Memoirous

Never underestimate a squirrel. They like to hang out on the sides of the road where a walnut tree drops those big walnut bombs and wait for cars to roll over them and then they run out to gather the nuts. It’s also where they die, run over by a car. So whenever I ride by on my bike I) am careful not to hit a walnut bomb and topple over, my front wheel torqued by the impact and 2) I’m careful not to squish a squirrel, and 3) I remember once collecting walnuts as a kid. It might have been my Little House on the Prairie period, one that lasted over ten years, approx. age 8 – 18. This is when I experimented with natural dyes and woodland crafts. Anyway, I collected a paper sack of half-decomposed walnut balls. Somehow I thought that was the nut, or maybe I knew the nut was inside . Nevertheless, I picked up the whole thing and brought them home an put them under my bed. So that when I was doing sit-ups, a hundred every night before going to bed, I was accosted by worms crawling acro...

That One Bike Ride, 1970 *where we took off without water, food, money, a map *where I are a whole loaf of French Toast and got a huge tummyache *where after a few miles and a big hill we turned back *where after those few miles, I began to miss home and got scared *where I felt the furthest I had ever been from what I knew *the unknown I cannot tell you how old I was. It was the 1970s when kids rambled outside unwatched. We were a gaggle of kids with a plan—albeit one very loose, disorganized, not well-thought through plan—to ride our bikes, possibly to Miamisburg. Again, I’m not certain as memory and time have corroded the edges of what may or may not have happened. I believe we took Alex Bell Rd, past Normandy Methodist Church and down a hill. The point is, we entered uncharted territory, left Washington Township, Centerville, our school district. Nothing was recognizable. I do remember a hill going down and feeling sick because before leaving one of the kids’s mother ...

Possibly because I’ve been reading the letters of poets Bernadette Mayer and Clark Coolidge (SEE link my last post, http://memoirouswrite.blogspot.com/2023/06/all-this-thinking-correspondence-of.html ) between the two, I’ve been dwelling in the past. Add to that I’m old. Not old old, but thumbing the pages of social security mail sent to me, encouraging me to sign up for Part B—or is it A, and is it Medicare or Medicaid, is it anything? What are we assured of? I’ve been dwelling in an existential crux, thinking about mortality, the passing of an age. Maybe family makes us/me think about all this. I remember after both my parents died within a span of months, going back to Ohio to clear out the dregs, the last of the last at their extended living facility/house in Canal Fulton. I thought it was no big deal. I had a car, gas money, the time—all the factors that have usually vexed me in getting away from my “normal” life in Chicago. My plan was to stay at the house and slowly unwind e...

12 th Grade I remember walking up to the photography studio the end of August. This is it, the beginning of the end. The start of my senior year. What was I supposed to feel? I wished someone would tell me. I also wish someone had told me not to wear that blouse. Sheesh! Now, decades later, I ask myself—couldn’t I have found something more interesting? I had no idea how important a final picture would be, that this might be the one to define me. I must have thought it would be like anything else. The humidity that morning was thick. With thin hair such as mine, it was hard to give it body, a soul, The heavy air acted like gravity and weighted it down. I had a hard time getting my bangs to appear effortlessly flyaway without falling flat into my eyes. My whole last year in high school I was continually disappointed by how boring and complacent my life was in what should have been a monumental time. I was always expecting more. Bob Staley took me to my first and ...

8 th Grade No pic 9 th Grade No pic 10 th Grade No pic 11 th Grade A junior in high school. This was the best time of my school career. I had a set, a circle of friends I hung out with and went over to their house in the evening and on weekends. I drove a Volkswagen “Bug” that during the day looked red, but under street lamps at night appeared orange. I was always losing it in the mall parking lot. My friend Jane and I drove everywhere. We’d spent a summer at a Young Life youth camp in Pittsburgh and met other kids like us, only a year older. We’d drive up to Canton or Mount Vernon or wherever to visit them. Youth group was a huge part of my life. One night a group of friends spontaneously baptized me in a culvert creek that dribbled behind the house. It was nothing for me to run miles or bike to another state—for fun. Eleventh grade was uncomplicated. I wasn’t worried about college or thinking ahead to graduation. I was part of the Quill Club—qui...

