Category Archives: Memoreis

A Memoir of Days Gone By

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Tasha's Family 1955010My great Aunt Alice, pictured on the far left,  was a “maiden” aunt. Never having marred, she lived with her mother, and then by herself in the grand home built by her late father. It was set amid the lawns and gardens of an estate on the outskirts of a small seaside town. We lived in a smaller house that had been built for the full-time gardener. A lifelong sportswoman, she had a collection of trophies from horseback riding, as well as her tennis matches. A vigorous woman I remember her saying she always parked her car at a distance from the store she was going to, so she’d get more exercise. I also found her intriguing because she wore socks over her nylons, and never wore trousers.

Aunt Alice also had a beach cottage we went to sometimes on weekends in the summer.  It had once been her Girl Scout camp. She had had a troup once and they still kept in touch. She also for many years had dogs, always small and yappy: Scotties and Sealyhams, and later, Dachshunds. I can also remember as a very young child being held up to pat the nose of a horse she had in a pasture. There was a stable with a horse stall, though I have no memory of ever seeing a horse in it.

Over the fireplace in the hall of her home there were hunting trophies: Fox tails from when she rode to the hunt. There were lots of books, both in her library with the window seat and the plush green velvet sofa and elsewhere. I loved that window seat. Aunt Alice was good enough to pay for two years of wonderful riding lessons for me. She also put me up when my parents went away on business and I had to stay and go to school. That was fun. I enjoyed her company, and she was always kind to me. As I think about her now, I realize that she was a great example of an independent woman. Her sister, my grandmother was also, though she had been married and was now a widow. Aunt Alice worked for various charities and was generous to them.

As we went there often for holiday meals my memories of her home are vivid. Her dining table was always set with beautiful china and silver, together with a flower centerpiece and silver candy dishes, piled with chocolates. When I was small there were cocktails in the large parlor downstairs. I used to enjoy her toy truck with the blocks, and a mechanical rabbit in lettuce that rose up and munched, flicked its ears and sank down again. When I was older, I remember gathering upstairs, where she had a music box like an organ grinder’s that played various tunes when the handle was cranked. The cigarette box was always filled with the brands my parents smoked. Daddy mixed the cocktails, and Ritz crackers with peanut butter were a featured hors d’oeuvre.

Aunt Alice was quieter than my grandmother. She also unlike my grandmother, who gave out checks for Christmas presents, went to the store and bought things. Her choices were notoriously bad. Of course, we never told her that. After I grew up and got married, when I could I’d bring my children to visit her. She enjoyed their antics. By then she was rather absent of mind. Alzheimer’s caused her to fall asleep at odd moments, and make it difficult for her to remember much. The children made her smile and that was reason enough to visit. I will always be grateful for her generosity to me, and of the wonderful example her life provided me.

Polishing the Pots

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Pots and pans 1In the fifties, when I was a young mother with two small daughters, my friends and I often gathered in one another’s kitchens for visits and chitchat. One day one of my friends looked at me, shook her head and said, “You are so brave, hanging your copper-bottomed pots for all to see without polishing them. Most women wouldn’t dare.” I smiled at her. “It doesn’t seem important to polish them,” I told her. “I’d rather play with my children or read to them.”

Today many mothers do not have that opportunity. Most families these days require two incomes for survival. This has not always been true, and it is also true that some mothers sacrifice the income and make do in order to be with their children while they are young. However, at that time, many young mothers did not work outside of the home, and instead put their diligence into their housekeeping and their children. Their pride was put into their homes and its appearance.

I was happy to be home with my children. My mother was an artist. I had not been raised to work outside the home, or to have a career in the wider world. My ambition was to be a writer, and I pursued my craft any way I could, writing publicity for the various organizations I belonged to, and sending my poetry off to magazines. Housework was not my first concern. I even wrote and sang a humorous song about how the housework could wait until my children grew up. I recall one husband of our acquaintance remarking to the children’s father that he felt I was out of line with my sentiments. Truth be told, I was happy to avoid housework any way I could.

