tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34396545051676904652024-03-05T13:39:19.922-08:00Booming MemoriesMemories of growing up in Boston during the 50s/60s/70sAnonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00542403019975718275noreply@blogger.comBlogger29125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3439654505167690465.post-56861402788460192362015-07-14T12:11:00.002-07:002015-07-14T12:11:47.859-07:00Once A Reader, Always A Reader<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
I recently moved and when getting the new house together, I went through photographs I hadn't seen for a while, trying to find some interesting ones for my walls. Though a lot of them simply went back into the box to go into storage, there were several that inspired some fond memories. One of them is of my oldest/best friend, Therese, and me, spread out on her front steps, books in our faces. <br />
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We probably were in third or fourth grade in the photo, judging by the length of our skinny legs. Growing up, we both shared a love of books and though we grew up in the projects and spent a lot of time outside, we also read as many books as we could throughout the week (twice as much during the summertime). I can pretty much guarantee that we were probably deep into a Nancy Drew book. I would bet any amount of money that she and I read every single Bobbsey Twins and Nancy Drew book ever written.<br />
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Every time I went to my local library, I loaded up with the maximum number of books you could borrow, and I'd take a break from the walk home by stopping at my grandparents' house. My grandmother lined her driveway with lilies, gladioli, daisies and pansies. Her kitchen windows overlooked those colorful flowers, so I would sit there with my grandfather, eating one of our favorite snacks and talking about the books I'd just borrowed. He didn't say much (wasn't much of a talker) but he listened to me tell him that I'd chosen some biographies of Annie Oakley or Amelia Earhart or that I'd been the first one to borrow the newest title in the Nancy Drew series.</div>
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No matter how hot it became, we sprawled on the concrete steps or took our books across the street to the city playground near our school. I wonder now how we spent so much time in the sun, but we were there. All day, every day. By the middle of the summer, we'd be as brown as nuts and our hair lightened by at least three shades.</div>
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Looking back at those moments is always fun, but I never would have known at that moment that Therese and I would still be friends to this day and that we'd still be talking about books. My house is full of books, at least one little pile of books-in-progress in each room, and these days, when Therese and I check in with each other, one of the first questions invariably asked is "what are you reading?"</div>
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I wonder sometimes whether children read as much as we did then.</div>
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What are your thoughts?</div>
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Peace,</div>
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Dawn</div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00542403019975718275noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3439654505167690465.post-60529718408850574872012-06-02T21:03:00.002-07:002012-06-02T21:03:17.737-07:00Godmothers are stronger than the Godfather: Aunt Sis<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
When I was growing up, I had a lot of aunts. Some were funny, some were worldly, some could dance, some were women of the world, but only one was my godmother. Only one was truly Zen. More peaceful than any other, more balanced and thoughtful. Only one was my Aunt Sis.<br />
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Florence Gordon Bodvar, as my Aunt Sis was "officially" known, had been born a twin -- the second set that my grandmother, Laura Gordon, birthed. Sis was the other half of Sis and Bud (Bud being my uncle, "officially" known as Donald Gordon). I never really did get the whole "twin thing" when I was growing up, because Aunt Sis and Uncle Bud really didn't appear to be anything other than brother and sister. In fact, my mother and my Aunt Sis appeared more likely to have that special connection twins have than my Aunt Sis and Uncle Bud did. They didn't even really look alike. Aunt Sis had a placid demeanor and expression. Never a beauty, in the movie star sense of the word, Aunt Sis more closely resembled a nun, except when her rather dry sense of humor showed itself. She dressed somberly, acted slowly and thoughtfully, and had a quiet way about her that brought peace to the room. <br />
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Yes, she had a sense of humor. Yes, it was obvious that she loved entertaining (a visit to her house never ended without coffee and cake on her best china, complete with porcelain cups and silver service set). Yes, her home overflowed with antiques I didn't appreciate until I started dealing antiques myself when I was in my early thirties. She never lost her temper, didn't yell at her three boys when we were around, and spent the latter part of her life carving for Uncle Ernie after a debilitating stroke without complaining. I often wonder whether she simply held everything in check or whether she truly did feel the peace she exuded. But with all of that came a sense of peace that I didn't notice in any of my other aunts. Though she never practiced anything other than the Salvation Army Christianity her sister in law espoused, I think Aunt Sis would've been interested in my Buddhist beliefs and would have understood Zen quite easily. <br />
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When I was born, my mother and father had chosen my Aunt Sis and Uncle Ernie as my godparents, and from the first memory I have of them, I knew that I was special in their eyes, and that was the way a child should feel around the people who would essentially take over if their own parents died. I trusted them more than any other members of my family, even though they had three children of their own (Ernie, Carl and Wayne). I knew that my Aunt Sis and I had a special connection, one she didn't share with my siblings or even with her own boys. I was the daughter she never had, and I loved her with the same quiet devotion she showed me.<br />
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Aunt Sis lived in Malden, in a three-story Victorian at the top of a steep hill where you could hike up another steep hill to the top of what some would call a small mountain. Hiking up that hill always gave me the feeling of breathlessness that I never felt even when striking out to walk all the streets in our two-square-mile expanse of Everett. It was always an adventure to maneuver the small, rocky paths that led to the top of a promontory that overlooked the city of Malden and offered a view of Boston in the distance. To me, it was a little scary to be up that high, yet it was that height I associated with visits to her house.<br />
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My mother teased her older sister that she learned from the Swedes (my uncle, his mother, and unmarried sister) about making coffee so strong that it would "put hair on your chest." The way Aunt Sis brewed coffee seemed to require at least an hour of preparation and percolating and once it was done, Dad and Ma used all of the milk in the creamer to cut the "molasses" (as Dad called it). I didn't drink Aunt Sis's coffee until after I married, but for years, I had the pleasure of choosing one of the dozens of tasty pastries she set out on porcelain plates for us kids to sample while the adults gossiped about their siblings and drank endless cups of coffee.<br />
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At Christmastime, we always visited her house, as we visited my Aunt Till, Aunt Jean and my grandmother, but trips to Aunt Sis's at Christmastime were quieter. Her tree, decorated in wooden figurines from Sweden and glittering crystal ornaments, made me sit and stare in wonder. The holiday season in my aunt's house seemed like it was being celebrated in another country. None of her decorations or the way she celebrated the season seemed anything like what we had at home or remotely resembled the more modern decorations at Aunt Jean's house or the kid-oriented holiday we celebrated at Aunt Till's. Even though Aunt Sis never told us to sit down or to fold my hands in my lap, it did seem that she expected our manners to be impeccable and that the parents/adults had earned the same respect we did -- matter the age;<br />
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There were times during special occasions at my mother's house that my Aunt Sis simply sat in a quiet corner, watching. What she thought, I don't know, but I got the impression that she didn't need to listen to people gossiping and that she wouldn't lower herself to talking about others since she wasn't perfect herself. It's weird, but I do believe that she had a better vision for the company she was working for then when the majority of my mother's family wouldn't have.<br />
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She had an abundance of love that she showered on those who needed it most (she had a fond spot for my first husband that no one else felt), and I remember that appreciation best. I miss being able to tell her my secrets, miss her appreciation of me -- not expecting me to be anything other than who I was, and I miss the way she made me feel everything would be alright. Out of all my aunts, I truly believe she was the strongest, though she seldom said more than ten words when she was among her siblings. I do hope that I inherited some of her patience and subdued restraint, and if not, that I at least understood from her demeanor the way in which a woman can quietly control a room and influence those around her without raising her voice.<br />
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</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00542403019975718275noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3439654505167690465.post-23516560085275240472012-05-07T05:28:00.002-07:002012-05-07T05:28:27.807-07:00The Women of My Childhood: Thelma Crocker<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
I've decided to write about each of the people important to my childhood, starting with the women, then the men, then the children, and finally my parents. I suspect that through each of these blogs will be woven other stories that depict what it was like growing up in the 50s/60s and that everyone will find something of themselves in the stories. I'd love to hear about what connects with you.<br />
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There is no rhyme or reason about starting with Aunt Till (aka Thelma Crocker), except that she happened to come up in my mind as I was planning my next blog.<br />
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Aunt Till was the oldest of my aunts, and ironically, the most like my maternal grandmother. I say ironically because, though she was my aunt, she was not born of my grandmother Laura Gordon. Aunt Till's mother had died young, and when my grandfather met my grandmother, they took the children both had (my grandfather had my Aunt Till and my Uncle Ernest; my grandmother had my Uncle Jack) and blended the families . . . then had more children: a set of twins who died very young, then another set of twins (my Uncle Bud ((Donald)) and my Aunt Sis ((Florence)), my Aunt Edie, then my mother (the youngest). <br />
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Though I never really knew my grandmother Laura (she died when I was 7 months old), the pictures of her show a beaming, motherly woman, a bit chubby, though not obese, rimless spectacles on a softly-round nose, dark hair parted in the middle and pulled to a roll, dark shirtwaist dresses with buttons down the front, and black "sensible" shoes tied in a bow. Aunt Till looked a lot like my grandmother, yet she didn't wear shirtwaist dresses . . . sensible shoes, yes, because she walked everywhere. And I mean that literally.<br />
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When I was growing up, not a day went by that my mother and my Aunt Till either had a telephone conversation or met face-to-face at one of our houses for tea and cookies (while us kids ran in and out of the house, nesting on a lap, asking for cookies, telling on one of the cousins). The connection between them was perhaps the strongest of any of my aunts, and I often wonder now if it's because Aunt Till had already had a houseful of kids when my mother started having us and offered plenty of timeworn advice about how to raise children successfully. She seemed to do that with a great sense of humor and a lot of love. <br />
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I have many memories of holidays at the Crocker household, days when the two-story duplex on Bucknam and Linden Streets rang with my cousins Butch and Donald running down the hallway shooting at each other--and me--with Roy Rogers pistols. They were the closest to my age, but they were boys and less likely to play with me than they were to terrorize me. During one of those visits, they roughhoused with me on the porch and one of them (I think it was Butch) inadvertently pushed me into my brother's carriage. The pram was a large navy blue kind of carriage that had a brake on the front wheel. Unlike the one picture below that has a safety stopper on the end, the brake on our carriage did not, and it was that brake I fell against. The brake stabbed my upper thigh and an instant rush of blood soaked my shorts and spilled onto the porch floor. Aunt Till and Mom lifted me atop the wringer washing machine in the pantry, sticking my legs in the sink where the blood made rivulets that circled down the drain. Though they bandaged me tightly and got the blood to stop, they never took me to the doctor's, so I didn't have stitches and to this day, the two-inch scar is still visible. Throughout the emergency, my Aunt Till calmly took control while my mother did a little bit of freaking out -- and neither one of them believed my cousins had anything to do with my fall.<br />
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There were many other events that happened at that household, most of which were happy. Christmases were legendary -- a huge tree in the living room decorated with ornaments that each child in the family had made (Dottie, Barbara, Jim, Butch and Donald), noisy trains running the track around the base of the tree, what seemed like thousands of gifts piled beneath, and a happy chaos throughout the entire house. Aunt Till, flush-faced and aproned, in the kitchen with her turkey and all the fixings, and once everything was ready, all of us crowded into the dining room to eat. After a few years, us kids were relegated to a folding table set up in the living room (where an adult -- usually Dottie -- supervised and made sure we didn't kill each other).</div>
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Whenever Aunt Till was around, I could be assured that I wouldn't be punished by my mother. Aunt Till was soft-hearted and loving, especially toward us, for some reason. I distinctly remember a day when my mother was giving away some of my clothes, which I'm sure Aunt Till was bringing to a needy family, and I noticed that my favorite pair of shoes was in the package. Foretelling times to come, I threw a hissy-fit that the shoes weren't going to be mine anymore (I still have a thing about shoes! LOL.) Aunt Till practically had to sneak out of the house with that bagful of clothes/shoes, and I thought for sure that she was laughing about it until years later when my mother told me that Aunt Till had actually been crying. I know that soft heart was her most endearing trait.</div>
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And we all knew not to get her laughing! She would giggle uncontrollably at Uncle Charlie (her husband) or my father (who knew how to tease her) or at something she and my mother found hysterical, and before too long, she'd squeal, "Stop! Stop! You're going to make me pee!" And she'd have to take off her dress, wash it out and wear an old housecoat of my mother's until her clothes were dry enough to put on and go home.</div>
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When the kids were gone and Uncle Charlie moved her into a small apartment on Glendale Street, collecting salt and pepper shakers became her passion. She lined shelves around the walls of each room with S&P shakers of every shape, size and description, from the Mammy ones that are now worth hundreds of dollars to pairs that came from every corner of the world. Barbara (who traveled widely in the Air Force) and the many boys Aunt Till had befriended during the holidays when she opened her house to servicemen/women who wanted a homecooked meal would send her the shakers to celebrate every occasion.</div>
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Grandkids started coming, and still those Christmases exploded with gifts -- and somehow, she managed to still include us in her gift-giving, though she had what felt like hundreds of kids and grandkids of her own. Her heart kept expanding with each new baby that came into the world -- and when I had my own, she became my babysitter for a while until her own health couldn't handle the daily routine of supervising a child.</div>
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There is not a time that I think of her that I fail to see a smile on her face or a quip from her lips. She might have been small, like my grandmother, but she was feisty and funny and loving, and as I'm sure many of you who read this might realize, she is missed by all of those whose lives she touched.</div>
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</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00542403019975718275noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3439654505167690465.post-74478273931384842682012-05-02T19:33:00.002-07:002012-05-02T19:33:49.131-07:00Becoming: Female<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
During the Sixties, most of the girls I knew had absolutely no idea what was coming toward them until it came running down the inside of their thighs. <br />
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Yes, I'm talking about "that time of the month." "The Curse." "My Friend." Your period. Menstruation.<br />
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Uncomfortable to read, huh? Well, think about how uncomfortable it was for US.<br />
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The first time I doubled over with cramps, I was 11 years old. My mother had "the talk" with me when I was 9. She told me I would bleed once a month and that it would be my body purging itself of "extra blood" and that the actions my body was taking would prepare me for being a woman and for having children. I have to admit I had absolutely no idea how getting rid of what made my body tick would actually make it healthier and stronger and more capable of having children, but whatever . . . she was my mother and she had to know, right? The one thing she hadn't told me was how much it hurt.<br />
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Sheeeeeit. It hurt. For DAYS. I wanted to cry, and often, I did.<br />
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That first time, the blood that ran down my thighs was a shock. I distinctly remember where I was and how it felt. It was fifth grade, Mr. Sansone's class. That morning, I felt lethargic, but it was something I couldn't really pin down, so I went to school anyway. By mid-morning, everything changed. I felt crappy. Moody. Headache. Stomach "not right." In the middle of a lecture about something inane, my stomach started expanding and contracting as if two sets of large hands had taken control of my innards and were massaging my inner organs so hard they were about to burst. My body heated up, I began to panic, and trickles of heat and sweat ran between my shoulder blades like heated rivers of lava. I wanted to melt into the floor under my desk.<br />
