Category: memories

emotions, holidays, memories

reflecting

etikser
An old photo, captured in the rain through wet glass.

I am,” I said
To no one there
And no one heard at all
Not even the chair
[Neil Diamond, 1971]

Reminiscing tonight.

These years, Thanksgiving is a big production. I’m thinking back, though, to when I was 25, many years ago, to the year I did Thanksgiving all by myself. I can’t imagine doing this now, but I cooked a frozen turkey TV dinner for myself. Swanson’s or whatever. I was okay with it, but I remember talking to my mom on the phone, as was our ritual for years mid-day on Thanksgiving, and how bad she felt about my being alone.

I was embarrassed to tell her I didn’t mind, that I was planning to enjoy my four-day weekend. I had off from work Thursday and Friday, and of course the rest of the weekend, which was a real treat. It was my first grown-up job, and I hated it. And for four days, there would be no job. No stress. No pressure. No emotional drama about who was there, and how we were getting along. Relationships had ended, as they do sometimes, and all I had to worry about was me. Just to put my frozen dinner in the oven, and to take the aluminum tray out when the timer buzzed. I was okay with being alone. It was just me that November, and I don’t know why, but I was totally cool with being alone. It was me and my apartment. My couch and my TV, and my stereo and albums. And whatever has happened in my life, I have good feelings about that one-bedroom apartment.

I don’t have memories about the Christmas that followed. I probably flew home. But I remember that I got a little three or four-foot artificial tree for myself, for my living room window, and I went to Macy’s, which was Hecht’s back then, and bought some crystal icicle ornaments for the tree. I also bought a gold-colored angel topper that I still have today. The icicle ornaments all fell either that Christmas or the next, and broke, all of them, sadly too fragile for realistic use. My gold angel lost her wings. How or when, I don’t recall. But my angel has survived, minus her wings, and I would indeed feel a sense of great loss if something happened to her. One Christmas I couldn’t find her, and I missed her terribly. I’m sure she represents to me something I can’t explain about myself.

I am … I cried.
I am … said I.

It feels good  to recall these formative times,
That are part of life,
When we’re alone with ourselves,
And we hold together.
We survive.

___________________________

© Etikser. All Rights Reserved.
All photos and images here are my own.
They may not be used elsewhere or reblogged.

connections, memories

summertime

etikser

Tangled memories and twisted connections.

There’s this thing about summer. It lives in our soul. It’s a memory (a feeling?) lingering from years back, an emotional synapse connecting the warm days and nights of the past with the present.

Growing up, many summers ago, I slept with windows open on both sides of the room (before AC, we had cross-ventilation), and a nighttime breeze would blow in from the outside and over the sheets. A cooling, soothing breeze to lull me to sleep. Gentle as an unexpected afternoon nap.

On one of those nights I saw the outline of my leg in the dark under the sheets, and thought it was a snake. A  big snake…as big as my leg. It scared me enough I can still remember it today, and I realized back then, even in that childish moment, how silly it was. How foolish I was.

I got scared outside tonight. Scared of what? I was scared an animal would come at me out of the dark. I was scared I’d lean back too far, looking for stars, I’d lose my balance and fall backward. Pretty foolish stuff.

Summer evenings aren’t all tenderness, nighttime prayers, gentle rains, and comforting breezes. The livin’ ain’t always easy. But it’s all there, isn’t it, not far from the surface of our psyche, the screen doors and street lights, fireflies, distant thunder, and silly childish fears. We muddle our way through life and find it all, unexpectedly at times, still tucked away where we left it, memories and juvenile emotions, and part of  the grown up person we are today. It all lives in our soul.

Summertime by George Gershwin, DuBose Heyword, and Ira Gershwin.
My previous post on Summertime, the song: https://etikser.home.blog/2020/05/28/summertime/

___________________________

© etikser. All Rights Reserved.
All photos and images here are my own.
They may not be used elsewhere or reblogged.

memories

on a warm summer’s evening . . . 6

etikser


My dad joked about his ‘friends’. I knew the friends he had at home, and this had nothing to do with them. Every time he looked at me and smiled about his ‘friends’, my mom rolled her eyes impatiently. I didn’t get it. I had no idea what he was talking about.

