ONCE UPON A TIME . . .
[Summer is a time for reunions--family, school mates. This summer I'm looking back at my life, and at the lives of my children and friends. Following are a few thoughts published a several years back, memories of times I might have forgotten, but thankfully I have not.]
Thinking
back on that house, it was only four big rooms: two bedrooms, living
room, and kitchen, with a bathroom featured by a claw-foot tub; and a
side small room I never discovered the reason for, but probably another
little bedroom that we used as storage. There was a long back porch off
the kitchen. Possibly a basement, but I don’t recall going down into a
basement in that house. So, scratch the basement.
-----I am 22 years old, the mother of three children. We—my husband and the three children—have just moved to a city I’ve never lived in before, though I did visit once for a couple of days. The house is rented, furnished, and it has two astounding, wonderful things about it: an automatic dishwasher and a spinet piano. We can afford beds and pots and pans and clothes; I have never believed I’d have a dishwasher and piano so soon.
That
house has a basement and an upstairs, and an attached garage. My son
learns to walk in that house and we put up gates to keep him from
exploring stairways. The gates do little good.
-----
I
am 36 years old. The organist at my little country church tells me a
law office in the county seat has a vacancy for a legal secretary and I
should apply. I go to the interview, sort of as a lark, to see what
kinds of things people ask when they interview you. It is unlikely, I
think, that I’ll get the job—my background is in English and French, I
will soon sit the Master’s written exam for an M.A. in English Language
and Literature, and I’ve been around the block enough times to recognize
the value of a degree in English: You can either do anything or
nothing. (Garrison Keillor is right on the money with his jokes about
English majors. My mind is considering whether I’ll be better off
working at McDonald’s.)So I go to the interview, trot out my credentials, which look pretty anemic lying there on the polished desk of the new junior lawyer. Experience? (Rearing children, reading, cooking, doing laundry, driving like a madwoman to get to class on time 30 miles from my home . . . .) Can I type? (Wow, something I can do!)
What
really got me the job was the fact that I could spell. They didn’t know
that for certain, but they assumed I could if I was practically a
Master of English. (It’s true, I could, and can, spell well.)
It was the first “real” job I’d ever held. And I managed it for another 30 years.-----
I
often hear people say, “In another life”—meaning, not reincarnation,
but who the person was at, say, age 9 or 22 or 36. Do we really
remember being that person? Or do we remember things we did? People we knew? Events that happened (perhaps)? (Or did they?)
----So much advice is written today about how to keep our memory sharp; how to increase memory (as if we were a computer and could add another 64 Mb in a little chip). How to keep from losing memory (put it in a little bag and tie it to our belt? Put it in our safe deposit box at the bank? Stick it in a box and put on a good tight label telling what it is, and add the date and our initials?).
I’m all for memories. But sometimes, it seems to me, too much emphasis is put on what we
remember. Why should I remember every street address and telephone
number where I lived during the years from, say, birth to age 20? (An
impossible task—I moved 20 times in 17 years.) Or how to make white
bread without a recipe? Or who wrote that book I used to read every
single year? Or what cupboard holds the cereal bowls?
Maybe it’s about what is personal to me . . . to you.
I
remember people who were kind to me when my mother died—Aunt Dessie,
Mom’s oldest sister, took me, her 15-year-old niece, to her favorite
dress shop and bought me a tweed suit and silky blouse to wear to the
funeral. I wore those lovely clothes for years and years. The suit was a
color I now know as mauve, with little flecks of blue and grey. I think
Aunt Dessie also bought me a pair of white gloves. (All my clothes had
been destroyed in our house fire six months before.)
I
remember going into surgery in Indianapolis, nearly three hours from my
home, not knowing anyone in that vast hospital except the eight
people—family and friends and clergy—who had come to be with me and pray
for my wellbeing.
I remember losing a large measure of my innocence when someone shot and killed our young president.
-----I remember losing a large measure of my innocence when someone shot and killed our young president.
Today we celebrate our memories: personal ones, collective family memories; shared and unshared. Good memories, that we're happy to take out and stroke because they make us remember good times. Bad memories, yes, I celebrate those; they tell us something about who we are, how we coped (or didn't), what we might have learned about ourselves, about life, and living.
We need our memories: They are the stories we tell—to ourselves and to each other—and thereby connect us together.
Thursday's Child