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Somehow I obtained permission to go to the girls' room (it wasn't difficult; I had an almost unwritten pass to leave the room anytime I wanted because of my epilepsy -- and I have to admit, I used it whenever I was bored, but this time, I needed that permission to scoot out the door as quickly as possible). And when I got to the bathroom, I realized this wasn't any normal flu bug. This was debilitating. I anchored my butt and stayed there for what felt like hours. Wave after wave after wave of cramps ran through my body like an angry tidal wave.<br />
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If you've never had stomach cramps, consider yourself lucky. Cramps grasp you in meaningful and cruel ways that wreck your sense of time and space. You find yourself struggling to control groans so animalistic that to release them would make you sound like all the National Geographic nature calls put together and amplified so loud they would reach the furthest corners of the continent of Africa. All you remember afterward are those brief seconds when the pain lifts, the drenching stops and you can breathe . . . and during those moments you feel like you've been granted access to heaven. That's how much of a relief it is when the pain stops.<br />
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After that first month, my period came with an almost abnormal regularity. Each 28-30 day cycle seemed more cruel than the last, because with each cycle came cramps, moodiness, and pain so incredible that I realized fainting was not only inevitable but normal.<br />
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Through it all, my mother was there. She stood outside the bathroom door until I finally would let her in. She drenched facecloth after facecloth with ice cold water, holding them to my forehead, placing them on the back of my neck, folding them around my wrists, anything to fight back the drenching fevers that held my whole body hostage. She was the one who grabbed me as I slumped to the floor, she lifted me to my bed, fed me Midol, swabbed my forehead, found the heating pad for my stomach, bought the boxes of Kotex that made me walk bowlegged for a week. She soothed me with her voice, reassured me that it would be over soon, reminded me not to hyperventilate, and cried when the tears ran down my face unabated. She understood.<br />
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I hated being a woman. I wanted more than anything to go back to being a girl able to climb the monkey bars and swingsets like an untamed wild child, to ride my sled with abandon down the hills at Glendale Park, to go ice-skating in the dead of the frozen New England winter with no worries about falling, to ride a bicycle without the bulkiness of the "sanitary pad" between my legs. I wanted to be a boy because I truly believed they had absolutely no worries.<br />
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By the time I ended my teenage years, I had been told over and over again that the only way the cramps and pains of the monthly curse would end would be if I took the next step in womanhood and entered the motherhood stage. Though it wasn't the only reason I became pregnant with my one and only child, it definitely was in the back of my mind that it was possible that this monthly agony would end and that I would have something angelic to show for it. And I did. But first, I had to deal with the fact that those cramps and that monthly agony would far more than just the pains of becoming a woman: that agony was the precursor of something much more deadly, something everyone had ignored. But that's the story for another blog.<br />
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All I can say is that I'm so happy someone discovered that birth control pills help to regulate the monthly cycle and to alleviate the pain most teenage girls experience during 'that time of the month' . . . because I think most of us would have been driven to rid ourselves of that trauma in whatever way we could. <br />
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I truly didn't need that kind of misery to move me from girlhood to womanhood. A simple Hallmark card marking the occasion would have sufficed, thank you very much!</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00542403019975718275noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3439654505167690465.post-81768281860789291392012-04-09T05:26:00.003-07:002012-04-09T05:26:51.129-07:00Easter and New Shoes<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
I have many photos in my albums of my sister, Candy, and my brother, Brian, and myself at Eastertime in our new outfits, but one in particular stands out in my memory. We're standing on the stoop in front of our apartment in the projects. I'm probably 8, Candy's 5ish, and Brian's around 2. On my head is a silly hat with net flowers on it (if I remember correctly, it had netting, too), and I'm standing with my white-gloved hands folded over my rather round belly. The coat was slate blue, though the picture is in black and white, and my shoes were patent leather and made a little tapping sound when I walked. Under the dress, I wore a scratchy crinoline petticoat that puffed out the dress and made me feel like a ballerina. My sister, probably dressed in pink (I don't know why she always got the feminine colors, and I always had blue, but that was the case the whole time we were growing up), looks like a mini version of me, except she's missing her two front teeth (and apparently doesn't care, because she's grinning widely). Brian had one of his many accidents shortly before Easter and the results are apparent in the photo -- a slash across his forehead (by the time he was 5, he'd had approximately 20 stitches in various parts of his face: his forehead, above his teeth, across his chin). He's a little chubby, too, and his hair is slicked across his head though a little piece at the crown rebelliously sticks straight up. There's no denying we're related. Each of us have a wide forehead and blonde hair, blue eyes and the same silly close-lipped grin (Candy is the aberration in this picture, but in every other one of us during our childhood, she's close-lipped, too).<br />
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Easter was one of the few times during the year that our parents went to church with us. Any other time, my father would drop me off at the back door so I could go to Sunday school. When I grew older and I taught those classes, I'd walk down Walnut Street (where we lived from the time I was in 6th grade) and walk home when I was done. On Sundays, I spent pretty much the whole day at that church. I'd start at Sunday school, and when I was older, I'd attend church as an acolyte, then end the day at the downstairs gym, either (badly) playing basketball or just hanging out with the other kids. And for at least two other days during the week, I spent time at the church -- and any other time I needed to visit the chapel where the huge painting of Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemene hung, I could get in through the huge front doors of the church, doors that were never locked.<br />
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When I sat in the church vestry, I spent most of my time looking at the intricate stained glass windows, ten feet tall portraits of Jesus's life, or at the ceiling, soaring bows of highly polished cherry that resembled the inside of a ship's hull hanging upside down over our heads. I still think that the Glendale United Methodist Church is one of the prettiest I've ever been in, though I've visited many throughout the world that would rival it for sheer golden artistry. <br />
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On Easter, the whole altar would be full of white lilies, symbolizing the majesty of Christ's rising and the sermon would be one of hope and love. Everyone wore new hats, new clothes, new patent-leather shoes, just like mine, and after church was over, we'd drive to the cemetary where my grandparents were buried and deliver lilies to their graves. If it was too cold, as it often was during the month of April, we'd take the flowers home with us until the weather was warm enough to put them on my mother's parents' grave, but they always made it there, either at Easter or later. That was a ritual I could count on, no matter what.<br />
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The week before Easter seemed specially made for children. We sung in front of the church, the minister would give each of us crosses made of palm leaves, and I would wonder what those palm trees looked like in real life and whether they were bald from all the little crosses made of their fronds. How could there possibly be any leaves left if all the little children across the world had a palm leaf cross in their hands on Palm Sunday?<br />
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I loved those days and still remember them with fondness. I wish they hadn't ended. I wish I knew why my parents didn't attend church more often. I wish they had never started locking the church's doors. I wish I had never had friends leave for a war that the church strangely supported. I wish I hadn't had discussions with my best friend's father (the minister of the church) around his dinner table, discussions about the Bible and not killing anyone and the war and why he felt ministers needed to bless the troops. I wish that same minister hadn't chosen to tell me I was no longer part of his church because I had chosen to marry a Catholic boy. I wish I still had the solace of that church vestry and the innocence I possessed as a child. But things change and children grow up to realize that churches are where you live in your soul. They are not just the buildings where we worship but the beliefs that we practice on a daily basis.<br />
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I remember those Easter days and the stories of Jesus and the lessons about the Beatitudes and the Commandments and all the peaceful feelings that the church itself gave me, and I'm grateful for that. That feeling still exists. Not in that stone building at the corner of Walnut and Ferry Streets in Everett, Massachusetts, but in the heart that beats in my chest every day. I am grateful that I was able to learn the stories I did and to realize that there are certain expectations in every religion that we should treat each other as we would want to be treated, because I have carried that with me, even though I am no longer a practicing Methodist. What those days gave me was the freedom to explore what ultimately became my connection with Buddhism. Those early lessons became a solid basis for the philosophy that has morphed into what I practice today: a respect for others' beliefs; a compassion for everyone; a certainty that if we want peace, we need to act peacefully and to not harm others; and an awe for the many places of worship throughout the world -- Protestant, Catholic, Islamic -- that I have visited and which have afforded me that same sense of peace that my childhood church did.<br />
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I think that Jesus (and Buddha) would approve.<br />
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</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00542403019975718275noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3439654505167690465.post-58364757366799035002012-03-31T17:27:00.002-07:002012-03-31T17:27:33.628-07:00Surveillance: Party Lines and Water Glasses<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
At the risk of sounding like some troglodyte, I'm going to start this post with the reminder that when we were growing up in the 1950s/60s, phones were black devices that sat on hallway tables and each house had only one; TVs showed images in black and white, we had 3-5 channels, and each house had only 1 (usually located in the "parlor" -- living room was a term coined later); and people talked to each other face-to-face, usually across a cup of coffee or tea, to catch up on what had happened that day. Our "entertainment" was simple and wholesome, for the most part, but when the gossip got "hot," the only way others found out was the beat of the tom-tom -- that sharing of info that usually happened in kitchens or back porches, transmitted by women who wore aprons to cook dinner and who wrapped their hair in bristly pink rollers every night before they went to bed. Those women were our mothers.<br />
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It is only now that I look back to the projects where I grew up that I realize just how "entertaining" the stories of other people's family business was to my mother and her sisters (my aunts). Though they usually shoo'd us out of the room as they stirred sugar into their tea and shared shortbread cookies, many times I chanced punishment and sat behind the kitchen door, holding my breath, to hear the latest gossip. But sometimes I was lucky and the gossip happened right in front of me. Such was the case with what transpired with the family who lived next door to us.<br />
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Though I don't remember their names, I do remember the faces of the female members of the family whose voices traveled through the paper-thin walls that separated our apartments. The mother: thin, hollow dark circles under her eyes, black straight hair to her shoulders, a frightened grimace that stretched her mouth every time she tried to smile (which wasn't often). She wore gray or light blue shirtdresses, never shorts or peddle-pushers like the other women in the neighborhood. Most of the time, she ventured outside her apartment only to hang her wet clothes on the clotheslines strung down the middle of the center of the projects. And when she did go out, she didn't talk to anyone, except my mother, and only occasionally.<br />
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The two daughters resembled their mother so closely that they could have been miniature versions of her. The older one, only a year or two younger than I, had large brown eyes, the kind you see on an animal ready to be slaughtered. The younger one, probably a year or two younger than my sister, tended to laugh a bit more often than her sister or her mother, as if she had no clue what her life would be like a few years later. I think back now and wonder whether I might have noticed bruises on either of them, but at that point in time, it was normal for kids to be regularly spanked so I probably wouldn't have thought it was unusual. I had bruises myself from time to time.<br />
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I mention the bruises because it was the mother who sported black eyes so often that there would be weeks she didn't come out of the house and my mother would hang her clothes out for her or offer to cook something for dinner. The stories surrounding what happened to our neighbor brought the afternoon tea/gossip to a hush. I think everyone in the neighborhood knew something horrible happened in the apartment next door to us, but no one ever said anything, until that night.<br />
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The three of us kids shared a bedroom on the second floor of our apartment and the staircase downstairs acted as our "buffer wall," but there were evenings that even that dead space couldn't stop the screams and thuds coming from the apartment next door. On one of those nights when the noises woke me up, I padded into the hallway. When I reached the top of the stairs, the sounds of a woman screaming and crying were so clear, she could have been downstairs. Rubbing my eyes, I started downstairs, and I saw my parents crouched at the bottom of the stairs, heads together, talking so animatedly between them that they didn't notice me. It wasn't until I was within a step of them that I noticed my mother holding one of our juice glasses to the wall and pressing her ear against it. She saw me in that instant, held up a hand to indicate I shouldn't speak, and said quietly to my father, "Don, we need to call the police. He's going to kill her tonight."<br />
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They argued for a few moments. My father didn't want to get involved. My mother thought they didn't have a choice. Each of them concerned that if they stepped in, either they would have to take care of the woman or, on the other hand, the man might unload his anger on them rather than on his own family.<br />
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I think of how long the argument ensued now and how I ended up in that woman's same predicament many years later, and I wonder why my parents waited so long to offer that poor woman the help and safety she needed. But that was another time, a time when men had the "right" to "punish" their wives and children without interference from others. It breaks my heart that the cries of our neighbor went unheard until that night when my mother finally won the argument and made the call to the police. Ironically, our phone was a party line and my father had to interrupt the people we shared the phone with in order to make the call to the police. That is another story, but finally, he was able to dial out and within moments, the sirens and blue lights filled our neighborhood.<br />
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The next day, the projects erupted with the story of how the father had been dragged away in handcuffs that night, about how bloody and beaten the mother had been, and about the silent children who clung to their mother as she was taken to the hospital, about the children who had no other family members to take care of them, about the children who were so bruised along their backbones and legs that their skin was no longer white.<br />
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The father never came back to the neighborhood. I'm unsure to this day whether he was simply thrown in jail or whether he chose to desert his family. But I do remember that the mother started coming to our kitchen to share tea and cookies with my mother after the bruises healed and about how she started smiling and laughing before she and her two girls finally had to move.<br />
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Perhaps we have more privacy now, but I wonder if it's worth it. I wonder if all of our societal "party lines and water glasses" make for our global neighborhoods now, but if someone hears us crying on the other side of the wall, are they still likely to pick up that phone to save us, or would they be more inclined to switch the channel or to send another message on Facebook before taking the step and the chance of endangering their own safety to intrude on our family life and speak about what is right.<br />
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Though my mother never had a license to drive and never worked, though she never went to college and often didn't go out of the house for weeks on end, she knew that a husband didn't beat those he loved and she knew how to fight for what was right and how to reach out to those in danger. There aren't many times I can remember that have made me more proud of my mother than the night she tore the screen off the tragedy that almost happened in the apartment next door to us, and I think if that woman and her children are still alive, they probably sent up more than one "thank you" to my mother for the gift of life and independence she gave them.</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00542403019975718275noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3439654505167690465.post-88261463121684207132012-03-09T05:32:00.003-08:002012-03-09T05:32:56.698-08:00Race in the Sixties: Confusion and Conviction<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
During our playtime in the backyard on hot summer afternoon my friend Debbie and I decided we needed to be the same. We stripped all our clothes off, lay down on the grass and proceeded to see whether I could tan as darkly as she had. We were four, and we had absolutely no clue that she was African-American and I was Caucasian. Hell, we couldn't even pronounce those words! All we had realized was that our skin color was different, even though WE were the same inside. We played the same games, we had the same rules in our families ("come home for lunch," "no going outside after dark," "no talking back to Mom/Dad"), and we both knew that we'd be going to school next year at the Hamilton grammar school. What we didn't realize was that all the adults knew why we were different . . . and neither one of our mothers was particularly thrilled that our naked young bodies were on display for the world to see. We had no clue that "bad men" might think dirty thoughts when looking at us, and we certainly had no clue that adults who looked like us might not like each other. We liked each other, and that was all that mattered.<br />