One of the main reasons I disliked it so much was that once I began cleaning, it was difficult for me to stop until I was completely finished. Yet finishing was a goal that often eluded me because I kept thinking of more, I could do to make whatever I was cleaning perfect. One day I ran across a magazine article that suggested limiting a task to twenty minutes at a time. This helped somewhat, and I began to attempt to put this regimen into practice. I still suffer from this condition to a degree. I’m not sure why, and I look upon it as one of my opportunities to be mindful rather than go on automatic and be carried on the tide of my forward motion.

I haven’t polished the bottoms of my pots for many a year. My housekeeping duties have changed considerably, nor do I any longer have little children to mind. I can usually sit down to write whenever I like. I truly cherish this freedom, once so rare. Remembering those happy days I spent with my little ones, I do feel for mothers who  have to work outside the home, and who don’t have the time to spend with their young children that I and many of my generation had. Rather than spend my free moments polishing, I do my best to find the time for fun that brings me joy, whether it’s watching movies with Stephen, taking a walk in the good weather, or simply sitting and allowing myself to relax and listen to music. Polishing the pots for show is the least of my concerns, and I most likely will never hear anyone comment on them again.

 

Dealing with Anticipation

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Flower -1 bud  The appointment for my hip surgery was made more than three months ago. Now its time has come. While I feel positive about the outcome of the experience, I also feel a tiny bit apprehensive. Everything I have heard about the surgery from those who have had it done has been good. I even ran into someone who had the procedure done by the same doctor I have and she said hers had gone wonderfully and she was very pleased.

However, my mind has been twirling around the upcoming surgery for all the months I have been waiting. My thoughts have revolved endlessly about what I will be unable to do and for how long, as well as what I will need to have prepared and so forth and so on. Now as one who tries hard to be in the present moment as much of the time as possible, this has been a real teaching situation. Present moment mindfulness is not something to be practiced only during meditation. It is a frame of mind to be kept in place all through the day.

I once met a man who said, “Whenever I think about what is upcoming, and dread it, it always seems much worse than it turns out to be.” The fear of the unknown is what drives the dread. The silly part is that anticipation has no actual basis in fact, and therefore it  is inaccurate. Only when the experience has arrived can it be truly judged. Otherwise its truth is obscured by what we feel rather than whatever the facts may be.

There is an acronym for fear that reads: “False Evidence Appearing Real.” This is a good description of fear. The so called evidence is usually a product of our active imagination, warnings by people who are trying to be helpful, past experience that may not be applicable here, or feelings of inadequacy. When we think about what is upcoming if we can recognize this for ourselves we can think about it in a more positive way.

As a child I used to enjoy anticipation. I would think about going to the circus, something that happened once a year, with great joy. I looked forward to going to the library to get a pile of new books to read. An avid reader, I often devoured a book a day whenever I could manage to get the time to do so. School vacations were a great source of anticipation. Before they arrived they always seemed to stretch out invitingly and even when they were over there were more to be looked forward to

There was one form of anticipation that was unpleasant. That was when I had done something I shouldn’t and my mother would say, “Wait ’til your father gets home!” Even though he was a kind man, I knew whatever punishment was coming would be more severe if he administered it. My anticipation of the surgery is not with dread, however, but with joy. I look forward to more mobility, less pain and a better sleep at night. Meanwhile I am trying hard to stay as focused as possible on the present moment.

 

The Many Ways of Cherishing, Part One

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Dad with Snake Dictionary definitions of “cherish” tell us it comes from words that imply caring and holding dear. The French word “cher,” or “cherie” meaning dear one is often used as a term of endearment, especially in Europe. That and those we cherish are what and whom we hold in our hearts as precious. Keeping, implying more than just a momentary affection, is another dictionary definition of cherishing. I was thinking of this as I contemplated Father’s Day and the memories I cherish of my late dad.

