Showing posts with label memory. Show all posts
Showing posts with label memory. Show all posts

Tuesday, July 21, 2009

Summer Memories


At bedtime the other night I was telling Joe-Henry about things I did during the summer when I was a kid. Every summer we'd go to my Aunt & Uncle's cabin at Hayden Lake, ID. It was a one room affair, with beds stashed in the corner, a sink for doing dishes, a pot bellied stove for warmth (an electric range for cooking), and an outhouse. No shower, no phone, a teeny black and white tv that got crappy reception, and every few days we'd drive to get drinking water from a freshwater spring. (The running water for dishes was pumped directly from the lake) At night, I'd fall asleep on the couch, listening to the adults playing poker and laughing at the crazy names they came up with for each new hand. During the day, we'd swim in the lake, get out on the dock and warm up, and get back in the water again. All day long. If it was too cool or too early to swim, I'd hike around the property (by myself!), or walk the dirt road to my other Aunt & Uncles' cabin half a mile away. At lunch time we'd come up and eat tuna sandwiches and Ruffles potato chips on the porch (there were two, which could both be used for accommodating extra sleepers) and listen to the radio. I remember this song playing a lot one summer, and every time it gets uncomfortably hot, I play this song and remember a time when the heat didn't make me crabby.

Thursday, July 26, 2007

Time Capsule


The last few days have been spent watching old videos of Joe-Henry as a baby. It's not that I was feeling particularly sentimental and sought it out. I just happened to be unpacking a box from storage, and ran across this one tape that had about three hours of our life from about five years ago. I plopped it in the vcr when he was eating breakfast, and when it was over it was time for lunch. We both were mesmerized.

There was our first apartment! There was our old condo, the first piece of real estate we were ever lucky enough to purchase with the generous aid of my in-laws! There were our friends, and their children as babies, and we all looked so young. I was so patient and focused and loving, so much more even tempered than the drill sergeant I seem to be today. And there was Joe-Henry, all eyes and cheeks and tummy, naming everything in sight, saying "Lalu" and generously giving slobbery kisses to anything that moved.

Watching it has made us both a little more loving with each other now, even as he tests me, even as I skirt the rapids of perimenopause. Oddly enough, it's made us both a bit more present. It's made me more aware than ever that this time is fleeting, and even though six is a far cry from two, it's also a far cry from twenty.

Right now, he's on the couch, freshly awake, wrapped in his train blanket playing "Prince of Persia" on his Dad's old cell phone. "MOM! I got the WHIP! Yay!!!"

Someday, in the not-so-distant future, that memory will make me just as gooey as "Lalu Mommy!"

Monday, January 22, 2007

details, details


I’m thinking that the reason I can’t come up with, um, uh…..oh yeah - words, and the reason I… what was I going to say? Oh, right, the reason I forget things is this:

I know the names of all of these tiny plastic animals that live in our tub.



They are:
front row: Tallhead
second row: Lizardy, Blackeyedfrog, Longlegs
last row: Greenyfish, Amanda, Joseph, Isabella, Bella, Gola, and HeHe (“because he’s a he”)

Why I have this capacity for the names of brightly colored plastic fish, reptiles and amphibians, I don’t know. I guess because it’s important to him, and it’s a way to connect. I guess that’s why.

Still, I wish I could remember a few grown up things too.