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Both our mothers punished us that day. Mine made me sit in my bedroom with my clothes still off, waiting for my father to come home to give me a spanking. I can still remember looking out the bedroom window toward where my father would park his car, and feeling incredibly humiliated. Ironically, my father never came in my bedroom to give me a spanking, and I suspect that he and my mother disagreed on my punishment. That was fine with me. I had suffered enough.<br />
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What they didn't realize was that they had taught me a lesson that went much deeper than "don't go outside naked." They had taught me about the difference in race, and it pissed me off.<br />
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Debbie moved shortly after that. I have no idea why, and I never saw her again, but when I got to school the following year, there were other girls and boys whose skin looked like hers, and I wanted to be friends with them. My mother swore throughout my childhood and young adult days that I was a rebel from the very beginning, but if embracing different races and cultures and being curious about other people made me a rebel, so be it. I was and am fine with that. I believe my life has been a lot richer due to my interest in other people than it would have been if that first "lesson" had turned me into a person who saw the world in only one color.<br />
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When we moved to the projects shortly after that time, there were few Black families who lived there, but the family who lived across the street from us (the Johnsons) was a family I both respected and admired. Their mother, a tall and stoic woman, raised her two boys much more strictly than any other mother on our block. She took no guff whatsoever. That was abundantly clear. And their father, a little more friendly than she was, took a back seat to her. But I spent most of my time watching the two boys. They were young teenagers then, addicted to basketball and popular among their circle of friends. And incredibly handsome. I fantasized being their age and going on a date with one of them, though it had by that time become clear that white girls didn't date Black boys. So what?, I used to think. <br />
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My parents had always told me when I asked about my own race that I was "Heinz 57" -- a little of this, a little of that. "Am I Chinese?" I would ask, and my mother would nod and smile. "Am I French?" Another nod and smile. "Irish?" Yup. "African?" Absolutely. "A little of this and a little of that," she would repeat. "Heinz 57." So, it wouldn't make a difference who I dated, right? My mother would reply that she would love any little baby that came from whatever relationships I had. Perfect.<br />
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Throughout my school years, I had friends of all races (though I must admit there were very few Asians in our neighborhood, so I can honestly say I didn't become friends with anyone from an Asian country until I went to college). Little did I realize during that time period that my own family was a minority. There weren't too many families in the Italian-Irish area where we lived whose ancestors came from Sweden. When I returned to Everett for my 40th high school reunion, I realized that most everyone in my graduating class had an Italian or Irish last name. And though I had what I thought were lots of African-American friends, they were in the minority, too.<br />
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By the time I reached high school, I understood all too clearly that the division between the races was an ugly one, and again, I felt that anger rise in me. JFK and Martin Luther King, Jr. were angry too. They worked on two different sides of the social spectrum, yet I respected both of them for what they did, and still, to this day, feel they are my heroes. They validated the questions I had: Who had the right to tell someone else they weren't good enough? When would people come to the conclusion that everyone had the same needs in life -- the need to be loved, to be part of a family, to be respected? Had someone discovered a line in the Bible that said one race was better than the other? I had taught enough Sunday School classes to realize that the Bible said just the opposite. I had also come to realize that the Bible said not to kill, thus the war the U.S. was embroiled in also made absolutely no sense. That rebellious nature my mother had identified early in my life was what I came to define as self-righteousness. There were certain things that were just plain wrong. Prejudice was one of them.<br />
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Other friends came into my life then. And sometimes the friendships required a lot of work, especially when Black girls started realizing that they were being treated unfairly by people who looked like me. It broke my heart when one of my friends turned against me just because of the color of MY skin. I knew why she had done it, but logically, I had thought she knew ME for who I am instead of the color of my skin. That was when I realized that my anger was one millimeter of what she felt.<br />
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And there was another boy, a senior in high school when I was a sophomore. I really, really liked him, and I would have been quite happy if he had the freedom to ask me out. But I was a sophomore, and he was a senior, he was Black, I was white, and he was a star athlete. There were many reasons why that relationship would never exist. I surreptitiously watched him with my girlfriends' brothers, seeing the natural affiliation of athletes (no matter the color of their skin), and I knew that he was not only athletic but also smart, and could tell that he was truly kind, as well. When I shared my crush on him with one of my friends, she looked at me as if I'd truly lost my last marble. "<u>You</u> could never go out with <u>him</u>," she exclaimed. "Eeewwwww." When I asked why, she stuttered, then said, "He's a senior!" What was unsaid was profound. <br />
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Since that time, I've broken that dating "rule" many times over, yet I've discovered that it is still something with which the majority of people don't agree. Mixed couples still aren't "accepted" in most circles, but dating others outside my race has enriched my life in many ways, and I won't stop. <br />
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Because of what I learned in those early years and the anger I felt about it, I marched with those who protested against the division in race, starting in high school and continuing throughout my life. In fact, just recently, I made a trip to the Mississippi Delta for a National Endowment for the Humanities seminar on Civil Rights. It dawned on me during that trip that my upbringing in New England never prepared me for what the rest of the United States experienced. I think I'm thankful for that. I'm also thankful that my New England "toughness" gave me the freedom to say how I felt about the ways in which people have treated others unfairly. And I'll always be thankful to my mother for giving me the freedom to be "Heinz 57."</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00542403019975718275noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3439654505167690465.post-45441816710189447682012-02-25T08:20:00.000-08:002012-02-25T08:20:55.369-08:00A-B-C: Spelling Bees<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
In sixth grade, a sort of adolescent transition took place in more ways than one. Yes, we moved to a house with a backyard filled with lilac bushes on a tree-lined street. My sister and I shared a girls' only bedroom, instead of sharing with my brother. My feminine senses became heightened. Boys started mattering. And the high school loomed as a very real "next step" only a few blocks up Broadway.<br />
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The traditions and repeated events we enjoyed throughout grammar school started to disappear, though I didn't see it at first and wouldn't appreciate it until much later. I should have treasured those last experiences, but like everything you trundle through as an adolescent, the experiences were confusing and painful and I was never quite sure whether what I did was "right."<br />
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At the Hamilton School, once a year we had a spelling bee, and if you made it to the "finals," you ended up in the auditorium on the stage in front of the microphone . . . staring down at a small audience of friends and family who had come in to cheer on their spelling bee participant. For days before the bee, my mother would sit at the kitchen table with me, drilling me on the lists of words our teacher gave us throughout the year. The bee was usually scheduled at the end of the year, right before summer break, so those lists were long. I remember laying my head on the table, begging her to stop so I could go to sleep. I knew these words. Why did we have to drill for hours?<br />
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On the day of the bee, I joined everyone else who had made it through the preliminary rounds. Heart pounding, palms sweating, we sat on stage next to each other until it was our turn. Then we would be given a word, repeat it, spell it out correctly, repeat it again, then sit down. I distinctly remember every single spelling bee and every word I misspelled that took me out of the bee. I would go home and tell my mother, and years later, she, too, remembered the misspelled word and would ask me out of the blue how to spell it . . . F-R-I-E-N-D, capital A-m-e-r-i-c-a, C-O-U-L-D-N-apostrophe-T. Ugh.<br />
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Finally, in the 6th grade, I participated in the final spelling bee. Thank God. Only this time, the bee wasn't in the familiar auditorium that I remembered, there was no microphone, and no one I knew in the audience. <br />
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I felt more trepidation than I ever had before. Surely everyone in the room would laugh out loud at the new girl when she made a mistake. Surely everyone stared at me when I rose out of my seat to repeat the first word back to the teacher. Surely everyone wanted me to fail.<br />
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I knew that my strengths in the classroom revolved around anything to do with reading or writing. Had there been a Math bee, I would have failed miserably. But I also had less faith in myself as the years went by because of those earlier failures and my mother's expectation that I would get nothing but A's on my report card. Perhaps it was my own insecurity that I wasn't perfect that butted its ugly head into the last spelling bee, making sure that I lost in one of the earlier rounds rather than to face the fear of standing on a stage in front of a microphone to be tested to spell words that I would normally have no problem at all spelling . . . but, whatever the case, that 6th grade spelling bee was over quickly. And I was happy. My mother, however, was not.<br />
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These days, I watch on TV when the grammar school kids make it to the Scripps National Spelling Bee. I see them struggle with roots and prefixes, know that they are aware of the Latin and Greek spellings that give them clues to words they have never heard before, and I wonder how many of them practice with their parents for hours and hours before striding onto that stage. I think about the time they spent with mothers or fathers more intent on their child winning than the child him/herself. I also think about the incredible satisfaction and rush of love they share when the child spells the word correctly, the partnership, the bonds that strengthen as a result of spending so much time together striving for a common goal. <br />
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And I realize I miss that. I miss the intense caring only my mother could provide. It's not the spelling bee. It's time.<br />
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<br /></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00542403019975718275noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3439654505167690465.post-88980355289573118862012-02-15T05:39:00.000-08:002012-02-15T05:39:35.593-08:00Moving . . . Nothing Easy About It<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
During the summer before sixth grade, my parents announced we were moving into my grandmother's house. After my grandfather died, my grandmother took the insurance money he left her and bought a house. Ironically, it was the first house she had owned since her kids were little. My grandfather and she had always lived in an apartment when I was growing up. Now that I think about it, I realize that she bought the house just so we could live upstairs, and it was probably just as well, because we were able to keep her company and take care of her as she aged.<br />
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The house on Walnut Street represented the "moving on up" mentality Americans had during the 1960s, but to me, all it meant was that I was leaving the friends I had known since kindergarten and the school where I had been happily ignorant of how poor we were. <br />
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Though the Edward Everett Hale school was right around the corner from the new house, the walk to my sixth grade classroom that first day seemed more fraught with boogeymen and nightmares than the days when I saw the face in the window at the bottom of the hospital hill. I knew no one, though my parents had both grown up in the neighborhood and told me tales of Miss Dyer, the principal of the school, who had been there when they were little. I figured she must have been at least 100 years old by that time, since my parents were soooo much older than I was.<br />
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The school's windows, reaching to the ceilings of the classroom (probably only about 10 feet tall, though they seemed twice that size at that time), opened with the help of a long pole with a hook on the end. My most vivid memory of the one year I spent at that school is a smell of lilacs . . . the scent I have since associated with springtime. The teacher pulled down the top half of the windows and warm air -- and that fresh lilac smell -- floated into the classroom. No one paid attention to the rest of the History lesson.<br />
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I made new friends there, but I was always aware that I was the "new girl." The group of girls who befriended me lived in the neighborhood and went everywhere together. We walked to school and home together, tried smoking cigarettes together (hiding the pack we shared in someone's bushes every night and hoping it didn't rain before we reached them again the next morning), dressed up for Halloween together, roamed the neighborhood looking for driveways to shovel after the first snow (I discovered how to make money then), and talked about the boys we met when we started Junior High.<br />
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My family's new house, a pea green, three-story buidling, where my grandmother lived on the first floor and we occupied the second and third, was the place where I would spend the rest of my teenage years. Its small backyard gave my grandmother more room to garden, and she happily created little beds that outlined the square expanse. In one corner, a huge old lilac tree grew and behind it, the perfect cave where I could bring my books to lie on the cool earth and read for hours on a summer afternoon.<br />
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Gone were the days of playing on a hot tar playground. It took a while to get used to the move and to adjust to being the "new" person. And I must admit that it made all the difference in how I saw myself as a person. I was no longer confident and happy. Instead, I started questioning myself and everything around me, especially the scary visions of war I saw on TV every night.<br />
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But that's another story for another blog.</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00542403019975718275noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3439654505167690465.post-82868050810406846872012-02-11T06:40:00.000-08:002012-02-15T04:59:44.166-08:00Glendale Park<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Growing up in the projects meant that we didn't really know too much about trees. I never climbed a tree as a kid (though my father hung a swing from the tree in the back of our house on Woodlawn Street, I moved from there before first grade), though I was great at climbing swingsets. We never saw a fox or a rabbit or a deer, except on TV, but I knew how to capture a grasshopper in a Skippy Peanut Butter jar (with holes punched through the lid). I had not learned the knack of skipping stones across the mirror surface of a quiet pond, but I knew how to attach a pair of iron skates to my shoes, turning the key with enough force so they'd stay attached (I had skinned too many knees when a skate flipped off, bringing me to an abrupt halt on a patch of asphalt).<br />
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But we had a large, green park in the middle of Everett where we city kids could get a taste of the green grass and trees that I would learn much later in my life could actually be part of someone's back yard.<br />
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In the summertime, Glendale Park came alive. Four baseball/softball fields welcomed teams throughout the day and into the cool summer nights. Around the periphery of the fields, a paved walking path provided enough space for two large prams to pass each other comfortably so mothers walked their children during the daytime. My aunt would meet us there, usually with one of her kids in a big black baby carriage, and she and my mother would sit on a bench while the "older kids" (me included) tossed a ball, played baseball, or just chased each other around the bases. Lots of other moms brought their kids to the park and took advantage of the time to catch up with the latest gossip. They paid little attention to us, so we explored the whole park, including that area behind the bleachers that would end up being important for a different reason (<u>much</u> different!) when we were in our teens.<br />
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The baseball area of the park was flat, but in the back of the park rose a fairly good size hill, terraced at two different levels. The parks and recreations department hunkered into the first level of the hill, tucked against the rise in such a way that anyone with a yen for sports would be discouraged to try to navigate the trek to the office. Above the office building sat a double tennis court where a friend and I first learned how to lob the ball across the net when I was in junior high.<br />
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Above the parks department and the tennis court was another rizer. And only the bravest of the brave would make the trek upward so that s/he could catch a wave back down the rest of us. Up above the park, another set of projects sat with a great view of the skyscrapers of Boston in the distance. We knew some people "up there," but we rarely visited them until later in my life when my cousins moved in, had children, and I became their babysitter.<br />
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That hill became my favorite part of the park in the wintertime. Come December, when the snows began to fall in earnest, the hill became a sledder's dream. One could start at the very top on a Fearless Flyer and make the long run down the first (and most exciting) half, then over the rise and down the second half to land on the flat area of the baseball field. If the snow was particularly slick, one could go over the rise to the second half in the air -- screaming and laughing -- like Evil Knievel. Plenty of kids did that and more than a couple landed on their skulls, occasionally having to take a trip to the emergency room.<br />