I had a tank of frogs then, pet frogs you could say, in the room that served as the guest bedroom. It was probably the only spot I could find to locate the tank. And my parents used to visit regularly, several times a year, and would stay a few days to a week.

I didn’t know this, but apparently, in the middle of the night, the frogs were vocal. Yeah, what you’d imagaine…ribbit, etc. My dad would hear them, and ribbit back. Yes…these were his friends. My dad was amused, my mom not so much. So this was the scene. It was 3 am or so, the room (somewhat familiar and somewhat foreign) pitch dark, and the ribbiting started. My mother wasn’t charmed by the sound. She wasn’t the camping type, and didn’t find the sound of nearby frogs lulled her to sleep. She pictured frogs hopping around the room. That wasn’t bad enough, but then my dad would start ribbiting back to them. So she’d lay in the dark with the sound of frogs nearby, and the imagined visual of frogs hopping around her, and this guy next to her making his own frog sounds.

My dad thought it was funny. I thought it was very funny. My mom did not think it was funny at all. It wasn’t easy, but we found another spot for the frogs.

I can’t honestly say I would appreciate the sound of frogs ribbiting nearby in the middle of the night. The frogs pictured here, fuzzy photos through dewy glass, don’t live in my house, and they don’t ribbit. So it seems, anyhow.

Almost another lifetime…more than 15 years ago. But these are the memories that bring whimsy and a smile to our lives.

_________________________

On a warm summer’s evening … simple words … my favorite kind of words … packed with age-old nuance and memories.
Credit:  The Gambler, performed by Kenny Rogers (1978), written by Don Schlitz.

___________________________

© Etikser. All Rights Reserved.
All photos and images here are my own.
They may not be used elsewhere or reblogged.
Please visit my other blog, Clover & Ivy, https://cloverandivy.wordpress.com.
I post mostly nature photos there.

memories

January

etikser

All the snow has turned to water
Christmas days have come and gone
Broken toys and faded colors
Are all that’s left to linger on
  ~ John Prine, Souvenirs ~

Souvenirs was my introduction to John Prine. I loved the sound, I loved his words. I love the way it transports my soul to a place many years ago, holds me in a place not so distant, and soothes everything about where I am today.

Those first lines of the song sound like the melancholy of January to me, and the images that follow feel like the way we cling to our precious memories and view life through what we remember of the past. Broken hearts and dirty windows, etc.

Just some of my favorite lines. Thank you, John Prine.

___________________

© Etikser. All Rights Reserved.
All photos and images here are my own.
They may not be used elsewhere or reblogged.
Please visit my other blog, Clover & Ivy, https://cloverandivy.wordpress.com.
I post mostly nature photos there.

flashback, life, memories

1963

etikser

I’ve counted several times, and yes, November 1963 was sixty years ago. Those were days when the world experienced sadness in a terrible collective way. It was a time when kids had nuclear drills in school, when people were supposed to have fall-out shelters in their backyards. (We didn’t. We had a cellar with a metal cabinet, where we stored canned vegetables.) It was a year past the Cuban Missile Crisis, when my family huddled around this same TV set and listened to President Kennedy tell us about submarines and nuclear weapons. And we were a few scarce weeks away from hearing “I Want to Hold Your Hand” and discovering The Beatles.

1963.

1963
memories

sound your harks

etikser

I posted this a few years ago…a memory from long ago.

etikser's avataretikser

Every New Years Day, my mom took down the tree. Always, as if it was required. In a few days, though, I knew it would be Christmas again.

