawing and snickering each time.

Do you have Iddles of the King (snort)
Do you have Iddles of the King (snort)

Within the past five years, I found an old, beat up copy of  the book “Idylls of the King.” It is navy blue with gold leaf lettering.I bring it with me to the cottage, and whenever someone draws the card or asks for it, I whip out my copy and read a selection. Now we giggle and groan because everyone knows I will read a section out loud.

I am not the only one who thinks Tennyson should be read aloud. Radio 3 in the UK with be presenting “Idylls of the King” on July 12th. Apparently, as Michael Symmons Roberts tells us in this article,

Tennyson’s voice has been ringing in my head these past weeks, as I’ve been working on a new adaptation of his Arthurian sequence Idylls of the King for Radio 3. Not just Tennyson’s voice, but the voices he creates for kings, knights, maidens, fools and churls. This is poetry to be read aloud, and this was a poet with a popular voice. When a short, early version of the Idylls was first published in 1859, more than 10,000 copies were sold within the first fortnight. The more I worked on the poems, the more I thought of him as a radio poet before the age of radio.

I hope they create a podcast. I may decide to download it and the next time we are sitting around the table at my beloved cottage playing authors and someone asks “Do you have Idylls of the King by Alfred, Lord Tennyson, I will hit the play button…

Here we are...playing 'Authors'
Here we are...playing 'Authors'

The Laurel Chain Tradition at Mount Holyoke College

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I just returned from my daughter’s graduation from Mount Holyoke College. Mary Lyon founded the college in 1837 to promote female scholarship. Emily Dickinson studied there for a time. In the Laurel Chain tradition, the alumnae and graduating class process in a parade to Mary Lyon’s grave. The seniors carry a chain of Mountain Laurel and wrap it around the iron fence which surrounds the grave. It is a a sight to behold. Truly beautiful and terribly moving…

My Summer Vacation

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My summer vacation. Fifty summers. Fifty summer vacations. Like a homing pigeon headed north, I fly. North. To the Northwoods. To the land of lakes and birch trees and hemlocks. We drive two days through the mountains and the cornfields and finally the forests, my mother and sister and niece and I.
As we wind through the Appalachians, I remember the first time I saw a mountain. I was 17 and I was enchanted. I remember a feeling bubbling up inside of me. Like a hidden spring, the possibilities of topography dawning on me, all those embossed globes of my childhood, I could feel, like a blind person the memory of my finger tips running down the spine of a mountain range and now, here it was like a wall before me.
I wondered if I had somehow missed out on something deep and mysterious and ultimately more tremendous than the dark black Illinois loam of my mother’s peony bed by having spent my first 17 years on the prairie. I would have had a similar reaction to the ocean except for the fact that Lake Michigan had prepared me better than my paper mache globe.
But now, in my fiftieth summer, as we round each curve in the Daniel Boone National Forest, my body pressed from centrifugal force against the car window, I find my heart beats harder the closer we come to Indiana and the vast expanse of corn fields all wearing their long lace collars of Queen Anne’s lace. I am going North.
When I finally see the first corn fields ahead through the asphalt mirage of the highway and glimpse the dark heart of Indiana’s hardwood forests beyond in the distance, I start to feel as if I am going home. I sigh, a long sigh, as if I have been holding my breath for yet another year when we finally stop for the evening, our first day of travel complete. I feel as if my own fetch greets me. The ghost of the girl I once was. It is the air swirling around me. It takes me back to my Midwestern girlhood. It reminds through flashes carried into my senses on the breeze. Like the ripple of playing cards in a dealer’s hand I can see of all my summers. I shiver and It reminds me why I never wore sundresses without a sweater.
In my youth I resented having to cover my pretty shoulders and now as I stand outside the Comfort Inn in Crawfordsville, Indiana which stands in the middle of a cornfield, I ache to go back in time and cover my shoulders all over again. Now. Even now when I know about the mountains and the oceans and the sultry beauty of Savannah and Charleston, I want to go back to the time when all I knew was perfectly straight strips of highway hidden in the precise grid of gently swaying cornfields and the fact that summer was only, truly, three weeks long.
In years past, our daughters stood, teeth clattering at the edge of the Indiana motel swimming pool, lamenting the chilly early July evening air and yearning for their Southern summer swimming pools. Our Southern born daughters who understood nothing about their riches of sweater-less sundresses, our daughters whose lungs ached for the languid blanket of humidity which made it possible to always wear the thinnest cotton over a bikini in the pitch black midnight of Georgia. There is a beguiling sense of recklessness inherent in a Southern summer evening. Yet only a Northerner can truly spot it. Southerners, like our daughters, raised as they are in so gentle a climate are blissfully unaware of the joys of owning multiple sundresses and walking sweater-less on a summer evening. Yes, Sundresses sum it up nicely.
The next day we drive up through the straight center of Illinois, Land of Lincoln and Chicago and me. Dan Fogleberg once sang Illinois, Illinois, Illinois, I’m your boy. If Dan Fogelberg was Illinois’ boy than I am Illinois’ girl; I can barely stand to see the road signs which point to Decatur. I drive and glance continually to my left after we leave Bloomington and Decatur fades in my rear view mirror. For reasons I can’t explain, the green interstate sign declaring this way to Decatur reminds me of my college love making conducted in a dorm room somewhere in Decatur and the sweet boy I left behind. I remember first kisses and secret good byes and because I know I can never take that exit again, my lips quiver a bit.
Soon we are flying by Rockford and then we are finally in Wisconsin and the flat land gives way to rolling hills and perfect farms with barns and silos and dairy cows that frame either side of highway. We accelerate a bit, in hurry now to exit from the lunacy that is interstate 90/94. We exit and find Highway 51, our impatience growing now to be on our island and rowing on our lake.
As the Northwoods loom ahead of us, my melancholy fades. I manage to shake off all the places I have left behind forever and turn my attention to the constancy of my ancient cottage, tucked away on a tiny round island. I am returning to the place I can always return to: the place where time stops. Here, bull frogs serenade little green ladies throughout the night and loons wail distantly in the hidden bays of the lake. Dragon flies who ironically wear Carolina Blue land on my knees and I remember I live in North Carolina now. The herons abide in marshy alcoves and otters play on their backs at the edges of our shore. A mother deer and her babe sneak across our filled in road to drink at the water’s edge and we watch humming birds drink at the feeder we have placed on an old wrought iron lamp stand outside the window.
For fifty summers I have traveled north. North. Toward the stars. On my way to heaven. My summer vacation.