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One of my favorite pics is of me at approximately two years old, wrapped up in a snowsuit, bundled in several blankets, and being pulled on a sled by my father. I remember that day and how cold it was -- and how hard it was to move even my little finger! My rosey and cold cheeks took at least an hour to thaw out. Many more times in my life, my cheeks were just as frozen and chapped at the end of a day in Glendale Park.<br />
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The Park isn't the same anymore. Our sledding hill is now occupied with the new high school. All glass and chrome, it's pretty to look at, but I must admit I still love the brick building on Broadway where we crammed into small classrooms and complained about the cafeteria food. And I hate that the new building takes up the space where we spent so many happy days sledding, playing tennis, and getting to know ourselves under the trees.<br />
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P.S. Thanks to John Cooney (Class of '71) and my sister, Candy Cioffi, for the pics they provided me for this post.<br />
</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00542403019975718275noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3439654505167690465.post-48695140408144657942012-02-08T05:09:00.000-08:002012-02-08T05:09:25.710-08:00Grampie<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
My grandfather (my father's father) was one of those men women gravitated to. A dangerous man, handsome in a sensual way even late into his sixties. His shock of pure-white hair was thick and shining, styled in much the same way as Elvis's but long before the rocker was born. It is that hair and his dark, knowing eyes that I remember most and that pierce anyone who sees a photo of him.<br />
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But the Grampie I remember is the one who came home from work in mid-afternoon, showered and changed into a white t-shirt and work pants, and immediately took a nap on the flat, brown, nubby couch my grandmother kept tucked in a corner of their living room. It was such a ritual that everyone knew not to disturb him as he lay there, white-socked feet crossed neatly, arms wrapped around him like a blanket. <br />
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When he was awake, he was my partner in crime. We'd sit at the kitchen table eating breakfast when I stayed over during the summer, and he'd teach me how to create his favorites: peanut butter, banana and bacon sandwiches; graham cracker and milk "soup"; soft-boiled eggs, butter and mayonnaise. Now that I write this down, it's no wonder that everyone in my family has died of heart attacks. We had the worst diet! But it was delicious, because I was eating it with Grampie.<br />
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Grampie and my dad took turns teaching me how to swim when we visited my aunt's summer camp in New Hampshire. Grampie, tanned and muscular in his swimsuit, would put his hand on my stomach, then show me how to cup my fingers and bend my elbows to do the Australian crawl, and when I least expected it, he would take his hand away and say, "See, you're floating, now just keep on going. That's it. Just keep moving your feet. Dig your hands through the water."<br />
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During the week, Grampie worked for the City, repairing their vehicles and managing road crews. At one point, he ran for mayor of the city, but something happened -- I'm not quite sure what -- and he decided he really didn't want to be a politician. But politician or not, it was clear to me that everyone knew him. He'd ride in one of the convertibles for our 4th of July parades, and I'd point him out to all my friends as we sat on the sidelines watching the marching bands and the troops of Army men filing by. My Grampie would wave and laugh, as my father would in later years, and point at me as if I were someone special.<br />
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<img height="200" id="il_fi" src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/46/Doughboy_World_War_I_drawing.png" style="padding-bottom: 8px; padding-right: 8px; padding-top: 8px;" width="70" />When I stayed at my grandparents' apartment on Baker Road during the summers, I'd roam through their five rooms, touching the momentoes from his years in the service, his medals, the photos of the two of them, their children and all of us grandchildren. My favorite photo was the one of him in his dough boy uniform from World War I. The sepia photo depicted him in the flat, wide-brimmed brown wool hat, his face at an angle to the camera, those hooded eyes of his challenging the photographer . . . and beyond, as if he knew all the women who would be affected by the photo. He wears the high collared jacket and though we can't see him, I'm sure he has jodphurs on, as well. If he had a moustache, he could be Clark Gable, that movie-star handsome -- and confident.<br />
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By the time I was in grammar school, Grampie was in his late sixties, and though none of us knew it until it was too late, he had lung cancer from smoking close to two packs of cigarettes a day. No one realized how dangerous smoking was back then, or I'm sure Nana would have asked him to quit. And every one of the guys in our family smoked. It was part of being a man, part of growing up, and it was something even I would adopt before I hit my teens. It was "cool."<br />
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Grampie died when he was 71 of complications due to lung cancer and heart problems. I remember my father going back and forth to the hospital at the end and how hushed the house was when he came home with the news of his father's death. Somehow, my father realized that my Grampie's death was the first I'd experienced, and I'm sure my parents talked about how to deal with it. At 11, I knew what death was and knew that I would not see Grampie again, but I had no idea how to say goodbye. Thankfully, Dad did.<br />
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He brought me to the funeral home where Grampie was prepared for viewing. My Uncle Bill owned the home and greeted us at the front door, a little more somber than his usual boisterous self. He hugged me, called me "Little Dawn," as everyone in my family did (my father was "Big Don"), then took us into the hallway of the home. The cut-velvet wallpaper on the walls reminded me of the wallpaper in our own living room, except this wallpaper was darker and more elaborate. The carpeted hallway led to a room lined with velvet curtains so that sounds became whispers. And there, in an elaborate, mahogany coffin, lay my grandfather, his white hair perfectly groomed, wearing a suit and tie, looking distinguished, handsome and almost like he would turn his head at any moment and say, "What do you say, little girl? Want a peanut butter and banana sandwich with your Grampie?"<br />
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We were the only ones in the room, my father and I. He whispered to me that I could kneel on the red velvet bench in front of the coffin and say a little prayer. I was terrified. What if Grampie didn't like my prayer? But I did, staring at my grandfather the whole time. Dad let me stay there for a moment, and I was sure he stood behind me, ready to answer whatever questions I had. But I didn't ask any. I got it. This was death. Grampie was gone. He wouldn't be there to hold his hand under me as I swam anymore.<br />
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Dad finally touched my shoulder and led me to the guest book, telling me I could be the first to sign it. So in my awkward grammar school penmanship, I wrote my name and the date. And as I followed my Dad out of the funeral home, I realized he had done this especially for me, and I knew, at that moment, that I had grown up.</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00542403019975718275noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3439654505167690465.post-72653945944840338942012-02-03T18:01:00.000-08:002012-02-03T18:01:15.548-08:00Playing Outside<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span>We played outside every day when we were kids. I think we went out as soon as the sun rose and didn't come in until it set (maybe my mother planned it that way! It seemed she was always cleaning and wanted us out of the way, though I don't know how that was possible since our house wasn't that big. On the other hand, my aunts came over on a regular basis, so I do remember them sitting having tea and chatting it up.) The good thing was that the other kids in the projects were out at the same time, so we always had someone to play with -- even in the wintertime. But summertime was my favorite, so this blog is going to be about all the games we played during those hot days.</span></div>
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<span>We were never at a loss for things to do, and most of them cost little to nothing, like the hand clapping games. Sometimes just learning the clapping sequence took a whole summer, but we all knew at least three or four of the games, and it was our goal to get the person we were playing with to miss a beat. Now that I think of it, those who played instruments in the band probably got good practice with the hand games we took. Each game had a chant to go with it, like "Miss Mary Mac Mac Mac, all dressed in Black Black Black . . . " There were so many, that I can't remember them all. The most important part was that the words went with the clapping sequence. We didn't know it then, but that was early rap (LOL!).</span></div>
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<span>I was always good at Chinese jump-rope. The "jump" rope was actually a huge elastic band that two people could stretch between them. We'd stand with the jump rope around our ankles, stretching it taut between us. Then one of us (or a third person) would take one of our feet and bring the rope over, criss crossing it and jumping over it so that it becomes a geometric shape. To manage the complicated jumps takes coordination and timing, and not everyone got it. There were some girls who were so nimble that they seemed to fly back and forth over the Chinese jump-rope and others who could barely manage a three-step sequence. I had my good days and my bad days, but the hula hoop, now that . . .</span></div>
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<span>My father brought my first hula hoop home when I was 5. I had no idea what it was or what I was supposed to do, and he really didn't either. We stood under the big oak tree where my tree swing was hung, and he leaned against the tree, smoking the Camel always hanging from the corner of his mouth. "You're supposed to swing it around your waist," he said, pointing to the hula hoop. "Okay, Dad, how do I do that?" "Just kind of swing your hips," he said, then he turned and went up the stairs, leaving me to figure it out on my own. And I did. Pretty soon, I could stand there and hula hoop-it for ten or fifteen minutes at a time. Right now, I'd probably be able to swing it three or four times, and that's about it.</span></div>
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<span>One of my favorite things to do on a summer afternoon was to create hopscotch tables with chalk, especially if it was colored chalk. We would designate a "score" for each block and add them up as we hopped. Some blocks we'd hit on one leg, others we'd hit with two feet down. During the summer, you could see a set of hopscotch squares every ten feet or so. We'd draw them all over the playground and use them until it rained, then we'd have to draw them again. Each block would have a number, and you'd have to follow the numbers in order to go through the hopscotch correctly.</span></div>
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<span>At night when it was cooler, the running games would start -- like </span><span>dodge ball. When I think about it now, I realize how cruel that game was. If you had something against someone or didn't like what they did that day, you could take the ball and SLAM it against the person. The point was to circle a group of people around and have one person in the middle who would have to dodge the ball as it was tossed against them. If you got hit with it, you lost; and you knew if you had pissed off someone if they hit you with the ball so hard that you ended up with a huge red circle on your thigh. I can definitely remember going inside at night still aching from that game.</span></div>
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<span>Speaking of group games, the easiest one to play was one whenwe stole our mother's clothesline and used it for a group jump rope. Two people would hold the rope and swing it for three of our people to jump in between. Sometimes this would become a huge cluster-mess, but other times, synchonicity would happen, everyone would jump simultaneously, and it would be like the event was choreographed. Those were the moments when it was exhilirating to be a kid.</span></div>
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<span>After a day of all of this physical "stuff," the one thing I remember about the moments between dinner and bedtime was the nighttime bath (with my mother, your skin was rubbed so raw, it became bright red), then the clean-smelling, soft PJ's . . . ahhhh . . . it's definitely time to slide between the crisp cotton sheets and sleep!</span></div>
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</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00542403019975718275noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3439654505167690465.post-22699188100124263412012-02-01T10:40:00.000-08:002012-02-01T10:40:48.489-08:00The Moving "Carvinal" -- Food Trucks/Rides<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
This one came up out of the blue when I was thinking of something else, but there's definitely a connection with growing up . . . <br />
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<span>As I've said before, I grew up in the projects, and though we were poor, we had a good time. All of us kids made games out of nothing. We didn't need to have fancy toys or expensive bikes to have a good time, but occasionally, we did like being entertained by someone else, and during the summer, that was not a problem. </span></div>
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<span>During the summer, when all the kids were home from school, the moms had us 24/7, and I have to admit there were times when the females screaming at their children reverberated in the neighborhood. Thankfully, we kids were like migrating birds: when a female shriek rose above normal decibels, we all swarmed and flocked to the other end of the neighborhood where it was quieter :-) We all loved our moms, but we had each other as "protectors" when it got to be a bit too much. And our mothers, bless them all, definitely went beserk more than once during a hot Boston summer (pre-air-conditioning, mind you!).</span></div>
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<span>It was on those days that nickels/dimes/quarters were handed out with abandon when the traveling food trucks came into the neighborhood.</span></div>
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<span>The ice cream truck was usually the first one to arrive. It would play an obnoxious musical tune (like Pop Goes The Weasel) -- over and over and over -- as it patrolled the neighborhood, stopping two or three times to sell Popsickles, Fudgesickles and Ice Cream Sandwiches to the kids and their parents. If we were lucky, the moms would relinquish their coins and let us get a treat. I'm sure they were terrifically excited that we quieted down for at least half an hour (until the sugar kicked in :-).</span></div>
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<span>And at night, the Italian guys in the pizza truck came through. They usually arrived on the weekends (it wasn't a nightly thing, probably because the guys knew that we all had certain dinners that fell on particular nights on the week -- the myth about spaghetti on Wednesdays was actually true in our neighborhood). So, Friday night would be our moms' night off from cooking for the family. That didn't happen often with my mother. I could count on one hand the amount of times we got pizza from the truck. My mother would say it was because the pizza wasn't that great, but I think it was because we simply didn't have the money.</span></div>
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<span>And then . . . and THEN . . . there were the "other trucks." The ones I loved best!</span></div>
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<span>I remember three ride trucks in particular. One had a mini ferris wheel on it. I think it probably sat 6 kids, tops. The tiny wheel went round and round with a callipe playing the whole time. Again, an obnoxious tune.</span></div>
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<span>Then there was the bumper car truck. Four or five little cars with antenna type wires that attached to the ceiling of the truck. And when kids got into those cars -- BANG! -- you could drive, first of all (how cool was that?) and you could bump into anyone you wanted to -- with no apologies! Yeah! Let me drive!!!</span></div>
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<span id="yui_3_2_0_1_1328111176793741">And the third one was the mini Whip. On the back of a flatbed trailer, a small oval race-car type of track and cars that attached to the center of the circle and whipped in oblong circles so fast that your head would jerk back. (All kids love pain and they love to scream!)</span></div>
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<span id="yui_3_2_0_1_1328111176793743">Those trucks came around half a dozen times during the summer, and if we were really really really lucky, we got to ride them. I often wondered about the kids who lived in other neighborhoods (rather than the projects) and whether they could ride those truck rides more than we did.</span></div>
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<span id="yui_3_2_0_1_1328111176793739">Yes, we might have been poor, but summers were special, and whenever we got one of these special treats, it was memorable.</span></div>
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<span id="yui_3_2_0_1_1328111176793737">I really appreciated those treats -- still do!</span></div>
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</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00542403019975718275noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3439654505167690465.post-36462700811177977652012-01-31T18:12:00.000-08:002012-01-31T18:12:02.538-08:00Disney: Not Just Mickey<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span>It's amazing how much of my life was influenced by Disney. I grew up with the gorgeous cartoons and believed all the stories that he told . . . but I want to see if I can remember enough details to make sense of it all.</span></div>
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<span>The first Disney feature I remember is actually The Mickey Mouse Club. I must have started watching before I started school, because I remember tidbits of the show and where I was sitting. I was in the parlor of our apartment on Broadway, and I think I was three when we moved. I don't remember much, but it's enough for me to know that's when "it" started. By the time we moved to Woodlawn Street (where I had the tire swing in the backyard and met my best friend, Therese), I knew enough about the MM Club to be able to name all the Mouseketeers. Annette was my favorite, and I am sure I wasn't alone. In fact, when I met a girl named Annette in grammar school, I was sure she had to be related to Annette Funicello from the Mouseketeers. She even looked like her, except that her dark hair bounced in sausage curls rather than the short coif Funicello had. I could sing the song (couldn't everybody?) and felt a certain nostalgia everytime they signed off with it because it meant the show was over for the day.</span></div>
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<span>When we moved to Road B, I got my first taste of the nighttime Disney show, Walt Disney Presents, and I was hooked for life.</span></div>
