Tag: memories

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/

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© 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.

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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.

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© 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.

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© 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.

gardening

spring, fall, and the process

etikser


Spring planting was something I did for my parents in their latter years, something I enjoyed immensely. They had great soil, great dark soil, and it was a pleasure to garden with such good dirt. As reality goes, weeds grew happily in that soil too, but after weeding, the rest was easy. You could handily hollow out the required small crater and drop a tiny plant into the soft dark soil, press the dirt granules to surround the plant, and that was the extent of the process.

I knew what my mom liked, and I knew what I liked, and there’s this thing about planting. You have to buy plants with something like a vague game plan, but other than that, you dig a hole and insert the plant, and that’s 95% of flower gardening. Dig a hole, insert a plant, cover it over with some dirt, and give it a watering. It’s called the process. The process is initiated. The precious process.

My parents could handle watering once in a while, and I could fertilize when I visited, and that’s all it takes in good dirt. It was a process I loved. I came in May and started the process. When I came back in July, things were well on their way. A little fertilizer, a little water. And my mom had pretty flowers growing at the corner of her yard. She was pleased. It’s called the process.

My dad wasn’t as accepting or agreeable. He still had a few tomato plants growing along the side of their house that came from nothing more than re-seeding. Again…the process. He’d nurtured those plants for years and years, and the plants did their part.

I think of plants in a personal way, and I imagine the plants and seeds respond with something like gratitude. An acknowledgement and appreciation of everyone’s role, and a recognition of the relationship that exists with plants and the earth and humans. My dad didn’t really accept that someone other than him would plant his tomatoes for him. From his chair in the living room, he said something like, if I can’t do this, and if I can’t do that, what’s the point? Nevertheless, we planted the tomatoes, and without much in the way of staking or other attention, they produced more tomatoes than the ones I tend to on a regular basis. Good dirt. And the process. It just works.

The process. Trust the process.

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

reflections

Prince

etikser

It would be remiss to remember his words without remembering his image. Pearl buttons, ruffled collar, and head-to-toe fair weather clouds. An impish grin, big brown eyes, and a medley of style and spirit, working like a magnet to draw you in.

Ready?

One,
Two,
One, two, three, four.
Yeah.
Seems that I was busy doing something close to nothing
But different than the day before.
That’s when I saw her, ooh, I saw her.
She walked in through the out door, out door.
She wore a raspberry beret.
The kind you find at a second hand store.

A video popped up for me the other day. It was an event honoring George Harrison. Prince and Tom Petty were among many musicians performing George’s song, While My Guitar Gently Weeps. What a great performance by Prince.

Prince…Tom Petty…George Harrison…John Prine…John Lennon…Janis Jopin…they weren’t all there, of course, but such great talents gone too soon.

Some of this is a re-post, more or less. You can’t help but remember Prince this time of year. [ Prince, June 7, 1958 – April 21, 2016.]

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Image and lyrics from Raspberry Beret by Prince & The Revolution (1985).

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Italian Class

parola e pensiero

etikser

I can’t imagine anyone not liking my Italian teacher.

I see her at the front of our class. A first floor room with opened, screenless windows. Trees outside, and a warm September breeze moving the air in the room.

She was maybe 23, from northern Italy, and she’d only been in the US two days. You wouldn’t say she was beautiful, but she was everything you see when you think sweet and sexy. Her hair was almost blond, she had soft blue eyes, and she wore glasses that weren’t exactly flattering. I think they had fancy light blue frames. She was built cute as a 23 year old can be built, and she wore dresses. All of us were in sloppy jeans, and there she was in a sleeveless dress, a cottony kind of fabric in an A-line shift that came to the top of her knees. And she didn’t shave her armpits or legs. Yes, she was cute and sexy in some kind of 23 year old, stylish, old world, northern Italy, kind of way.

She hardly spoke any English. She could say, hi, and, thank you, and she joked about us teaching her bad words.

Today. Yes, today. Today, it’s an October evening and I’m looking for my old Italian grammar book, and my mind wanders to an image that’s just easy. For life as it is, for the worries and challenges, there’s a picture from the past that’s just easy.

Those classes were wonderful. They weren’t hard for me. After years of Spanish classes, I did some American blend of Italian/Spanish, and she understood. She smiled, behind those glasses, and it was cool. It’s hard to explain how some people are easy. Easy in a wonderful way. There’s not a person reading this who wouldn’t absolutely love my Italian teacher.

Bob Marley

music and images

etikser


When I hear Bob Marley, I see shades of tangerine and vivid pink. And pictures in tropical greens and blues and yellows. And one of those small half-circle type windows, with sheer white curtains gathered neatly in a fan, to block out the afternoon sun.

Outside on the covered porch, someone waits in the shade of painted wood. A fancy overhang, and thin carved spindles. Tiny glass chimes, multi-colored prisms, hang down between the spindles, quiet and motionless on a day that’s warm and still. And past the cover of the building, blue skies. Gravel and grass, magenta-colored flowers, and lush green sandy vegetation.

I pick up the scent of stewed chicken.

The imagination’s funny. It takes a little of this reality, and the flavor of a song or a memory, and without beckoning, it floats some kind of blurry image your way. Like the soft elements of it all have been waiting around in your head, waiting for something to stir them up.

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2021

august

etikser
angelon

All those delicate flowers we planted in May, or June, they’re strong and showy now. Or they’ve withered and died. The tomatoes are tall, healthy, nearly out of control, ready to pick. And tall blades of grass that used to be bright green are a shamble of bent, disheveled straw.

The last days of summer always feel a bit restless. Maybe bittersweet. Like we’re living in yesterday’s moment, and holding off tomorrow’s worry. We try to relax, but there’s a nagging feeling … it’s almost gone.