I fondly remember our many sand castles we built on the beach over the years. On occasional weekends would go to my Great Aunt Alice’s beach cottage so he could get away from the incessant telephone calls from clients who thought they were having horticultural emergencies. No cell phones disturbed our peace, nor was there even a landline to the simple, somewhat primitive beach shack our family slept in. Our daylight hours were spent on the sand, in the water or weeding the beach grass from the path to it. He considered that his way of repaying his aunt for her kindness in lending us the cottage.

If there were big waves left over from a storm in the days before we delighted in jumping hem together. Standing waist deep in the water he would hold tight to my hands and I would leap as high as i could with him, while the waves battered at us before they threw themselves onto the beach. He would call us “brave girl” and “brave boy” as we waited for the next one to crest around us. The exhilaration of it is vivid in my mind even today.

This and other cherished images from my young years are fun to dwell on. I keep them in my heart, along with those of other dear ones, some of who have departed this life and others of whom live at a distance, whom I seldom see. I also think about and spend time caring for friends and family nearby. I do my best to keep in touch and make sure we stay current with one another’s lives. I do this with email or phone calls, or even texts nowadays. The many forms of communication are a great help to me in my efforts

However, in my attempts to cherish I have learned that not everyone looks at life in the same way. For instance as in the tale of the monkey who fearing it would drown, so kindly put a fish into a tree, I try not offer help just because I think it is needed. I also must be mindful not to impose my values on a loved one who may have a perspective differing from mine. Most important, I must make sure think before I speak to hear what I am about to say and make sure that my words come across as loving. Sarcasm has never served me well, nor have clever comments or observations that may unintentionally wound. Cherishing takes many forms; being mindful is an important one

 

I love to hear from readers and I do cherish each and every one of you.

Riding a Time Machine into the Past

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Reflections in SummerWhat fun it would be to hop onto a time machine and return to the Christmas shopping of my childhood, after I had turned eight. How I enjoyed buying my parents small stocking presents at Grants and Woolworth’s. I want to return to the days when the ten dollars I had saved up sufficed to purchase about everything I wanted to buy for them. Maybe there would even be enough left over for an ice cream cone. I loved the way the store smelled when I walked in, and the overflowing counters with the glass part in front to make sure items didn’t fall off.

I didn’t mind no longer believing that Santa filled the stockings, because it was such fun to wrap up my inexpensive gifts to fill them for my parents. Best of all would be to write notes on them the way they did. I bought Ponds cold cream and vanishing cream each year. I think they were ten or twenty cents each.

My mother told us a joke once about the latter. It seems a child took off all her clothes, rubbed her whole body with vanishing cream, and then went downstairs where her parents were hosing a party. The polite guests pretended not to see her. The next morning she told her mother gleefully that vanishing cream really worked. My twelve year old self thought that was very funny.

My time machine would whisk me back to my Great Aunt’s dining room with all the relatives gathered together and finger bowls brought in at the end of the Christmas meal–often roast beef with Yorkshire pudding. Sometimes there would be a plum pudding brought in and ignited after brandy was poured over it. The dancing flames were blue and very exciting. I didn’t care much for the plum pudding but the had sauce with it was pretty good.

It would take me down the snowy streets with the sparkling stars way up high, and the carols on the radio. Those times seem quite simple compared to now. The television had only a few channels, and the programs didn’t play all night but ended with a test pattern. Mothers mostly were at home. Most had only one car per family, and my mother’s friends met bi monthly for lunch and chitchat over their mending.

In my time machine I would also visit the wondrous Daniel Lowe’s department store in Salem with all the glittering silver and crystal when you walked in. I did no Christmas shopping there. Salem was the big city to me and we seldom went. Nearby Beverly was smaller. That was where the Woolworth’s and the Grant’s were, as well as Almay’s department store. We did some of our shopping there. In those less frantic times no one thought to purchase gifts until a few weeks before Christmas. The stores waited until after Thanksgiving to decorate for the holidays or play Christmas music. However, that was then. Though different from that time, now has its delights as well. While the past is fine to visit, I wouldn’t wish to live there.