What Would I Pay For All I want?

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I just spent the day driving my mom half way to Augusta, Ga. I always meet my bestest sister in the middle of nowhere, South Carolina. Once there, (the middle of NOWERE) we make the hand off: that is she gets mom and I drive back home again, alone. Mom hasn’t been back to Augusta in a while and the visit will be good for her spirits.

It’s funny, but every time I do this, I always feel a little blue. Sort of like I have just seen my kid off to summer camp or the first day of kindergarten. It’s so true, we trade places with our parents……

I switched on NPR for company and listened to American Weekend. I mostly love NPR. They do the best job of human interest stories and if they could just leave out the political jabs, it truly would be a National Public Radio. Today, however, I just let it all roll over me. For some reason, I was feeling big spirited and overwhelmingly American. I listened to a marvelous story about the original indigenous meanings behind place names. Words like Connecticut and Illinois and Chicago and I felt fortunate to be a part of this vast expanse we call America. (Strange and slightly prophetic, Chicago essentially means big stinky place, was it karma that pre-ordained the stock yards?)

Anyway, during the next story they were discussing Radio Head’s decision to allow the download of their newest CD. Apparently, this past week, Radio Head made the decision to leave it up to their fans to pay whatever they think their music is worth. This gives new meaning to having a free market society.

But this eventually segued into the following question: What would a favorite song be worth to you in treasure, in dollars and cents? What, the hosts pondered, would you be willing to pay for your favorite song? What if it meant the difference between hearing the song or never hearing it again?

The host named Desiree made the startlingly beautiful statement that essentially, songs are only as good as the memories they are wrapped in. How true that is! The segment focused on the really moving stories of various listeners, each telling a story about the value they attach to their favorite song. American Weekend posited: how much you would pay for your favorite song, what is that memory worth to you? Would you be willing to purchase it, like a rare painting?

For me, it has to be All I Want by Joni Mitchell on her Blue Album. I inherited my Blue Album from my brother. He was killed when he was eighteen and I ended up with his albums. I remember his girlfriend telling me he would have wanted it that way. At the time, it felt solemn and deliberate; like the reading of a will in a Dickens novel. He had been listening to Joni Mitchell for about a year before he died and somehow the bequest felt spiritual to me in a way I have never felt since. Inheriting a person’s record album is sort of like retaining the key to their soul.

I submerged myself in this album for months after he died. I can still sing every song in order, side one and then side two. I am almost fifty years old and the songs still manage to shape my emotional landscape. When I am down, I still wish I had a river I could skate away on and if I love you, you are in my blood like holy wine, tastes so bitter and so sweet…In fact, I could drink a case of you…

Blue and All I want connect me to my brother like a strand of spider silk across eternity.

My first download from itunes was All I Want. It seemed inconceivable to me to start with anything else. It only cost 99 cents. But I am sure I would pay more if it came down to it. I suppose you could say I have already spent at least $18 on this song. When I couldn’t play the album anymore, I bought the CD. I made certian my daughter knew about Joni Mitchell and Blue. It is a touchstone; a shard of light breaking from underneath the door of my psyche.

How much is your favorite song worth? What memory does it enshrine? Think about it and be transported back to that moment…