When I was little…four, five, six years old…we celebrated a second Christmas after the first one was done. My mother’s side of the family celebrated Christmas on the feast of the Epiphany, January 6, and for a kid, that’s great. We didn’t get presents again, but we knew after we finished the December 25th Christmas, we’d get to go to my grandparents’ house on the 6th and celebrate again…cousins, aunts, uncles…eat, sing, play…food and fun!

Our memories from childhood are pictures, aren’t they?

I see me sitting with my cousins on the stairs off my grandparents’ kitchen. Laughing, making noise, keeping an eye on the grown-ups in the kitchen. I see my grandmother bustling around her big old stove and lots…

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life, memories

1963

etikser


When I was little, we went to 12 o’clock mass on Sundays. That’s what it was called, 12 o’clock mass. Back then Catholics didn’t sing the same songs as Protestants. Some songs were Catholic songs and some were not. My recollection, anyhow. Like the Catholic Lord’s Prayer was different from the Protestant Lord’s Prayer. Although we called it the Our Father. In the confessional box, the last words from the priest were always, “For your penance, say five Our Fathers and three Hail Marys.”

It so happened that while we were getting ready for 12 o’clock mass on Sundays, there was a cartoon show on TV called Davy and Goliath. Davy was a little boy with a dog, Goliath, and the show had a religious theme of some sort. I liked the show but I never got to see the end because we left for church about fifteen minutes before it was over. The intro music for that show was A Mighty Fortress, and since then I’ve always loved that song. I think as a kid I found the words impressive. Mighty and cruel hate and Sabaoth. Abideth and doth. And the melody was sort of compelling. But I knew it wasn’t a song we ever sang in church.

One Sunday in November, Davy and Goliath was pre-empted, or maybe it was interrupted. It was that weekend when almost all the shows were pre-empted. Back then, breaking news was truly breaking news. As it turned out, that week, the previous Friday, my parents had to go to the funeral home because one of my uncles had died. I suppose I was young enough I didn’t have to go with them. When it came time for my parents to return home, some aunts and uncles were with them. I guess to pick up their kids, my cousins, who stayed at our house too that Friday. With the oldest in charge. When the grown-ups walked in the house, in their Sunday best funeral home clothes, all the kids, including me, and the cousins, were jumping up and down on the beds. I don’t know how it started. I guess it just looked like fun. The grown-ups were so angry. I’m not sure this is important, but it is the context for me that following Sunday.

My memory is that we were getting ready to leave for church on Sunday and the TV was still on. I think we all looked at the screen because they were going to show the guy who killed President Kennedy. We were standing in the living room watching and could see a lot of people in camera view, and they brought a man out in handcuffs. I remember thinking something like, “Is that him?” It seemed seconds later, one of the men on the bottom of the screen moved toward the prisoner, poked a gun into the suspect’s waist, and shot him. Right there, on TV while we watched.

Kennedy was just killed a few days earlier. Now, there we are in our living room, the guy who shot Kennedy was already caught, and some other man walks up to him in the middle of the press and the police, and shoots him dead. It seemed nobody even moved to stop the shooter. It was surreal. I’m sure I didn’t know that word back then. But it was the feeling we’d all had that whole creepy weekend. Surely, someone would come on TV and tell us some story other than Kennedy was dead. I think we expected them to say they got it wrong. It was a practice or a drill maybe, or somebody else was killed and they just thought it was Kennedy. Or they thought Kennedy died, but he was really still alive. Well, that didn’t happen. Now it was two days later, and they were saying this guy we just saw on TV got through the crowd and shot the suspect. The suspect who shot the president. Huh??

I was thinking, “Can we all go back to Davy and Goliath and A Mighty Fortress?”

But no, we turned off the TV that Sunday, piled in the car, and went off to 12 o’clock mass.

life, memories, rose

rosy

etikser

This is about Rose. I knew Rose all my life, minus the first five or so years, which I don’t remember very well. Rose, like her husband, was a second generation American. Their parents came from Italy.

