Tag Archives: Childhood Memories

A Generation Thing

15 Sunday Aug 2010

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The oldest of the clan was recounting some tale of how her husband  once caught an octopus while fishing off the Pacific coast.  She was absorbed in her tale —  using arms to animate the action of eight legs fighting as her husband released it.

She’d hoped to entertain the young boy sitting across from her.  Before she’d launched into her tale, he had been wiggling about like an octopus on a pole, which was probably what triggered the story.  But the tale she told was too old for the five-year old — it flew over his head and across the restaurant dining room to me.

The child said nothing in response.  Perhaps the boy didn’t know what to make of the old story or the old woman telling it.  There was a formality between them that stamped her as ‘just visiting.’  In between the man and the storyteller sat a woman who bridged two generations — daughter to one and mother to the other.  She too, didn’t say a word.

The picture perfect family, four generations strong, was going through the ritual of keeping family.  Yet the three adults at the table were occupied by their salad greens,  leaving family stories to die untended on the old woman’s lips.  It was ten seconds before the man broke silence between bites of his salad.  “Is that right, Grandma.”

The lone response was too late to be anything more than polite.  It left me sad, as these days, I find myself adopting all sorts of scraps from my parent’s lives to help keep family stories alive.  Yesterday, I brought home four ice tea spoons.  I’ve no need for these early sixties relics.  I have sixteen already in the drawer.   And I don’t even sweeten my iced tea.  But I had to have them anyway.  Now they are odd men out, taking up space, keeping company with others that don’t resemble their pattern.

Handing stories on to the next generation can make one feel like odd man out.  The practice of storytelling requires thick skin; stories often go begging for a listening ear —  even when heard, children won’t always get the storyteller or their stories.

This need to preserve  stories is a generation thing.  Like that great-grandmother sitting across from me the other night; with seventy or eighty years of living bottled up inside, can you imagine how hard it was to keep stories from spilling over her lips.  Maybe she should consider spoon-feeding.

The Kindergarten Groove

10 Tuesday Aug 2010

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Every year, for the last five, I’ve driven the short distance to the elementary school where Kara teaches kindergarten.  She likes me to come help prepare for the new year and I’m honored she asks.

I have a very important job.  I erase the names from last year’s students and write a new crop of names in their place, using my “best kindergarten” print.  I always have to relearn kindergarten print, because my own writing is a custom mix of cursive and print.  It helps that Kara has cheat sheets tacked on the wall.

Over and over and over I write, until I find my kindergarten groove, until my too small and illegible letters transform into nice tall letters that fit snug in solid and dashed lines.  By the time I’ve finished writing the list of names five or six times, I begin to wonder what the student’s faces look like, what kind of students they will be, whether they will have first day jitters or whether Kara will (from their being in her class.)

Today being my fifth take and all, I’d graduated to being left on my own, while Kara attended a teacher’s meeting.  I had planned to arrive by 8:20 but of course I was late.  I called — told her it would be more like 9:00  — but after stopping at Sonic for the required Vanilla Coke, I was running 15 minutes late on late.

It’s my fault I arrived to a dark silent room.  Tuning on the lights, I spotted the list on the table, right next to the teachers U-shaped desk.  Item one:  “Erase old names.  Write new names.” I looked around, saw the new class roster and the pile of names to shuffle.  Item Two:  “Add new names to Leader Caboose.” My eyes dart around looking for a train.  What’s a leader caboose?  Have I ever seen this?

It’s funny how the combination of not knowing the “right” answer and being in Kara’s classroom sent me back to my own first grade jitters of trying to guess what the teacher wanted.  I never ever knew.  First grade was an absolute Mystery.  The only thing I knew for sure was Mrs. Randall did not like me.

I picked up my journal to capture my experience.  As I write, in walks Kara.  “Hey, Mom.  I came in earlier but you weren’t here.  Thanks for coming.”

“Hey, what’s a leader caboose?” Kara points to the wall by the door.  There’s no train.  Just two vertical columns of nameless cards.  The cards keep track of turns for girl and boy leaders for each week’s kindergarten caboose — I’m guessng the student caboose travels between various school destinations — bathrooms —  music lessons —  recess — lunch.

With one mystery solved, I point to the other wall and ask Kara about her “Monster Of The Week” spot, recalling again my own first grade teacher’s dislike of me .  “Honey, I’m not sure whether your students will want to win this award.  Who wants to be the class monster?”

Kara laughed.  “Oh, it has nothing to do with the students being monsters.”

But back at home and way out of the kindergarten groove, I still haven’t a clue what monster-of-the-week is all about.  And now I’m beginning to wonder whether Mrs. Randall liked me after all.

Diving in the Gene Pool

05 Thursday Aug 2010

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I didn’t go to Iowa to write about Daddy.

Yet writing memoir in a fiction class worked fine since similar rules apply.  While the learning  challenged me, the hardest part of Iowa has been returning to the real world where distractions exist and writing deadlines don’t.

Those who know me will attest I’m kindred spirits with the White Rabbit, as I’m always “late for an important date.”  I put off to the last-minute what I can and fill in the space with the rather-dos of life.   When desperately into avoidance, I settle for rather-not-dos.  Today, for instance, I weeded my front garden and my neighbor’s garden next door.

While I’ll not name my avoidance du Jour, I’ll confess ancestry research has become the mother lode of all distractions.  From the comfort of a computer chair, I swirl around in a digital whirlpool of documents.  Old census reports, immigration records and phone books, as well as a treasure chest of old newspapers for the entire state of New York.  It’s hard to come up for air when diving in the old gene pool.

Hours pass with nothing in hand.  Then, with a click of my mouse, I run across a rare find — a prominent 1943 newspaper article in the Schenectady Gazette featuring my Greek grandfather and his second wife.  The story is full of facts like their marriage date, where Papa and his wife had lived the week before, where Papa had parked his two children — my dear father and aunt.  Running across this jewel kept me going for another five hours straight in the hope of another big find.

While I didn’t go to Iowa to write about Daddy, I began my gene pool dives to feed my story of Dad.  My first day back from Iowa, I wrote this in my paper journal:

“I must not put away Daddy’s story.  It was alive Thursday night as I wrote it and Friday afternoon as I read it aloud to my review partners. So here are the things I will do to feed “it”.  I wrote of my desire to visit with Aunt Carol each week to record her’s and Dad’s story in detail.  I wrote of converting home-made movies my parents took from 8mm film to DVD.  I believe both will help ripen Dad’s story within me, while ancestor research will help fuel talks with Aunt Carol.

Today I pulled that old photo of my young grandfather with his sister Mary and brother Theo — the bookend at the top of this post. Lying beneath it, was another old photo of my young mother standing at a trade show booth, while three others sat beside her.  Had I not pulled out the top photo, I would never have known of one hiding beneath.

This sandwich of old photos becomes good analogy for what happens when writing memoir…or for what happens when diving in the old gene pool.  You begin with one photo or story and end with another.   Neither is more valuable.  Both work to tell the story.