Small Pleasures | Pujakins

Heartwings says, “Memories are fun to rummage through, and can be entertaining.”

I don’t use my cell phone often. Usually when I do, it’s to text one of a few friends to share with or for communication with family. So recently, when it rang with a number I didn’t recognize, I figured it was spam. I picked it up and found that it was a call from my grandson inviting us to visit on an app called Face Time. He lives with his wife in Saudi Arabia and he wanted to share his infant son, now four months, with Stephen and me.

Such precious moments are pages in my mental memory album. Some days they show up unbidden to help me recall a time and a place from the recent or even the distant past. One day I had an image of me in my skates, wobbling on a patch of frozen water in a wetland on my Great aunt’s property. I’m around eight years old and I’m wearing my snowsuit with its cute bonnet tied under my chin.

The feeling of the thick woolen snowsuit with its accompanying snow-pants comes back to me, the vivid memory expanding as I think about it. Nylon outerwear and lightweight winter clothing was in the future. Such memories are fun to enjoy and help me recall a childhood spent outdoors. As long as the weather was neither windy or too cold, I was appropriately dressed and sent out of doors to play among the trees and open fields of the property.

Recently I recalled how after there had been a great storm, a large section of a tree trunk, perhaps three feet in diameter and four or five long appeared in the wetlands we called a swamp, though by today’s standards, it really was not. I was delighted to see it and it became part of my fun, serving as a kind of home for small things. I played “house” a lot of the time. Then I found something really special. It was a pane of glass, not chipped, cracked or imperfect in any way, with blue and gold painted around the edges.

As I reflect on it now, it seems to me it was probably part of a picture frame, but then it was a magical item to be cherished and admired, a treasure given me by the sea. It became part of my log home and cherished accordingly. Then one day there was another great storm and when I went to where it had been, the log and the pane of glass were both gone without a trace. I was a bit sad, but soon went on to find other playthings. Still the items remain, standing out in my memory of my childhood spent outdoors in nature.

I know now how fortunate I was to have this special time growing up. So many children do not have that experience. Nature is such a fine teacher. Her school provides a lifelong experience that surpasses anything a computer or a cell phone can provide.

May you have recollections to enjoy from time to time

Blessings and best regards, Tasha Halpert

PS Love to hear your reminiscences, and hoping you would like to share. Please write me at tashahal@gmail.com, and sign up here at my blog to get more Love Notes at http://tashasperspective/pujakins.

Queen Ann's Lace with Bindweed The daily and weekly routines Stephen and I once had have been lost to the Covid 19 virus. Things we took for granted–trips to the library, going to the movies, eating in restaurants, and more have all been sacrificed to our safety. We must avoid exposing ourselves to a virus that can take a life with one simple breath. Although I have been alive for many years, this is like nothing I have ever experienced. I find it remarkable how my life has changed from what it was a mere few months ago. If you had told me last fall what my life would be like today, I might not have believed you. I certainly could not have imagined it.

I did have peripheral experience with a polio epidemic when I was growing up. I remember summers of rampant polio cases in the 40’s. Prior to the vaccine that eradicated poliomyelitis, many children succumbed to it. There are still adults today with legs crippled from polio as children. One of my sixth-grade classmates caught it. As I recall he was paralyzed and placed in an iron lung. I have a memory of seeing him in it, only his head visible. One parent I knew wouldn’t let her children drink any water that wasn’t bottled. She even made them brush their teeth with bottled water. Children, who were especially vulnerable, were supposed to avoid the beach also, though I am not sure why. Perhaps it was for the same reason we avoid crowds today for fear of Covid 19.

Losing our small pleasures is an insignificant price to pay for staying safe. Wearing a mask in public is a courtesy Stephen and I are glad to practice. It is like saying, “I care about you, stranger, and I want us both to stay safe. How long will it be before Stephen and I go to a movie theater again? I have no idea and I won’t even try to guess. The Spanish flu of 1918 took many lives and lingered even into i920. My own grandfather died from it. My grandmother, as was the custom, wore black for seven years. My mother told me that was the reason my father never wanted her ever to wear black.

It is strange to me that the tenor of our days has so altered. Before the onset of Covid 19, My life held few surprises. I never thought twice about going to the library or to a movie—and suddenly, I no longer could. It was just not there to do. Fortunately for us, Stephen has collected a quantity of videos o all kinds, and we could even make our own popcorn if we wanted. Yet I have come to understand that it’s not the film but the experience: going to the theater, sitting with others laughing or weeping, that I miss. I can get takeout from a restaurant, but I don’t get to hear the other diner’s murmur of conversation or get to chat with the waiter. When the day comes that we can mingle freely, without face coverings or fear, I will rejoice. Until then, while I may mourn my missing enjoyments, I’ll not risk my life for them.