She was small, a little over five feet, and pretty. Even when she was old, almost ninety, she was still pretty. Her hair turned from red to white, but her face was pretty and smiling. I see it now. Rose was probably the sweetest, kindest, nicest, most energetic, hard working, generous, human being I’ve known. I’m thinking, I’m thinking. Yeah, she was all those. You can probably think of some other ‘nice’ adjectives, and those would fit too. Her husband called her Rosy.

In the summer Rose and her husband spent a lot of time in the back yard. They sat there in the evenings with a glass of wine. Sometimes they played cards. It wasn’t a big area, a little bit of grass backed up to a tall hill covered with trees. And nestled at the bottom of the hillside a statue of the Blessed Mother. Everything about the space back there felt old country. It made you feel like you have nothing to do in life but sit, laugh, tell a story, and take it all in. There was a square wooden porch/deck attached to the house, and a screen door that took you right into her kitchen. I know, because I’ve been through that door. The last time was after my mother died and Rose called me in to see her new living room furniture. There are parts of us that just don’t grow up, and I thought at the time if I couldn’t still have my mother, I wanted Rose to be my proxy mother.

Rose was in the middle of making anise flavored cookies. She asked me if I was hungry, if she could get me some pasta. I don’t remember what kind, some gnocchi or whatever. She made her own, of course. There was no Mueller’s in that house. And it seemed to me she whipped up home-made pasta as easily as I whip up a sandwich or bowl of cereal. I’m probably exaggerating, but not too much. Picture the wood block countertop covered with flour, some chopping implements, and bowls and cooking ingredients scattered here and there. Old appliances. That was her kitchen.

Oh, and there’s the flowers. Tall bright colored flowers all around the metal fence in her front yard. Hanging baskets on her tiny front porch. Flowers up and down the side of her house. Flowers on the deck, flowers in the backyard. She loved her flowers, and they loved her back. Rose was well into her eighties and she would weed and fuss with her flowers the same way she did when she was thirty.

I thought about Rose yesterday, and this flower’s for Rose.


photograph from may 19, 2020

life, memories

sound your harks [original]

etikser

Every New Years Day, my mom took down the tree. Always, as if it was required. In a few days, though, I knew it would be Christmas again.

When I was little…four, five, six years old…we celebrated a second Christmas after the first one was done. My mother’s side of the family celebrated Christmas on the feast of the Epiphany, January 6, and for a kid, that’s great. We didn’t get presents again, but we knew after we finished the December 25th Christmas, we’d get to go to my grandparents’ house on the 6th and celebrate again…cousins, aunts, uncles…eat, sing, play…food and fun!

Our memories from childhood are pictures, aren’t they?

I see me sitting with my cousins on the stairs off my grandparents’ kitchen. Laughing, making noise, keeping an eye on the grown-ups in the kitchen. I see my grandmother bustling around her big old stove and lots of people scattered around the kitchen table. I see the block of soft yellow butter my grandmother kept in a white metal cabinet…the silly details we hold onto.

Then there’s the boxy living room. Two couches. One against the wall with the TV. A second couch on the opposite wall. And a single small picture hanging over that couch, Jesus knocking on a door.

My five uncles are gathered at the couch by the TV. Four of them sitting, looking up to the uncle who is standing, facing them. He’s directing them, sort of like their choir director. They’re singing Christmas carols, harmonizing, and the rest of us are on the other side of the room, the audience. Now it’s time for Hark the Herald Angels Sing. They need to get in tune because the song starts strong, with a hark. The uncle who’s directing asks them to sound their harks, and they do. Hark…hark…hark…hark. Again, seriously. Hark…hark…hark…hark. That’s when they start giggling. Yes, grown men giggle. So my uncle repeats, a bit sternly, sound your harks! And they go for it, this time with bad, goofy bad, silly harks.

At that point, it all falls apart, and we laugh til our sides hurt.

Enjoy your day. Take a minute to laugh, and giggle, and for sure, sound your harks.