Thank you, Mom for Your Gifts

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M

Mama Watering the Roses

My Late Mama Watering the Roses

This week I received a loving card in the mail from one of my three dear daughters. In it she expressed her thanks to me for what I had given her as well as for what I continue to give her. She lives at quite a distance from me so we do not see one another often. We do however do our best to keep in touch with mail and emails. It was a precious card and it was even more precious to read her acknowledgement of the little things I do for her as we continue to communicate and to share our lives together.

Although I cannot write her a letter or call her on the phone, I began thinking about what I might be grateful to my late mother for. There is a long list beginning with how she always insisted on my wearing a hat on the beach and cover up as well to protect my skin from the sun. Today, with the prevalence of skin cancer among my contemporaries and even those younger than I, I am especially grateful for her good advice. It is thought that the early exposure to excess sun is a precursor to skin cancer. She had a permanent tan on her back from her teenage years of sun exposure in Cuba where her German father was in the diplomatic service; later she had numerous bouts with skin cancer.

Though I haven’t thought much about this until recently, I realize that she was an immigrant, and what that meant especially in her early years in the country. Like many others who came here from elsewhere, she cherished her citizenship and was proud to be an American. She also contributed in many ways, from joining in the war effort as a civilian—I remember the brown uniform she wore for some kind of civilian women’s defense organization to the lovely art she created that graces the homes of many even today.

It was the outset of what became WWII that she married my father and came to this country from Germany. As a child I remember seeing a movie taken of part of their honeymoon showing Nazis marching. She had to endure suspicions and even dislike for her nationality, even from her in-laws. Fortunately she spoke perfect English and quickly became a citizen. She was herself very courageous, and she encouraged me to stand up for myself when I was picked on in school for not being athletic or slender. In addition she always supported me when I shared my grief at not being able to fit in.

She encouraged my creativity, keeping the little booklets I made for her even until I was much older and then giving them back to me. She applauded my early efforts to play the guitar and urged me to write my own songs. She pushed originality as a virtue, praising it above all in everything I did. I think of her often and wish her well as she makes her way through whatever is next for us all in the afterlife. I am sure her bright spirit is still learning and growing and perhaps she is in some way practicing the art she did so beautifully in this life to enhance the walls of the angels’ heavenly homes.

April Showers and May Flowers

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Maple blooming 17 2The forsythia is blooming. Its golden flowers brighten the landscape and provide a kind of sunshine even during April showers. Gardening is present in the thoughts of those who do and in the stores as well. Pansies and other colorful flowers decorate the entrances of supermarkets and other stores that sell them. Gardening supplies are piled up ready to purchase. Even though it’s not yet time to be planting, these and other signs of spring hearten those of us who are weary of winter’s drab browns and blacks, bare limbs and withered weeds.

Gardening runs in my family and in my blood. I wish I could yet I can’t claim the green thumb of my ancestors. My great grandfather planted an orchard of flourishing fruit trees. His apple trees blossomed and bore from the onset of spring until deep into fall. His quince trees produced fuzzy hard fruit that with my mother’s diligent efforts became jelly and preserves. In her garden she grew a variety of vegetables. I can see her still working away in it, her tanned back brown in the sun.

My grandmother had a gardener named Mr. Patch. He was Irish. I remember his nut brown face and his wonderful brogue as he discussed with my grandmother what he needed for the garden. She did some work also, principally with her pruning shears as she picked her magnificent roses. She grew both flowers and vegetables, harvesting and eating from her garden all summer long. What I remember most clearly were her glorious gladiolas, the saucer plate dahlias ranging from deep red to bright orange and yellow, and the colorful zinnias that lined the gravel path leading from her driveway to her door, bounded by a white picket fence and two strips of green grass turf.