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<span>One of my fondest memories is being awakened by my mother after we had already gone to sleep. She would usher us downstairs, and we'd be treated to Walt Disney's Wonderful World of Color. It aired on Sunday night, so this was a BIG treat for me. My mother believe in early to bed/early to rise, and we kids were always the first ones in the neighborhood to be ushered in, bathed and pajama'd and sent to bed (there were times during the summer that the sun was still high in the sky! I was always jealous of the kids who got to play outside until it got dark). For Ma to wake us up and allow us to watch television made me almost reverent. I remember sitting on the couch, my bathrobe wrapped tightly around my feet (Ma always kept the house ten degrees cooler than it should have been), engrossed in the show and afraid that if I moved or did so much as breathe loudly, this special gift would be taken away and I'd be sent back up to bed.</span></div>
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<span>Donald Duck and Ludwig von Duck were early favorites of mine, but once the show started airing the color cartoons that I loved (like Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella ((Boy, did I want a fairy godmother to turn me into a princess!)) and Snow White), I wanted to make sure I took advantage of every Sunday. I made sure that by Sunday afternoon, I was on my best behavior, and sometimes I got myself so keyed up that I couldn't fall asleep. Of course, those were always the times that my parents decided we needed our rest. Determined to get my "fix," I crawled out of bed and sneaked to the top of the stairs, sitting quietly in the dark, trying to imagine what was on the television by the dialogue and noises that floated up the hallway. </span></div>
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<span>Sometimes I got caught, and if I did, I got a spanking and was put back into my bunkbed, crying. But as soon as my tears dried, I was back by the edge of the stairs, hoping that they'd realize how much we wanted to see the show and reconsider letting us watch.</span></div>
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<span>I was so naiive back then that I thought the cheerful, moustached Walt Disney was related to another Walt -- Mr. Cronkite. After all, they both had moustaches, they kind of looked alike and they both worked in television. They must be brothers, right?</span></div>
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<span>One Christmas, I received an album of Christmas music, and I must have driven my mother nuts playing it over and over again. I memorized all the words to "Someday My Prince will Come" and "When You Wish Upon a Star." One night in early winter, I was crossing the yard to see my new friend Patti, who was visiting her cousin in the apartment diagonally across from us, and it was so quiet and clear that the stars seemed close enough that I could reach out, grab a handful and put them in my pocket. It was one of the only times I remember the projects as being peaceful. I saw a few lights in windows, but all the doors were closed because it was a bit chilly, and I was the only one outside. I felt all alone and free, and hopeless romantic that I was even then, I started dancing around, arms flung, singing "When You Wish Upon a Star." It was probably good that all the doors and windows were closed, because I can't sing, but at that moment, for that split second in my childhood, I was that fairy princess who trilled like a lark in those Disney movies. It was probably one of the most happy times in my childhood, yet it only lasted less than a minute.</span></div>
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<span>And even now, when Fantasia is on TV, I will watch it to see Magical Mickey and that dancing broom, the whales who fly out of the water, the way the spirits swirl to the sound of Night on Bald Mountain. It was another introduction to classical music, and probably the only one most children have, and who better to lead the orchestra than Mickey himself. It's funny, because when I got older and realized that film was created in the 1940s, I was amazed. Disney was a genius.</span></div>
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<span>Disney affected me so much that I ended up in Disney World for my honeymoon. Even then, grown and much wiser, I felt like I'd walked into a fairytale when entering Cinderella's castle. And to see the incredibly ornate and electronic world Disney had created made me appreciate the man much more than I had during those early years when the Mouseketeers and Davy Crockett were the emblems of Disney's forays into television.</span></div>
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<span>I think there are very few true geniuses in the past couple of decades -- in fact, I can probably count them all on one hand -- and probably each of the moviemakers I would add to that list can honestly say that Disney taught them some valuable lessons about imagination and the power of a good story. To this day, I would prefer going to the movies with a child and seeing animated brooms and flying whales than to see a gunfight at the O.K. Corral. </span></div>
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<span id="yui_3_2_0_1_1328060183904265">Thanks, Mom and Dad, for waking us up.</span></div>
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</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00542403019975718275noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3439654505167690465.post-31070656371772010652012-01-30T05:11:00.000-08:002012-01-30T05:11:05.851-08:00Penny Candy<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span>When we lived in the projects, there were no big malls anywhere close by, and the grocery stores weren't the superstores they are now. We bought just what we needed that week, and sometimes supplemented our refrigerator on a daily basis. To get anything for supper quickly, we simply walked to the corner store. To me, that little store on the corner was open for the main purpose of selling us kids penny candy.</span></div>
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<span>Though we were poor, my mother attempted to give us some kind of small allowance every week. Before I reached fifth grade, it was usually between a nickel and a quarter a week. And as soon as that hot little piece of silver landed in my hand, I sprinted to the corner store to fill up a tiny brown paper sack with a variety of penny candies.</span></div>
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<span>I had several favorites, and occasionally, I still find a general store that has the old standards. In fact, this Christmas, I found a small net bag of gold wrapped chocolates in the shape of different coins just like the ones I used to buy back in the early '60s at the little store on the corner of Road B and Ferry Street, across the street from Ski's Homemade Ice Cream.</span></div>
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<span>For a nickel, I could get some strings of red licorice, a few sheets of sugar dots pasted on paper like the roll they put in adding machines, some of the chocolate coins I just mentioned, and a few hot balls that scorched your mouth and left your lips a bright red to rival any of out mothers' lipstick. I'd make that candy last as long as possible because I knew I wouldn't get another nickel anytime soon.</span></div>
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<span>During the summer, that nickel might be spent on a Popsickle or a Fudgesickle that would start melting as soon as we walked down the block back to where we lived. My hand would be covered in grape Popsickle juice, and within a couple of minutes of standing in July's heat, it would be so sticky and smelly that it would take several washings to get it out of my skin. (What did they put in those things anyway? It was like dye!)</span></div>
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<span>My mother also had special favorites from the store. If she had an extra nickel, she would send me down there to get a large sour pickle for her from the big wooden barrel they kept at the end of the deli counter. I'd walk in, letting the wooden screen door slam behind me, and ask whoever was minding the store to give me the biggest pickle from the barrel. They wrapped it in waxed paper, yet the smell still rose from the paper, permeating the air around me like a cloud on my walk home. My mother would eat it with relish (no pun intended), sucking in her cheeks and rolling her eyes with the sourness of it. She loved those stupid pickles. I have no idea how she could have eaten a whole one in one sitting, but she did.</span></div>
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<span>My father, on the other hand, was a sweets man. He would rather take us kids across the street to Ski's for an ice cream on the weekends when he was home from work. He'd always get an ice cream sundae, but my favorite was their chocolate chip and if I could get it in a sugar cone, I thought I'd gone to heaven and was singing with the angels. That place had the absolute best homemade ice cream, and they'd stuff their containers so that there was at least an inch more above the top of the container, then they'd cover it with waxed paper and jam the lid atop that. It was like getting a fourth more than the container would hold. I'm not sure how they made any profit.</span></div>
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<span>When we moved to Walnut Street, there was a corner store diagonally across the street from our house called Foley's. My biggest childhood fantasy came true when I had the chance to work there. Now I was behind the long glass counter where all the candy was sold. I kept those shelves neat with Milky Ways, Almond Bars, red and black licorice, boxes of Double Bubble bubble gum, jawbreakers, and Sugar Daddys. I even got to use the slicing machine when people wanted sandwich meats. The only problem was that there were many afternoons the store was quiet, and once I'd finished my homework, all those shelves of candy wove their hypnotic siren song. I spent almost my whole paycheck on candy, ice cream, and sodas and probably gained about ten pounds.</span></div>
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<span id="yui_3_2_0_1_1327928030080147">By the time I graduated from high school, some of the corner stores in Everett were already closed, but the last time I visited, we actually stopped at one that had been open since I was a kid. Today, it's more of a franchise than a family-owned business, and that makes me sad. We used to know the people behind the counter at those neighborhood stores. Now the small family businesses are gone, replaced by the sterile sameness of a chain store. Those stores will never provide the memory of a slamming screen door, of a child filling a candy bag with all sorts of treasures, or of the refreshing chill of a glass Coca Cola bottle as you popped the top and took your first swig. I never thought I'd become one of those people who think the old days were better than the now, but when it comes to corner stores, I can only say this: I miss them, their intimacy, their smells, and their personalities. Whether it was a corner store near where I grew up in the projects or the one near my cousins' summer home where the floor was covered with sawdust and locals could sit on the porch with their Coke bottles, they were part of the neighborhood and a convenience of friendship more than a money-making proposition. I think we should start a movement to restore small neighborhood businesses!</span></div>
</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00542403019975718275noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3439654505167690465.post-36207239515431316552012-01-29T09:00:00.000-08:002012-01-29T09:00:51.463-08:00The Park Theater<div><span>Every Saturday afternoon from the time I was in third grade, a group of us went to the Saturday matinee at the Park Theater. Considered historic even then, the theater had opened in 1914. My father and mother told me stories about going to see live theater there, and even my grandmother had memories of vaudeville performances on that stage. Her sister-in-law, Gladys, had performed in some vaudeville shows, and I always imagined her as a Gypsy Rose Lee type of character, fish-net stockings, booming Ethel Merman-type voice, and a mind-your-own-business attitude. The theater still had the red velvet drapes and pull cords even after it had stopped hosting live shows and did nothing but movies.</span></div><div><span></span> </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6XjXo0KN9RDE6Hs5DGJL4fm4ND0_lXPnjq6EhwGWDjazdnYWUJEODHYRkhGcScWokhxMed4_mhHEF8sS0rZCo6d-ISJH9UqP6TtEoTMxuEoNduR35cpc3mP9KhT6ZmxljkxB4d4FJ74od/s1600/frcap.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6XjXo0KN9RDE6Hs5DGJL4fm4ND0_lXPnjq6EhwGWDjazdnYWUJEODHYRkhGcScWokhxMed4_mhHEF8sS0rZCo6d-ISJH9UqP6TtEoTMxuEoNduR35cpc3mP9KhT6ZmxljkxB4d4FJ74od/s1600/frcap.jpg" /></a></div><div><span></span> </div><div><span></span> </div><div><span>During my grammar school years, I always got excited about going to the movies, largely because we'd all walk together from the projects to the theater, the farthest we were allowed to go on our own. Parents didn't chauffeur kids around then. We were actually able to do some exploring on our own. The Park was probably a mile from where we lived, and there were times during the winter that, by the time the show got out, it was dark on the way home. </span></div><div><span></span> </div><div><span></span> </div><div><span>Another reason for the excitement was the prizes. During intermission, one of the ushers would come on stage and start pulling numbers from a spinning cage where all the movie ticket stubs had been stored. Your number was on your ticket -- and some were lucky enough to have a red stamped star on the back, which meant you were an instant winner. They'd spread the prizes out on stage, so we'd all ooh and aah over them. The prizes always included a bike -- I wanted the pink one with the long streamers floating from the handlebars -- dolls, stuffed animals, bats and balls, books, and basketballs. In the winter, they often added a sled or one of those "new" round silver disks that you could skim along the snow. Three or four lucky kids would win something each week. I was never one of them.</span></div><div><span></span> </div><div><span></span> </div><div><span>The show would start with a few cartoons, probably designed to get us to settle down before the matinee began. And the regular movie always had time for an intermission (just like the ones they showed at the drive-in theater that we went to with our parents on summer nights). I loved the animal movies, but the films I remember more than any others were the "different ones."</span></div><div><span></span> </div><div> </div><div><span>In 1960, I saw my first horror movie there. It was also the first 3-D movie I'd ever seen. And it scared the beejesus out of me. It was called "The Thirteen Ghosts" and starred a bunch of people who never made anything else. I can't remember the plot, but I do remember that every time one of the ghosts came out, you could see them with your 3-D glasses, but if you took them off, there was nothing there. That seemed magical to me, and most of the time the ghosts came on screen, I pulled my glasses off because it felt safer.</span></div><div><span></span> </div><div><span></span> </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgcjmbJgnJb73oZCFQO96qVCi3AOlLYAhqn4K00uCmflDvFKCvo6Ffqe0kAbptokHLCa-kIZ_uZ7d9v_hoA-r5IJAVMPXFLaTnJwOfXoC7KZ9kw6eIWJaQ7fdBV9NToV-PGDn0BASbNZ0sM/s1600/183527.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgcjmbJgnJb73oZCFQO96qVCi3AOlLYAhqn4K00uCmflDvFKCvo6Ffqe0kAbptokHLCa-kIZ_uZ7d9v_hoA-r5IJAVMPXFLaTnJwOfXoC7KZ9kw6eIWJaQ7fdBV9NToV-PGDn0BASbNZ0sM/s1600/183527.jpg" /></a></div><div> </div><div> </div><div><span>And then there were the Elvis Presley movies. It almost feels now like we saw one every other weekend during the 1960s, but that was impossible, especially since Elvis only made 2 or 3 movies a year. Still, I can see scenes from "Blue Hawaii," "Kissin' Cousins," "Viva Las Vegas," and many others in my mind, and I saw each of them at the Park Theater.</span></div><div><span></span> </div><div><span></span> </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXWuvpfjhG1m1oj1hm9mUXExOhjs43YbvoX_R737dlwpv9bXReZqKRu9rgCLVFF0x9bPAeYVQd4GV0aWX8hlBL58RrxedUfFkjshC3lKgdH3dT8krHrsH96R8q70PG7M8IXndO2vU4_4Yj/s1600/MV5BMTU0NDU0Nzk3N15BMl5BanBnXkFtZTYwNTkwNzI2__V1__SX296_SY442_.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXWuvpfjhG1m1oj1hm9mUXExOhjs43YbvoX_R737dlwpv9bXReZqKRu9rgCLVFF0x9bPAeYVQd4GV0aWX8hlBL58RrxedUfFkjshC3lKgdH3dT8krHrsH96R8q70PG7M8IXndO2vU4_4Yj/s320/MV5BMTU0NDU0Nzk3N15BMl5BanBnXkFtZTYwNTkwNzI2__V1__SX296_SY442_.jpg" width="214" /></a></div><div><span></span> </div><div><span></span> </div><div><span>As I got older, I still went there on the weekends, and it became common to go there with my high school dates (mostly because we could sit in the back rows and make out). It was almost a rite of passage to be seen there on the weekends, and if I were with a girlfriend rather than a guy, we spent most of the movie craning our necks around to see who was in the back row making out with their date of the week. That ended up being gossip for the school cafeteria during the rest of the week.</span></div><div><span></span> </div><div> </div><div id="yui_3_2_0_1_1327848424216403"><span id="yui_3_2_0_1_1327848424216402">The Park Theater ended up being demolished in the 1980s, and there's a high-rise apartment building there now. It's kind of sad that a place with so much history has disappeared, but I know there are many of us who treasure the memories still in that moving picture that plays in our brains.</span></div><div><span></span> </div><div><span></span> </div><div><span></span> </div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00542403019975718275noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3439654505167690465.post-34608987872971698462012-01-28T13:57:00.000-08:002012-01-28T13:57:10.903-08:00The Barbie and Ken Years<div><span>Okay, so if my earliest years and earliest images of relationships were built by the connections I had with my parents and by watching them together, the more formative years were built by the images on TV and the stories I read -- and the dolls I played with . . . how sad.</span></div><div><span></span> </div><div><span></span> </div><div><span>Those TV families I mentioned earlier built the impression that we would all be wonderfully happy if the moms would stay home wearing shirtwaist dresses and crisply-starched aprons, their hair permanently in place (thanks to hairspray that we didn't know damaged the ozone layer), the breasts abnormally pointy (thanks to killer bras) and their feet jammed into high heels that definitely weren't meant to be worn while making dinner for a family of five. </span></div><div><span></span> </div><div><span></span> </div><div><span>The stories we read during the 1950s and 60s were just as damaging, even though they were delivered under the guise of being fairy tales. Let's face it, Cinderella was a housewife, even though she never had an electric stove. She cleaned as many kitchens, swept as many floors, and did as many chores as those women we watched on TV (probably more). The only difference was that she was doing all those chores for women (her stepmother and stepsisters), while the TV housewives did their chores for husbands and children. Why was Cinderella's fate so drastically different? We all felt bad for her, but we didn't feel any compassion whatsoever for women (like my mother) who stayed home for their families day after day. And look at who Cinderella got -- the perfect male. Good looking, rich, in a position of prominence in the town, and, of course, devastatingly, hopelessly in love with her. Our mothers might have gotten decent men, but Prince Charming they were not!</span></div><div><span></span> </div><div><span></span> </div><div><span>Here's another fairytale maiden: Snow White -- rescued from death by a man's kiss. Another devastatingly beautiful, fine specimen of a man, who was going to rescue her from the most dysfunctional family ever: an evil stepmother that wanted to cut her heart out and seven of the weirdest little dudes in the history of fiction.</span></div><div><span></span> </div><div><span></span> </div><div><span>Then we have Sleeping Beauty. The poor girl just wants to close her eyes and forget it all, but again, the guy (yet another prince -- how many of them were there in the olden days anyway?) finds her in that dusty, cobwebbed castle, and kisses her, waking her up and sweeping her away from that horrible lifestyle. (Men must love taking advantage of the women who are simply out of it.) And, again, another devastatingly handsome, wealthy, privileged guy carrying her away from her troubles.</span></div><div><span></span> </div><div><span></span> </div><div><span>All of these fairytale princesses were both beautiful and sweet and exceedingly happy to have their Prince Charmings, a pretty solid basis for failure for any of us 'normal' women growing up in the innocent Fifties.</span></div><div><span></span> </div><div><span></span> </div><div><span>Why should it surprise me that we fell into the Barbie trap so completely?</span></div><div><span></span> </div><div><span></span> </div><div><span>Here comes the doll that all the little girls (who won't sprout breasts for at least another five years) beg for from their parents. An impossible figure: that waist was so tiny, she couldn't have hidden an extra spoonful of anything fattening, never mind breathe properly. Boobs so large for her figure that, in real life, she would have been stooped over with the additional weight. And those first Barbies didn't even have real hair! Their molded upswept hair defied the worst tornadoes. And those molded, made-up cat's eyes. Do you think Elizabeth Taylor modelled for them?</span></div><div><span></span> </div><div><span></span> </div><div><span>I was probably 7 years old when my parents bought my first Barbie doll -- and it wasn't even the real deal. No Mattel Barbie for me. I got an imitation of the original, and like any other kid influenced by commercials for the real deal, I was upset with my parents that they had given me a simple fake. Gotta give it to them -- this one really looked like an original. She had the same painted on cat's-eyes, the same molded hairstyle, the same impossibly out-of-proportion figure. But the fake had knife-sharp seams in her plastic legs and along her arms, as if she just came out of the mold, and she was physically lighter in weight than the real Barbie. Barbie had a rubbery heft to her that made it obvious she wouldn't wear out early. My doll was light and a bit on the brittle side, as if when I worked her legs and arms, they would simply break off if I moved them too quickly.</span></div><div><span></span> </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj7r4uedq28pSDLKMXZxpzbtSTTYPU3JnHUL2SRdINiZB5eZCQQ8t3r9RQIzNzf0J0QasLm6D9edTZDpC5eeUtr_bdrJzbYe0ubXx1Zn3r3CGTFoX1Qb5jEl3feMtZFVNpmKz548xEi6wE5/s1600/barbie2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="259" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj7r4uedq28pSDLKMXZxpzbtSTTYPU3JnHUL2SRdINiZB5eZCQQ8t3r9RQIzNzf0J0QasLm6D9edTZDpC5eeUtr_bdrJzbYe0ubXx1Zn3r3CGTFoX1Qb5jEl3feMtZFVNpmKz548xEi6wE5/s320/barbie2.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div><span></span> </div><div><span></span> </div><div><span>And she did break. By the end of the first week, the Fake Barbie's head loosened and popped off. My grandmother was mortified when I continued to play with the doll without a head. It was almost like the doll was human and my grandmother wanted to turn me in for beheading the poor thing. She did everything she could to fix my doll, including asking Grampie for help, but there was no way the head was going to stay on the doll. So, I played with this big-boobed, tight-waisted doll that had three changes of clothes and tiny mule shoes that attached to her feet with a tiny plug.</span></div><div><span></span> </div><div><span></span> </div><div><span>By that time, my Fake Barbie and I had connected. I wanted to keep her. She had clothes I could change her into, legs and arms that still worked. Besides, I had no replacement. </span></div><div><span></span> </div><div><span></span> </div><div><span>But within a week, Nana saw to it that I had a replacement (I really think I freaked her out by playing with a headless doll), and along with the Official Barbie, I received a Real Ken. But I kept the Fake Barbie, and when no one was looking, the Real Ken and the <u>Fake</u> Barbie (with or without the head) went on dates. I wanted to prove to myself that even a woman/doll with faults could still get the devastatingly handsome guy, but even I couldn't get that past the Fake Barbie. She knew the Truth. So did the Real Ken.</span></div><div><span></span> </div><div><span></span> </div><div id="yui_3_2_0_1_1327783095700170"><span id="yui_3_2_0_1_1327783095700169">And, I think that after a while, the real me also knew the truth. Some men wanted to be there for me no matter what, while others couldn't have been bothered. One thing's for sure: I knew that the Fake Barbie's head was the most important part of her body because that's where her brain was. And even though she might not have the brain everyone thought she should, she was the person I counted on. Ironically, she ended up being more real -- faults and all.</span></div><div><span></span> </div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00542403019975718275noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3439654505167690465.post-54331531832767130272012-01-27T05:02:00.000-08:002012-01-27T05:02:37.352-08:00TV -- The 'early' years!<div id="yui_3_2_0_1_1327668742641127"><span id="yui_3_2_0_1_1327668742641126">I think everyone who grew up in the 50s/60s fondly remembers the television shows that shaped their lives. I definitely remember the ones that shaped mine, and my very first memory of a TV show is a very young one because my family and I were still living on Broadway, and we moved from there when I was around 4 years old. I distinctly remember the show "<span class="yshortcuts" id="lw_1327668789_0">Rin Tin Tin</span>," and it must have been something I regularly watched because we had a cocker spaniel type of dog at the time that we (I) named "Rinny" (after Rin Tin Tin, who was, ironically, a German Shepherd -- quite the opposite of my dog). I can still feel the nobby fabric of the couch under my legs as we watched the black and white TV and can see the regal profile of Rin Tin Tin as he gazed down at whatever enemy he was fighting that week from his lookout point.</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh3ysJgyVNosfGka5nVlCffN9EEkvmiWgomIXmkyfabc2aU2XSJCiPXu4rpb9XlfFCqaOSl4KuQxXas4OinWWWaZcfKYtDsV1XwuOXhq7aS4tQtUABnst-Yot_HiVAol66H8m1BFoYEwON9/s1600/rin_tin_tin_comic_book.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" gda="true" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh3ysJgyVNosfGka5nVlCffN9EEkvmiWgomIXmkyfabc2aU2XSJCiPXu4rpb9XlfFCqaOSl4KuQxXas4OinWWWaZcfKYtDsV1XwuOXhq7aS4tQtUABnst-Yot_HiVAol66H8m1BFoYEwON9/s320/rin_tin_tin_comic_book.jpg" width="224" /></a></div><div><span></span> </div><div><span></span> </div><div><span>There were lots of animal shows back then that I fell in love with: "Lassie," "My Friend Flicka," and later on, "Flipper" (which made me fall in love with dolphins). Watching the gorgeous collies who played Lassie and seeing the connection Timmy and his favorite dog had made me want one of my own. The closest I ever came was Buffy, a Sheltie with the same coloring as Lassie but nowhere near the size. Unfortunately, her hair was too long for my mother (who had asthma and a lot of allergies) and Buffy was also quite ill with seizures. We had to have her put to sleep before she reached her first birthday. Of course, living in the city made pets like Flicka, a gorgeous black stallion, impossible to consider, and Flipper . . . well, that wasn't even a <u>remote</u> possibility. But I did learn all about pets and the kinds of connections people could have with them, and eventually, I did have several animals that were incredible (but that's another story).</span></div><div><span></span> </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhUDcmJjeIhMcmTX8CQMudeygUR3KKUT7yBMIxcHYYdk7i4Ax9W89gP-W6kaBhitDIDdy7Zrd093T6PyQk0hoDgY5Ppoj0VHo1sRYTcwzYjJ63HAEbhWQxkDMduNAol1WdDBp4K3If8zQjL/s1600/flicka_group325.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" gda="true" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhUDcmJjeIhMcmTX8CQMudeygUR3KKUT7yBMIxcHYYdk7i4Ax9W89gP-W6kaBhitDIDdy7Zrd093T6PyQk0hoDgY5Ppoj0VHo1sRYTcwzYjJ63HAEbhWQxkDMduNAol1WdDBp4K3If8zQjL/s320/flicka_group325.jpg" width="229" /></a></div><div><span></span> </div><div><span></span> </div><div><span>By the time we moved to the house with the swing, "International Showtime" was popular. To me, it was like having a circus in your house once a week. I watched the flying trapeze act with awe. Little did I know it then, but I would develop a fear of heights that made the trapeze act even more awesome to me. I have no idea to this day how someone can take such chances in midair. And the show horses that ran in circles around the ring with gorgeously costumed women atop their muscular backs were one of my favorite parts of the show. Don Ameche played the ringmaster on the show, and he was every inch the consummate showman: handsome with black hair and a well-oiled moustache, a deep voice, and a gorgeous white smile.</span></div><div><span></span> </div><div> </div><div id="yui_3_2_0_1_1327668742641141"><span id="yui_3_2_0_1_1327668742641140">Of course, there were also the shows that were either cartoons or with cartoon-type characters. "Bozo," the clown with the white face and huge head of orange hair, invited kids out of the audience every day, and I wanted to be one of them. "Captain Kangaroo" did the same thing, and he was much less scary than Bozo (though I'm sure there were quite a few stories floating around about his irritation with being unable to speak during that show. And "Howdy Doody" who was almost a puppetized version of Bozo, though on the quieter side. "What time is it, kids?" "It's Howdy Doody time" Ta-ra-ra-boom-de-ay!!!</span></div><div><span></span> </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiyq4ss-yVg0bnxYhW3KO40TvDonAasHGeRvlzI8VM_-PQeGKKKSOYc0FAwYPGx-wixDcXKDMl6SuwpruM30ScS4KY6hi9bmQSWNWU3zMyNvHVtxr4ihxcvtr2wgoZLlNmJMkqc1O4-mpVc/s1600/3917.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" gda="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiyq4ss-yVg0bnxYhW3KO40TvDonAasHGeRvlzI8VM_-PQeGKKKSOYc0FAwYPGx-wixDcXKDMl6SuwpruM30ScS4KY6hi9bmQSWNWU3zMyNvHVtxr4ihxcvtr2wgoZLlNmJMkqc1O4-mpVc/s1600/3917.jpg" /></a></div><div><span></span> </div><div><span></span> </div><div id="yui_3_2_0_1_1327668742641139"><span id="yui_3_2_0_1_1327668742641138">Though my mother wouldn't let us sit in front of what she called "the boob tube" all day, the hours that I did spend in front of the television were my favorite time of the day. I felt that Miss Jean of "Romper Room" really did see me in her mirror and that if I had seen the Cleaver, the Anderson or the Nelson families on the street, they would have called out my name to say hello. I wanted to dance with Lawrence Welk and to meet Topo Gigio when he came on the Ed Sullivan Show. Every show pulled on a different imaginary thread, and they were all connected to the little world that invented itself on a weekly basis inside the little box we called a TV.</span></div><div><span></span> </div><div id="yui_3_2_0_1_1327668742641137"><span id="yui_3_2_0_1_1327668742641136">It's funny. We had only three television stations, but we found plenty to watch. Now I have more than a hundred, and I'm not sure any of the programs are going to be as memorable as "Father Knows Best" or "I Love Lucy."</span></div><div><span></span> </div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00542403019975718275noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3439654505167690465.post-39738007503243004502012-01-26T05:09:00.000-08:002012-01-26T05:09:06.011-08:00A Tough One to Write: Epilepsy<div><span>When I was in first grade, I was diagnosed with petit mal epilepsy. I have no real idea what was said to my parents or how they were told to handle it. I only know what it <u>felt</u> like when an episode was about to come on, and I never quite understood what was happening.</span></div><div><span></span> </div><div><span>The first time it happened, we were living on Woodlawn Street, and I was going to school. I was in first grade. Those were the days when kids lived in the same neighborhood where the school was located and no one thought much about a really young child walking to school alone. It was safe. We were even allowed to have adventures on our own. No one worried about kids being abducted or sexually abused, though I'm sure it was going on (ironically, in churches, where we were supposed to be <u>super</u> safe!). </span></div><div><span></span> </div><div><span>As I was walking down the street that morning with my Roy Rogers/Dale Evans lunchbox and my shiny new black patent leather shoes (I always remember my shoes -- guess it's because I was always looking down), I saw what I thought was a monster in the window of the house at the bottom of Garland Street. The face looked like one of those horrendous rubber masks, the kind that fits over your whole head and transforms you into the creature from the black lagoon or an exaaggerated version of a dead president. I'm sure that the image of that monster was just symptomatic of the way the first epileptic episode came on, but throughout the rest of my life, I've had nightmares about that house and that face.</span></div><div><span></span> </div><div><span>The next thing I remember is picking myself up off the sidewalk, feeling really shaky and unsure of where I was. I stood there for a few moments, my lunchbox open on the ground, its ingredients spilled out, the sandwich my mother had made squished under the matching Rogers/Evans thermos. I packed up the box, and not knowing what else to do, continued to school.</span></div><div><span></span> </div><div><span>Now that I think about it as an adult, something must have happened that day at school to make my teacher suspect there was something wrong. She notified my mother of my condition, and after that, there was a series of visits to the doctor, then to the hospital, and that went on for years. Eventually, I ended up at the Children's Hospital in Boston with a specialist. Though my mother told me how famous the doctor was, I had no idea who she was. I'm sure my parents were much more impressed than I was that the woman putting wires into the tablespoon-sized wads of gunk she spread onto my scalp was Tenley Albright, the 1956 Olympic champion figure skater. </span></div><div><span></span> </div><div><span>Dr. Albright and I sat in her office many times throughout the next five or six years. She asked me about my parents, made me draw pictures (and depending on how I felt that day, sometimes they were happy scenes and sometimes they were not), and gave me what felt like hundreds of EEGs. Every time I had one, the gunk they attached the electrodes to was never completely washed out of my hair. It would dry hard as cement and ended up taking chunks of my hair with it when my mother and I tried to pick it off my scalp. I think that's why my hair went from being waist-length to chin-length by the time I was in fourth grade.</span></div><div><span></span> </div><div><span>My mother described my episodes as "trance-like." She said that I would stare straight ahead, unblinking, unseeing, for what seemed like five or ten minutes at a time. I remember those times as being deep in thought, away from whatever was happening in front of me, and focused on something deep inside. Sort of like daydreaming. But there were other times that were more scary -- like the face in the window. </span></div><div><span></span> </div><div><span>When we lived in the projects, my bedroom was on the second floor, and one day I stood at the top of the stairs, ready to walk down, when one of the epileptic spells hit. My mouth went dry, what felt like little electrical shocks ran through my body, then everything went black. I had tumbled all the way down the stairs to the bottom, and when I focused again, all I could hear was my mother's voice. I thought she was angry with me. Her voice, loud and shrill, made me nervous. Scared. I tried to stand up, but my legs wouldn't support me. Every time I opened my eyes, things would go black around the edges again, and my face felt prickly like I'd run into a rose bush.</span></div><div><span></span> </div><div><span>That type of event happened at school several times, and I could always tell when it was going to occur. Then Dr. Albright put me on some kind of medication (I later learned was Phenobarbital) and all I wanted to do was to sleep. The teachers started complaining to my mother that I daydreamed all the time. It became evident that when I started "daydreaming," it was best if I could get up and move around. No one knew that I was smart enough to realize that it meant I could get away with doing things the other kids couldn't. In the fifth grade, I had special "permission" to get up and leave the room whenever I felt like it. I started venturing further and further from the classroom (our room was on the second floor -- the older you got, the higher you actually went in the building). Soon, I found myself in the basement of the building where I often took violin lessons. The basement was our bomb shelter, with a glossy, painted cement floor, and wide open rooms we used as a gym during rainy or snowy days, but during regular times, the place was empty. </span></div><div><span></span> </div><div id="yui_3_2_0_1_1327582613385207"><span id="yui_3_2_0_1_1327582613385206">When I went down there, it was quiet, and my imagination roamed freely. I danced among the stanchion poles that held up the rest of the school, pretending to be Audrey Hepburn or Grace Kelly. I wanted to be a ballerina, wanted to waltz in one of those flowing ball gowns from the movies, and I could when I was down there. No one bothered me. No one even knew I was there.</span></div><div><span></span> </div><div id="yui_3_2_0_1_1327582613385209"><span id="yui_3_2_0_1_1327582613385208">But soon Mr. Sansone, my teacher, figured out that I was gone for longer and longer periods of time, and he must have said something to my mother because my permission to leave the classroom was curtailed. About that time, the episodes of epilepsy were also waning. Surprisingly, I grew out of the "disease" about the same time I "became a woman," and by the time I left the projects, I hadn't had an episode in quite a while. I couldn't have been happier not to have the horrible EEG tests anymore, but when I became old enough to take my driver's license test, the disease reared its head again, and I had to go back to the doctor's to get ok'd to drive.</span></div><div><span></span> </div><div id="yui_3_2_0_1_1327582613385205"><span id="yui_3_2_0_1_1327582613385204">Many years later, I heard Caesar was an epileptic, as was Napolean. Somehow, that made it cool. But my younger cousin, Ernie, was also epileptic, and his grande mal seizures were much more scary than my petit mal ones. The disease was no joke, I realized. Nothing about it was cool.</span></div><div></div><div> </div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00542403019975718275noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3439654505167690465.post-24784782714044124442012-01-25T10:14:00.000-08:002012-01-25T10:14:45.048-08:00Here's Where My Love of Reading Came From . . .<div>Once I learned how to read from those gigantic Dick and Jane books, there was no stopping me. I began thinking of books as little treasures -- and I'm sure I had an odd expression on my face as I flipped the pages of those early books, practically fondling them like some kind of pervert. I was hooked.<br />
<br />
</div><div></div><div>The first book I remember receiving as a gift was a Christmas present from my parents: a large, thick treasury of Shirley Temple stories. I read "Heidi" over and over again until I could practically recite it by heart, then "The Little Colonel," "Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm," and if I'm not mistaken, there was one more. I can't think of it right now, but I knew them all. That book stayed with me for many years until one of our dogs chewed the corner off. Even then, I still zealously guarded it, but my mother (in her own zeal -- cleaning!) commandeered it and threw it away. I was heartbroken.<br />
<br />