My father too grew roses and later brought back some young peach and plum trees from a horticultural show, planted them and then harvested the fruit when they grew old enough to produce it. I did have one experience with a fruit tree. Back when I had my spiral garden I had bought what I thought was a white forsythia to plant there. After three years it hadn’t flowered. Reluctant to discard it, I dug it up, replanted it at the edge and forgot about it. To my great surprise and delight, though now in the shadow of a large spruce, it grew into a white peach tree that produced three peaches its first year and many more after that.

These days my gardening is limited to a few potted plants. Perhaps one day I will have a small garden again, however I couldn’t manage anything very much more than the original three by five foot plot I was given as a child for my own. I grew flowers there, and then weeds by the time August rolled around. But it got me started on many years of garden tending. These days I write poetry about gardens together with other aspects of nature and the world I live in. My gardens have become metaphysical rather than physical, and truth to tell my back is grateful.

After the Gifts Are Unwrapped

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gifts-4  In days gone by when my children were small and Christmas was something of a big production, by the evening of the 25th everyone was satisfied to play with his or her toys, eat the festival leftovers and chill out. It was then that I would take my guitar in hand and drive with it to the Beverly hospital to play for the patients. I was a regular volunteer there so I would don my pink volunteer jacket and go around to the wards and private rooms to play Christmas music together with my usual folk tunes.

During my time in Manchester-by-the-Sea I used to play my guitar several times a month and sometimes even more often for the patients who were well enough to be listening. However I did have to be mindful of my lyrics. This being in the days of Pete Seeger and the Weavers, my repertoire consisted mainly of traditional folk songs, some of which had lyrics that might not sound cheerful such as: “Go tell Aunt Rhody the old gray goose is dead,” or one that began “When I’m dead and buried, don’t you weep after me,” a rousing spiritual that was great fun to sing as long as I omitted the first verse and went right into the body of the song.

On Christmas night I felt as though with all the visitors having gone home by then, the patients could use a bit of cheering up. After all, the visitors were returning to their families and friends while the patients were still in their rooms or wards and perhaps more aware of being there than usual. It was heartening to see the welcoming smiles on their faces and to receive their enthusiastic approval. More than once someone who had been relatively comatose would actually clap their hands and manage a smile.

Today my children are grown and gone and my family is for the most part scattered far and wide. Holidays are quieter. Nor do I play my guitar any longer, though next year I hope to have learned some carols on my new harp. However, I don’t expect to be singing them in a hospital. Life brings changes, some welcome, some not so. The happy memories of Holidays past become gifts to cherish with joy, more so perhaps than any other gift beneath the tree.

Now that the presents have been opened and our holiday meal consumed, I find myself reminiscing to myself over past holiday celebrations. I note familiar faces that have moved on from my life. Some still walk this earth others do not. I am reminded of the places where I have lived in the past and see again the rooms as well as the homes that hold the memories of holiday times. Each year holds its blessings. I am grateful for each and every one, and most of all I am grateful to be able to celebrate with joy the love that flows to me from those who each year remember me.

 

The Peddler Woman, Childhood Days A Childhood Reminiscence

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Me and mama by Bachrach I was a young child during World War II. As I look back I realize this was a time of great change in American society. Not only were we fighting a large scale war in far away countries, but we were also changing the way things were done at home, especially if one lived in the country as opposed to the city. By living in the country I mean living where if you wanted to purchase anything that was not delivered to the door, you needed a car. Of course there were various catalogs, however for everyday shopping most of what we bought we purchased from the local stores. The internet did not of course exist.

Because like most people we had only one car my mother could not get out to shop all that often. My father worked as a salesman and he usually needed the car to get around. In addition, gas was rationed so no one used it thoughtlessly or took trips just for the fun of it. On Sundays, all the stores were closed. That pretty much left Saturdays and the occasional afternoon when my dad would work at home catching up on paperwork, for my mother to shop anywhere we could not walk to. Living where we did, that would mean a couple of miles trek, and with my short little legs that would have been unrealistic.