</div><div></div><div>That early gift made me realize there were lots of stories that I had yet to read, and when my mother took me to the little library on Union Street (hardly more than a storefront), I had found Nirvana. I roamed the stacks, immersed in the infinite number of books available to me -- and the variety! I could read about Annie Oakley or Abraham Lincoln, I could learn about Japan or the deepest parts of Africa. I could go on sleuthing explorations with Nancy Drew or enjoy the family stories of The Bobbsey Twins. I rampaged that place! The maximum number of books you could take out on that cardboard library card the librarian stamped with the date (one stamp for every book) was ten, so that's how many I took out -- every seven days. And, yes, I read every single one of them (some of them twice!).<br />
<br />
</div><div></div><div>I carried those ten books all the way home from the library, stopping at my grandmother's on the way in the hopes that my grandfather would be home to share some graham crackers and milk with me. We'd sit at the pine table in their kitchen, silently (my grandfather didn't talk much), smashing the graham crackers in the bowl of milk and slurping them until the last crumbs were left at the bottom. My grandfather had dark Clark-Gable-eyes and a pompadour of pure white, soft hair. He was gruffly handsome, and one of my favorite photos of him is the doughboy shot of him in full uniform from World War I. But when we sat at the kitchen table together, he was always wearing a white t-shirt, khakis and his brown leather slippers.</div><div><br />
</div><div>My grandmother had a birdhouse outside the kitchen window and while we were eating our graham cracker mush, my grandmother (Nana, I called her) would name the birds for me: "That bright blue one is a blue jay. See how pretty that one is? That's the male. That smaller, plainer one over there? She's the mama. She needs to be plainer so that she doesn't attract attention." By the time I was 8, I knew all of the city birds that visited my grandmother's house, what they ate, and what their eggs looked like.</div><div><br />
</div><div>That's one lesson my Nana never learned: how to be plain. Instead, she was always taking instruction from the flowers she grew along the driveway coming into the house--gladiolii, tulips, jonquils, lilacs, roses. I have pictures of her in a three-quarter length sleeve white coat with huge round buttons. She wears elbow length black kid gloves and a matching hat. She stands like a model, one foot in front of the other. I thought she was elegant, slim, classic. (She was responsible for my love of gardening. I think she would have been thrilled if she had seen my climbing roses at my last house.)</div><div><br />
</div><div>I loved the library, but I also loved visiting my Nana's house on the way home.</div><div><br />
</div><div>My best friend, Therese, loved to read, too. In fact, we still talk about books to this day, and one of my alltime favorite photographs is of the two of us -- lying on the front stoop of her house (not a porch, just a cement, two-step stoop with an iron railing) on a hot July day. Both of us on our backs, books raised in front of our faces. You can only see our legs, bent at the knobby knees, our Keds flat against the cement stoop. We both are wearing cotton shorts and sleeveless tops because it's the middle of the summer, and I can bet you my last dime, that as soon as one of us finished what we were reading, we silently passed it to the other and we'd start at the beginning. </div><div><br />
</div><div>My "rite of passage" occurred when I graduated from that little library on Union Street to the big library on Broadway -- the Shute Library, an impressive brick building with a tower in the middle that was the entrance to the upper level. You had to walk up around two flights of stairs to get into the adult section. The kids library was in the basement and the entrance was around the side. I can still remember the first day I entered the adult part of the library and was told "shush." I walked through the stacks as reverently as I had walked through the vestry of our church. I was afraid to touch anything.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.cardcow.com/images/set409/thumbs/card00715_fr.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" gda="true" src="http://www.cardcow.com/images/set409/thumbs/card00715_fr.jpg" /></a></div></div><div></div><div>The first "adult" book I read was KON TIKI by Thor Heyerdahl. It was a story about his journey around the world on a raft, complete with disasters, battles with sharks, horrible storms and near-death experiences -- as well as visits to completely exotic lands I had never heard of before. I promised myself when I brought that book back to the library that someday I would have my own traveling adventures -- though I wasn't sure I wanted to have them on a raft.</div><div><br />
</div><div id="yui_3_2_0_1_1327512005787236"><span id="yui_3_2_0_1_1327512005787235">Years later, I found a copy of that book at a yard sale and couldn't resist. It was nowhere near as large as I remembered it, but the magical voyage was still as vivid. It is still on my bookshelf, and if I have to sell every book in my collection, that will be the one that will go to my grave. That and my white Bible that my mother gave me on my 13th birthday. But that's another story.</span></div><div></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00542403019975718275noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3439654505167690465.post-18746419172012598062012-01-24T05:03:00.000-08:002012-01-24T05:03:45.718-08:00Introducing -- ta da! -- My Family<div><span>I realize I've been writing about my family, but you haven't had a proper introduction, so this installment will be about them.</span></div><div><span></span> </div><div><span>My mom and dad were together from their twenties until the time they died, almost fifty years later, and although they occasionally complained about each other, there is absolutely no doubt in my mind that they loved each other from the day they were married until the day my mother passed (my father died less than two years later).</span></div><div><span></span> </div><div><span>My mother, Elaine (Bessie) Gordon, graduated from high school, then went to work for an insurance company as a secretary. She quit as soon as my mom and dad married and never worked again, but she wasn't a stupid woman. In fact, she always reminded me that her dream of being a journalist was one she never gave up on, and I like to think she lived her dream through me. Her high school picture shows a truly sweet woman with reddish blond soft curls, and even when she was in her late sixties/early seventies, she never did look her age. She couldn't drive, didn't swim, and really didn't cook well, but she sang beautiful lullabies, was the best tutor I've ever had, and made certain that each of her kids pushed the envelope in whichever way possible. And she loved her grandchildren with that passionate "they can do no wrong feeling" that only grandmas possess.</span></div><div><span></span> </div><div><span>Dad never graduated from high school. Instead, he walked out of the building shortly before graduation with four of his good friends to join the thousands of other young American men who wanted to be battle the evils of the world during World War II. He joined the Navy and became a gunner. I always have an image of him high above the battle, looking out through one of those clear domes atop a fighter plane. I'm sure it wasn't that romantic, but his stories made me see it that way. He came home, safe and sound -- though there was a report sent home about his death that sent his family into a tailspin, but it was another family's son that had been killed in action. </span></div><div><span></span> </div><div><span>A few years after his return, my dad decided to enlist again. This time, he went into the Army and ended up in Korea. He was an MP, but he also saw action and told me at the dinner table when I was in high school about his best friend blowing up in front of him. We didn't know the name for it then, but my father ended up in the hospital when I was in high school (during those years when the Vietnam war ended up on the news reports on our television sets) with what we now know is post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). My mother shared that he often woke her up in the middle of the night, thinking she was the enemy, and that there were a couple of times when she was afraid he'd hurt her. He never did.</span></div><div><span></span> </div><div><span>Many years later, Everett High School had a special event over Memorial Day for vets who hadn't finished their high school years. My dad was given his high school diploma and when they introduced him, they listed all the medals and honors he had won during his years in the service, none of which he'd shared with us. My father was a hero, but it took someone else telling us about it for us to realize what a brave man he'd been. I can still see him accepting the accolades, chuckling as if embarrassed by the attention. (He was always chuckling. I didn't realize until he was gone what an affable man he was and how easy he was to get along with -- probably because we always teased him and called him "Oscar the Grouch.")<var id="yiv1106766400yui-ie-cursor"></var></span></div><div><span></span> </div><div><span>Mom had six siblings; she was the youngest. They were a blend of three families: my grandmother's (to another husband), my grandfather's (to another wife. Both of them were widowed), and from their marriage together. They had two sets of twins; one set passed away before their first birthday, and the other set (my Uncle Bud and Aunt Sis) were siblings, but I never would have known they were twins if I hadn't been part of the family. They didn't look alike and really didn't act alike either. Each of my mother's siblings had at least three kids, which made for quite a large extended family. It always amazes me that I remember giving presents to EVERYONE when we were little. I have no idea how we afforded it, especially since we grew up poor. </span></div><div><span></span> </div><div><span>Mom's parents came to the United States from Canada. Her father's family originally emigrated from England to Newfoundland, then he came to Boston from there. He owned a small grocery store in my home town of Everett and added up the cost of whatever his customers bought with a sharp pencil on the brown paper bags he used to bag their groceries, tallying the totals as quickly as today's computers. At night, he and his friends filled the living room with political arguments and academic discussions that kept the family up until the sun rose over the horizon. The one photo I have seen of him shows him in his Mason uniform, stiff and stern as he posed for that formal picture.</span></div><div><span></span> </div><div><span>Grammie looked like the typical loving grandmother: thick-legged, bespectacled, dressed in a dark dress with low-heeled and laced black shoes. Everyone who knew her called her a saint, swearing that she was the sweetest person they had ever known. In all the pictures of my family, she is smiling or laughing, and one of my favorites shows her holding me as a baby, a loving expression on her wide face.</span></div><div><span> </span></div><div><span>Uncle Bud was low key and mild-mannered. He always called me "Donna," though we reminded him over and over again that my name was Dawn. He loved teasing people and always did so with a side smile that gave away his pleasure. My Aunt Sis was my godmother. She married a tall, lanky Swede with a prominent Adam's apple, and that marriage kind of reminded me that I had Swedish elements on both sides of my family (mother's and father's). I loved my Aunt Sis, her black coffee that she set out for all of us (even us little kids) in china cups and saucers so delicate you could almost see through them, the pies and cakes she made, the quiet and assured way she would sit and watch the rest of us act like fools. </span></div><div><span></span> </div><div><span>My Aunt Till (Thelma) had 6 kids (each of whom had at least two of their own -- most I babysat). She had the most amazing Christmases, because not only were all her kids around, but she also took in any of the local service people she could find at the local Y or the Salvation Army. She was a small, stocky woman who worked as a waitress and walked everywhere. I don't remember a time when she wasn't laughing, no matter what. When we were little, train tracks wrapped three or four times around the Christmas tree in her house, and there were packages everywhere: for all of her kids, for all of us, for all of the other cousins, for everyone in the neighborhood. I swear she started buying gifts the day after New Year's. She had the biggest heart.</span></div><div><span></span> </div><div><span>My Uncle Jack had his issues (he was an alcoholic) and years later, my cousins (his kids) would share horror stories of what they went through with him, but he was a charmer. My mother used to tell us stories of how Uncle Jack tap-danced on the street corners for pocket change during the Depression. What I remember most about him was when he came to our house for dinner and how much shorter he was than I was. He had a look about him that reminded me of the actors from the 1940s--not the handsome heartbreakers, but the bad guys, the ones who would talk out of the corners of their mouths, wore their fedoras perched on the side of their heads, and threatened everyone with guns. He married my Aunt Edie, who kept the family on track, worked her whole life in the local bank, and dressed impeccably, no hair out of place. Years later, she and I lived near each other in Florida, and I visited her often. She was always amazed that I kept in touch with her since she'd divorced my uncle much earlier, but when you're a kid and you're brought up with sets of aunts and uncles, you always think of them as sets, no matter what happens later down the road.</span></div><div><span></span> </div><div><span>I had another Aunt Edie, too. She was my mother's sister, and she lived in Illinois with her husband, Ray. She had the saddest story of all my aunts and uncles. A beautiful redhead, she had married her handsome Navy man and left her family behind, heading for the corn fields of Illinois and what she hoped was a happy family life. She had three children: Adorable Nancy who loved posing in cowgirl outfits, stocky Billy who was chosen to be on the Olympic wrestling team, and smiling Laura Lee, the baby of the three. Before Nancy had her fifth birthday, she found some medication and took the whole bottle, not realizing that the pills were for adult consumption and would prove fatal for her. Devastating as that was, my aunt continued, her belief in God helping her to keep her little family together. Many years passed, then my cousin Billy, a high schooler, made the family proud by becoming a champion wrestler. When he got word that he had a chance in the Olympics, we all celebrated. Then came the horrible day when my mother got a phone call from my Aunt Edie, and she stood in the dining room on that old black phone, saying, "No. No. That's not possible. No."</span></div><div><span></span> </div><div><span>Billy, at the tender age of 17, had driven his car into a huge oak tree across the street from the family home. The accident resulted in his death.</span></div><div><span></span> </div><div id="yui_3_2_0_1_1327409182958102"><span id="yui_3_2_0_1_1327409182958101">My mother and my Aunt Sis donned their best Easter hats and suits and got on the plane to travel to Palatine, Illinois, to be with their sister for the funeral. My mother told us about the distraught young athletes that carried Billy's casket into the church and about the lines of mourners that waited hours to come in to the funeral home. He was such a big guy that it took many of his fellow athletes to raise him high. And it took everything my mother and my Aunt Sis could do to support their grief-stricken sister. I still don't know how my Aunt Edie managed to lose two children and to still find the strength to smile and to finish raising my cousin Laura Lee.</span></div><div><span></span> </div><div id="yui_3_2_0_1_132740918295897"><span></span> </div><div><span>Just writing about these people makes me realize how much strength it takes simply to <u>live.</u></span></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00542403019975718275noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3439654505167690465.post-25435032719607657352012-01-23T04:58:00.000-08:002012-01-23T04:58:05.665-08:00The Beatles: Music Timeline of My Life<div id="yui_3_2_0_1_1327322641997139"><span id="yui_3_2_0_1_1327322641997138">My mother always had the radio on when we got up to get ready for school in the morning. Most of the time, I ignored it, because I found it irritating. I never liked getting up early and she was always so damn cheerful that it just got under my skin. I know I got her irritated, too, because she had to call me at least 10 times before I finally stumbled downstairs. When we lived in the projects, all three of us kids shared a bedroom and bunkbeds. I went through kindergarten through fifth grade before we moved into my grandmother's house, so out of the three of us, I have the bulk of the school memories from that period of time, and to tell you the truth, I don't even remember whether Candy and Brian got up with me in the morning (though Candy must have). Now that I think back, I realize Ma had a real love for music, though I never quite appreciated it. She had a collection of albums that ranged from classical music to Frank Sinatra to country; in fact, when I moved out of the house, I took her Rhapsody in Blue/Gershwin album with me, and though she must have known I had stolen it, she never said anything.</span></div><div><span></span> </div><div><span></span> </div><div><span>When the Beatles first came out, we were still living in the projects. I had never liked Elvis, so when this new group was compared to him, it wasn't interesting to me at first, but then I heard them one morning on Ma's radio. She teased me a little, told me I should learn how to dance like they did (she always liked it when we kids put on shows and sang and danced for her in the living room -- I'm sure we were horrendous). In spite of myself, I <u>did</u> want to dance to their music. I wanted to do more than dance to it -- I wanted to sing with them, wanted to scream with the girls who went to their concerts, wanted to date Paul. Hell, I wanted to marry him!</span></div><div><span></span> </div><div><span></span> </div><div><span>Through the next ten years, I -- like most other teenage girls around the world -- watched the Beatles change the landscape of music itself. I remember my 7th grade music teacher, a little guy who was a concert musician and pretty talented in his own right, telling us that the Beatles were a "flash in the pan," that they wouldn't even "be remembered much past 1968." I had never been so sure of myself when I argued against him. I found my voice during 7th grade and argued against any authoritarian who would let me (and got into trouble for it).</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiAXb4CY23f-phA0WzhL29dPV1NfVDNx5jBZtYAubaGhv1exmS87SgZqz8o6stQzIQKKDFnQ2q234SB7UCsG9oXGKPYr-ALFZ_R8LTwhWbuc2uivUxjIfDnaj2eyBHooZvxMStqSy3dEa7J/s1600/Beatles.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="202" nfa="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiAXb4CY23f-phA0WzhL29dPV1NfVDNx5jBZtYAubaGhv1exmS87SgZqz8o6stQzIQKKDFnQ2q234SB7UCsG9oXGKPYr-ALFZ_R8LTwhWbuc2uivUxjIfDnaj2eyBHooZvxMStqSy3dEa7J/s320/Beatles.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div><span></span> </div><div><span></span> </div><div><span>"She Loves You" was the theme of my middle school years. We would pretend to hold microphones while we screamed and shook our hair, then fell against each other, laughing. When I went to my first school dance in junior high, one of the songs they played on a regular basis was "Yesterday." It was the slow dance, the one that made everyone look around nervously, wondering whether they would be one of the lucky ones to be paired off with someone else. When I heard that song played tonight, it actually brought tears to my eyes because now it really IS yesterday. </span></div><div><span></span> </div><div><span></span> </div><div><span>When the Beatles were playing with us during their Sgt. Pepper days, I was wearing an Eisenhower jacket (a tan wool jacket with a high collar and brass military buttons), white go-go boots and a Mia Farrow haircut. I had my first boyfriend, and I thought it was cool to say that "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" was my favorite song on the album (though I have to admit that, looking back, it wasn't my favorite album of all the Beatles produced). Little did I know that the song (and many others) referred to more than a brilliant nighttime sky sprinkled with stars :-)</span></div><div><span></span> </div><div><span></span> </div><div><span>I was one of the lucky ones that got to see the Beatles in all their combinations: as a group, Paul with Wings and Linda, Paul with Wings without Linda (loved that concert because I could fantasize about him), Ringo alone (what a horrible concert that was!), George with Ravi Shankhar (George was so hoarse and out of tune that I ended up angry to have spent nearly a hundred bucks on the ticket, but I left the concert with a new love for Indian sitar), and John with Yoko (I would have much preferred him alone; she screamed through the whole concert). What has always amazed me is that they were not only brilliant lyricists but incredible musicians. One of the few groups that could hold it together on their own, as well as together. And not too many people could play their chords on the guitar!