Milk was delivered, and ice for the icebox with the pan that accumulated water underneath that had to be emptied regularly. Eventually the milkman added bread to his supplies. In addition there was a woman who walked from town to town lugging a large suitcase with all sorts of small items for sale. She sold what might be termed “dry goods.” The dictionary definition for dry goods is “textiles, ready made clothing, and sundries.” She always stopped at our house. It was exciting for me when she did.

I can still see her coming into our living room and opening her big suitcase. In it were needles and thread, buttons, handkerchiefs and occasionally something rare in those days: nylons. They had seams, and were shear unlike the cotton stockings that were available. My mother would buy thread, pretty hair ribbons for me, and sometimes cotton socks. In the winter the peddler woman sold woolen gloves and hats. In the summer she might have carried the sun bonnets my mother insisted I wear to protect my fair skin.

How different the world is today. The end of WWII brought in a new era in so many ways. How little understanding children growing up today must have of what it is like to buy from a peddler woman, a strap over her shoulder, clutching the handle of her suitcase as she walked from town to town with her notions and dry goods. I don’t remember when she stopped coming and we went instead to the big stores in Beverly to shop. It could have been around the time we got an electric refrigerator to replace the zinc lined icebox by the kitchen door. When one is small, time dissolves into timelessness, and memory delivers images not dates.

 

 

 

Growing Up By Myself

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Bed Friends 1

When I was growing up I lived a couple of miles from a small seaside town on a large property that belonged to my Great Aunt Alice. I didn’t have any siblings until I was almost nine. Virtually an only child, I was surrounded by busy adults and often told to stop bothering them and find something to do. A voracious reader, when I wasn’t nose deep in a book, I played games of pretend, making believe I was someone other than a lonely child in an isolated neighborhood with only herself to rely on for amusement.

I had quite a collection of teddy bears, dolls and other stuffed animals. When I was small I was sure they came alive at night. This belief was influenced by Johnny Gruelle’s Raggedy Ann and Andy books. These innocent stories about a group of toys that had adventures were written in the early 1900s and became even more popular in the 30’s and 40’s. In these stories, ice cream cones grew on trees, cupcakes and hot dogs could be plucked from bushes and lemonade and sodas were available in puddles and brooks.

Raggedy Ann’s magical woods full of “fairies and elves and everything” held all sorts of fun inventions that I yearned to experience for myself. I loved the stories and used to watch my toys to see whether they too might have adventures while I was sleeping. Sometimes I thought I spotted them in different positions than I had left them, though I could never be sure.

Later I moved on to books by Robert Louis Stevenson, Alexander Dumas, and Edgar Rice Burroughs. Then I wanted to be a pirate or have exciting adventures when I became a grown up. I made bows and arrows out of handy branches and tied string to my father’s hoe and rake to make a hobby horse. If my father needed his rake he knew where to look–in my lilac bush “stable.”

My family believed in fresh air and I spent a lot of time all year round out of doors in nature. Where we lived I was fortunate in having a large open area to play in There were all kinds of trees to climb and large fields of tall grass that I made into my private jungle. My pretend life was much more interesting than my actual one. The world I lived in as a young child was without TV or any form of electronic toy or game. I had to use my imagination to conjure up my entertainment.

I wonder if my childhood led me to grow up looking at the world from a different perspective than most. Steeped in nature and in the creativity of my mind, its sights and sounds enhanced my imaginary life. Today I perceive links and patterns everywhere. I find significance in synchronicity and receive messages from the nature around me. The world was and is alive for me in a way today’s youth may not discover. With the current focus on electronics, most children will not have my opportunities. I learned to listen to and observe nature and found there a sense of companionship and of comfort that is with me still.