</span></div><div><span></span> </div><div><span></span> </div><div><span>By the time they sang together for the last time on "Abbey Road," I had dated several guys who had gone to VietNam. Two of them didn't come home, and I'm not sure about a third. I hated the war, hated what it was doing to people, hated that guys my age were killing others then coming home changed in ways that made them unrecognizable. It was at that point that I found myself at odds with the church because the minister kept blessing troops that were breaking one of the Bible's most basic rules: killing. But, again, that's another story.</span></div><div><span></span> </div><div><span></span> </div><div><span>When the last Beatles album came out, I lived on the 3rd floor of my grandmother's house in my own room overlooking the street. The room had pitched attic walls that I lined with posters of Simon and Garfunkel, Janis Joplin, and yes, the Beatles. If you turned the lights off and adjusted your eyes to the darkness, the posters would glow for a little while. I used to pretend I was stoned and watch the shapes shift and settle into the darkness. Often I sat at a makeshift desk in the corner, looking out the two windows that led onto a small roof (my mother caught me out there one night and was convinced I was going to jump. I had no intention of doing that -- sheesh, she knew I was afraid of heights! -- I just wanted to see the stars). At that rickety desk, I wrote poetry that mimicked what the Beatles were producing. And I thought about the strange world we had been brought into. </span></div><div><span></span> </div><div><span></span><span></span> </div><div id="yui_3_2_0_1_1327322641997151"><span id="yui_3_2_0_1_1327322641997150">My mother still played the radio in the morning when I dragged myself out of bed for those last two years of high school, but she was playing country music now, and I found it repulsive. Songs about sad lovers and dogs that followed trucks didn't move me like "Because the world is round it turns me on . . ." and "Blackbird singing in the dead of night . . . " And when the boyz went their separate ways, I followed along like so many others. Lennon's revolutionary music spurred me to push back against those who wanted me packaged up nice and neat. McCartney's love songs made me believe all would be right in the end. And Harrison's shapeshifting from traditional to oriental sounds helped me appreciate the different ways people can believe in something other than themselves. Ringo just made me laugh.</span></div><div><span></span> </div><div><span></span> </div><div id="yui_3_2_0_1_1327322641997149"><span id="yui_3_2_0_1_1327322641997148">My mother might have taught me to appreciate music, but I think she was a bit dismayed to find that I had carved my own path, with the first bricks laid by four guys from Liverpool.</span></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00542403019975718275noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3439654505167690465.post-30263995331367657082012-01-22T07:16:00.000-08:002012-01-22T07:22:02.868-08:00Millis and The Ol' Folks<div>My father was one of two children (I've already written about my aunt's camp in New Hampshire), but his mother (my grandmother) had several siblings, some of whom I never really met. One was close enough to us that I ended up spending a lot of time with her. She was my Great Aunt Lily. She and Great Uncle Ed had two children: Edward and Arthur. They all lived in a ranch-style house in Millis, west of Newton, in a very rural area. The house was nestled in a forest, yet their next-door neighbor had a large patch of farmland. I didn't know anyone else who had a farm or grew anything, so it wqas fascinating to me to see food come out of the ground. </div><div></div><div></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh3qTWOMEpwtww_TjIEbLayoIiWKyYTCHkncLyDPHi4DvW3vLDtTm1rb_DREveN2Q6qZIRUyQBP4AW8g9hVR4jwCeYna3ia8Got5srjaysxLP0ArYGHNxJxRvzMRC8rse-16EoaKmSn5rbN/s1600/Nesting+dolls.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh3qTWOMEpwtww_TjIEbLayoIiWKyYTCHkncLyDPHi4DvW3vLDtTm1rb_DREveN2Q6qZIRUyQBP4AW8g9hVR4jwCeYna3ia8Got5srjaysxLP0ArYGHNxJxRvzMRC8rse-16EoaKmSn5rbN/s320/Nesting+dolls.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>My first memory of Millis is not my Aunt Lily's house, though. It's of my great-grandparents' farm, and it's really an image more than anything, a sensory memory of smells, sounds and one image: a large Christmas tree decorated with lit candles and surrounded by a series of graduated wooden dolls that fit inside each other, nesting dolls. That image was one I revisited for one of my short stories ("The Nesting Dolls"). <br />
<br />
</div><div>Ma and Pa (my father's grandparents) had come to the United States from Sweden when my grandmother was approximately twelve. They settled on a piece of farm land and raised chickens, cows and horses. My father used to tell me stories about going out there when he was young. He learned how to ride, as well as how to milk cows, kill chickens and grow vegetables. In fact, his skill with horses gave him one of his first jobs as a stable boy in Everett (if you could see Everett now, all brick, steel and tar, it would amaze you to know there were farms in the area right up to World War II). I remember Pa as being quite tall (and scary) and Ma as having a lilting accent. Other than that, there's very little to connect to them since I was so young when they passed away.<br />
<br />
</div><div>But the rest of the group in Millis was a different story. And what a group they were! Every time my family went out there, it was a party, whether it was Christmastime or the middle of the summer. Aunt Lily was what we called a "hot ticket." Roly-poly and always laughing, she took no guff from the guys and brought my grandmother (who tended to be gracious, elegant and a little on the chilly side) out of her shell. Uncle Ed was big, too, with a booming voice. He had some kind of executive position in the local shoe factory. Their boys were as different as my city home and their country one. Eddie, a big football player, was engaged to tiny Jeannine, a girl all the guys constantly teased and fawned over. Arthur, on the other hand, was erudite and suave, and though everyone knew it, no one admitted he was gay until many years later.<br />
<br />
</div><div>In the basement of their house, Uncle Ed had built a wet bar and converted the area to a party room, with red leather banquette seating against the wall and plenty of room for dancing. It was there that Arthur taught me how to do the Cha-Cha (he could have competed on "Dancing with the Stars") and the Stroll. My father smoothly moved over that floor with his champion Jitterbug moves, and I considered myself lucky if he danced with me since most of the women monopolized his time. He was a charmer, Frank-Sinatra-style. There were very few moments in my life that my father wasn't laughing, and he especially loved to dance, so my memory of him is with a full smile, a toothpick stuck in the side of his mouth, his blue eyes sparkling. He wasn't very tall, probably 5'8", but he was the biggest man I knew, especially when he was out there on the dance floor. I loved watching him, but even more, I loved dancing with him.<br />
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</div><div>When I grew a little older, I would go to Millis for a few days every summer, all by myself, and I roamed the sweet pine-smelling forest behind the house and helped the woman next door harvest potatoes, but I didn't get to dance with anyone. I did, however, get to eat my first lobster with Aunt Lily and Arthur, both of them teasing me mercilessly when I cried because the lobster was alive before it went into the boiling water. I didn't like that first lobster, though I love the meat now (and still can't watch them being boiled alive).<br />
<br />
</div><div>I was with Arthur in his red and white Impala convertible the day Marilyn Monroe died. When the news came over the radio, he pulled over to the side of the road, turned up the volume and just listened. His eyes filled with tears and his skin paled, and since I had just seen my first Marilyn movie ("Bus Stop") with Aunt Lily just a little while before that, I felt the sadness, as well. I'm not sure he has ever realized that my fascination with Marilyn started that day and ended up with me writing a book about the millions of collectibles created in her image. He probably would get a kick out of it. I should tell him the next time I send him a Christmas card . . .</div><div></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_1_1327243733180259"></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00542403019975718275noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3439654505167690465.post-527714383763126402012-01-21T09:55:00.000-08:002012-01-21T10:04:19.772-08:00MusicI just picked up a cheap (but good) boombox because I was tired of not being able to play my own CDs or listen to the radio (and yes, I know I can do it on the laptop, but it's not the same), and it got me thinking about how important it has always been to me to have music around . . . and why.<br />
<br />
<div></div><div>The first time I heard classical music, I was in second grade (probably around 1960), but the first time I truly appreciated it was third grade. Our music teacher was Miss Babikian, a tiny woman who wore cat's eye glasses, smiled all the time and had hair that I'm sure was hairsprayed into its <u>truly</u> permanent waves. She was a no-nonsense kind of person and demanded our attention, sometimes even more so than our regular teacher who was in charge of making sure we learned what was valuable (English, History, Math). Miss Babikian convinced me that music was just as valuable -- maybe even more so.<br />
<br />
</div><div></div><div>She taught our classes upstairs in what I could refer to as the "attic" of our grammar school. It was probably used as a rehearsal hall, because it had a stage and an audience full of folding chairs. (We also had a big auditorium downstairs.) I remember being up there one day when she played Peter and the Wolf for us, and she told us the story in between the orchestra's pieces. I visualize it in my head as she talked: the cold, winter white scene, the boy and the hunter, the wolves. Then she started teaching us the different sounds of the instruments: the timpani (love that word), the bassoon, the viola, the flute. And she would play a piece of music, asking us to identify the instruments. I knew the sound of the oboe, and she was amazed. Her reaction still sticks with me to this very day. ("Excellent, Dawn! That's right! I'm amazed you knew that instrument. It's one of the ones no one ever recognizes.") </div><div></div><div></div><div>After that, I would ask my mother to change the radio channel in the morning from her usual country music (don't ask me why she listened to that -- but that's what we ate breakfast to every morning. Maybe that's why I don't like it) to the classical station. Occasionally she would do it, and I would get swept away in this romantic reverie, seeing delicate women dressed in huge, flowing ball gowns, circling a floor in a graceful waltz. It entered my subconscious like no other sound.</div><div> </div><div> </div><div></div><div>When I was 14, my parents gave me a new dress (sleeveless ivory lace with a brown velvet trim -- the prettiest dress I'd ever owned) and took me to dinner at a restaurant on the wharves in Boston. There was a piano player there, and he asked me what I wanted to hear since it was my birthday. I told him the name of the only classical piece I could name: Clare de Lune. It made me feel so grown up to hear that song and to actually recognize/name it (I still love it). My parents had no clue how deep my love for classical music went.</div><div></div><div></div><div></div><div>I'm sure I'm not the only person who ties particular songs to certain moments during my childhood, teenage and adult years, and I'm also sure I'm not alone in needing music to take me away from the day's confusion. Certain songs can make me cry no matter where I am ("Dance with my Father" by Luther Vandross), and others make me feel exceptionally "dangerous" ("Born to be Wild" by Steppenwolf). Others are signatures ("My Girl" by the Temptations was the first song they'd play at high school dances, and it's always been my phone ringtone), while others simply evoke memories ("United we Stand" was our high school song, and all of the Cat Stevens songs remind me of my first years in college and the friends who came to my house at least once a month for a party). I can't listen to Frank Sinatra without fond memories of my mother, and the Big Band music from the Forties makes me want to dance -- my father taught me how to jitterbug to that music, and it always makes me smile. And, of course, there are those songs that remind me of particular romantic moments when the future was something I looked forward to without fear. Those songs make me sad because that future is here and I should have feared it then, but then again, if I had, I wouldn't have had the experiences. I would have had "The Dance," as Dave Koz says.</div><div></div><div></div><div></div><div id="yui_3_2_0_1_1327158648773284"><span id="yui_3_2_0_1_1327158648773283">Yup, I'm listening to Norah Jones now on that "new" $12 CD player, and this little apartment seems so much warmer with the sound of music filling its little rooms . . . I'm less alone.<var id="yiv1005639478yui-ie-cursor"></var></span></div><div></div><div></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00542403019975718275noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3439654505167690465.post-29055164862853432222012-01-19T20:07:00.000-08:002012-01-19T20:07:00.325-08:00The Opposite Sex: the early yearsDuring my early grammar school years at the Hamilton School in Everett, the boys were pretty much just royal PIAs. They would take my waist-length braid and dip it into our paint cups (which didn't make my mother very happy), or they would tease me. But there were a few good ones.<br />
<br />
One of them (I'll call him John to protect the innocent :-)) and I were chosen to be the resident dance-and-song couple, and on special occasions like St. Patrick's Day, we would go from room to room to do a song/dance. As a result, I learned how to do an Irish jig, a wooden shoe dance, and several others. (Don't laugh!) I can still remember the feel of the wooden shoes, and the clomp-swish-clomp as we danced. Years later when clogs were in style, I had a head start on everyone else because I had practiced in those wooden shoes.<br />
<br />
John and I played Hansel and Gretel in the school play in 2nd or 3rd grade, can't remember which, but I do remember being on stage in front of a large audience (as with everything, when you're a kid the rooms, buildings, and audiences are always bigger than when you return to the same place as an adult. Somehow I think those childhood memories get tarnished if we try to relive them as adults).<br />
<br />
As a result of being embarrassed on a regular basis, I think, John and I became really good friends. Yes, he gave me my first kiss, and I think my mother watched us closely throughout my school years, hoping we'd end up together. My parents had a habit of teasing me all the time about who I liked and what it would be like if I married that person (sigh), but we didn't even date. We were friends, period, and he's even on Facebook now. From what I hear, he became a fireman and has several kids and is still as nice a guy now as he was when we were growing up.<br />
<div><span></span> </div><div><span>Then there was another guy, who I'll call Steve (again, to protect the innocent!). We met at the same time--1st or 2nd grade. He had a bit more of the "dark side." His teasing was often mean, but he made it clear from the time we were 7 or 8 that I was his "girlfriend," even though I didn't want to be. </span></div><div><span></span> </div><div><span>The kids teased him about his name, which tended to morph into some pretty vulgar iterations (thanks to kids' humor) and I think that teasing might have sharpened his already dark personality. I started to ignore him, and eventually, he turned his attentions to someone else. Through the years, he became one of those oily, vocational school guys that was always on the periphery of being in trouble. By the time we reached high school, I really wanted nothing to do with him, and after we graduated, I lost track of him. </span></div><div><span></span> </div><div id="yui_3_2_0_1_1327031194096135"><span>Many years later, I was working as a professor of English at a small college in Northern Florida, and a guy came into my office, asking to be registered for one of my classes. He kept smiling at me, which I thought was strange, but I didn't think anything of it. He was pretty strange looking, too, with long gray hair loosely gathered into a ponytail and a rather scruffy beard. He wore a pea green Army jacket, like the ones the guys who had fought in VietNam wore for years after they came home, and his holey jeans looked like they could stand on their own with the dirt caked on them.</span></div><div><span></span> </div><div><span>Finally, he said, "You don't know me, Dawn, do you?" I said, "Should I?" (Figured he must have been in one of my classes previously.) When he replied, "I'm Steve." I almost fell off my chair. </span></div><div><span></span> </div><div><span>I had known him in Massachusetts, so what was he doing in Florida? What were the chances he would enroll in the same college where I was teaching? To say I was shocked is an understatement. We sat in my office and talked for a long time about growing up, what he'd been doing (he'd been a long-timer in the Navy), families, friends, life. By the time a couple of hours had passed, he looked like the Steve I knew in grammar school again, but a lot of time had passed, and I was willing to give him a chance to prove he wasn't the oily, almost illegal guy I knew in high school.</span></div><div><span></span> </div><div><span>He and his stepson ended up in my class, and neither were prepared for how difficult I might be as a teacher. When it was clear I wasn't going to give them special breaks because I'd grown up with Steve, both of them dropped out. I was disappointed that he hadn't hung in there, and I tried to tutor both of them, but it was a no go. He disappeared from campus as quickly as he'd appeared in my life again.</span></div><div><span></span> </div><div><span>I found out from another former classmate a couple of years later that Steve had approached her and asked to borrow some of her clothes -- he had become a cross-dresser! She and I had a good laugh over it, but I've often wondered what happened to him after that . . . pretty sad, I think.</span></div><div><span></span> </div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiX6rrQGaQBP7ftUqYrpBc5nMiJbEdb_fUm7rXBQWeOz_50eEfQ_r207_cJFOIfd4BflYKb3xGabxS81UsOgG28vy9YKTGgBEtaRFYcWVJIaoCDC2Me-8yMFVu-NPtxFIJV-dRdq4nVflLN/s1600/18938_274310585907_515680907_4448220_951394_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiX6rrQGaQBP7ftUqYrpBc5nMiJbEdb_fUm7rXBQWeOz_50eEfQ_r207_cJFOIfd4BflYKb3xGabxS81UsOgG28vy9YKTGgBEtaRFYcWVJIaoCDC2Me-8yMFVu-NPtxFIJV-dRdq4nVflLN/s1600/18938_274310585907_515680907_4448220_951394_n.jpg" /></a><span>Here I am around the time I met the guys -- my hair goes all the way down my back, and yes, I'm missing teeth in the front, and my mother always cut my bangs :-)</span></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00542403019975718275noreply@blogger.com0