7 th Grade The back of the picture says “Janie, 13 yrs old.” Yet I look twelve or younger. Certainly nothing like a thirteen year old today. I’d lost weight, so likely was not wearing chubby girl clothes. In 6 th grade I’d discovered running—a solitary sport. It started innocently enough (it might have been a punishment) the Phys Ed teacher sent the class consisting of 6 – 8 th graders on a one-mile run. We left the school and wound through back streets. Again, no one would be allowed to do this today without a drone or security camera following. I remember passing 8 th grade boys who looked like men until finally there was no one ahead of me. I remember thinking: This is crazy; I can’t be this good. I expected to die of exhaustion. But I kept going and ran back into the front parking lot of the school. If middle school is hell then 7 th grade was the absolute inner ring. I suddenly had no friends. They were too busy having sex or illicitly drinking or smoking or doing...

6 th grade I look into the frame of this picture. I’m wearing a dress. In elementary school the best I could do was shorts under my dress. There were so many times while on the jungle gym on the playground that I would realize I’d forgotten to put on shorts and that boys could look up and see my underpants. I always had to remember before swinging on the monkey bars, and tuck the hem of my dress into my shorts so that while hanging upside down my stomach didn’t show. It wouldn’t be until middle school that we were allowed to wear slacks, dress pants. Though certain girls wore jeans. Hithergreen Middle School was a whole other animal compared to elementary school. I attended an open school, meaning there were no classroom walls. We’d meet in pods to go over lessons. Sixth, seventh, and eighth grades fuzzily blended together. There weren’t textbooks per se, but packets that we worked on at our own pace. I was a self-motivated learner and was allowed to explore subjects a...

5 th Grade I lied. I do remember my 5 th grade teacher’s name. Mrs. Medillo. She said in my school year book that I was her “busy bee reader.” I kept track of all the books I read on index cards. I had a stack of them. I didn’t know how to score the books I read more than once. It seemed a miracle that because of redistricting I was able to spend 5 th grade back at my old school Driscoll, except by this time my friends had moved on. We were different on a scale that only a tween would understand. I was desperate to read a friend, a book that loved me for who I was—somewhat nerdy, existential, an optimistic fatalist. Little Women. I could actually see Jo staring into the depth of her grief when she opened Beth’s hope chest, where the mementos of her short life were stored. Even today, my throat catches every time I read this passage. I am Jo, the writer, smudging the outside of my finger as my hand rushes over fresh ink on the page. Secretly I nurture a secret po...

4 th Grade We moved in the middle of 3 rd grade, from one neighborhood to another. Yet it necessitated a switch from Driscoll Elementary to Stingley. At recess I was an outcast. There was a sign, a symbol really, by a door that we never used. I must have asked someone and they said it was a bomb shelter. What? At Stingley I decided to read every book on the shelves in the school library. I got through the Ds. I stumble upon an old-fashion book by Nancy Barnes titled The Wonderful Year about a girl much like myself whose heart breaks when her family has to move. She also rode a bike. I read the book through once, twice, three times. I remember telling my mother about it. Here was my story, told in fiction, about another girl in another time, yet it was also about me. In my school picture I flash a cheesy grin. I took the photographer literally when he demanded that I smile. Pinned to my jumper was a seal with a marble-size fake pearl for a body. I still have this pin...

3 rd Grade No one bothered to straighten my bow. Peter Pan collars were very popular growing up. Later I would gravitate toward angular, heavily ironed collars. In high school I’d sew my own clothes. But for now I was stuck with whatever my mother picked out for me. One time she took me shopping at Elder-Beerman’s where I was forced to browse the chubby girl section. It took a while, but eventually I would attempt to assert some autonomy over my clothes choices. Mostly I wore hand-me-downs from my sister Nancy who was only one year older. Case in point:   Though I was a slow reader, books became very important to me. My teacher (I cannot remember a single teacher’s name) read Charlotte’s Web to the class. I can still hear the sing-song back-and-forth lyricism in her voice as she read the scene of the kids on the tire swing in the barn. I was confused by the ending because up to that point no one had ever died in a book I’d read. Also I thought the title should...

2 nd Grade Same bob haircut. My teeth are like boxy appendages stuck into rubbery pink gums. It will take years for me to grow into my new teeth. My parents did not believe in braces. Orthodontics was for rich kids, or for the most serious cases. I would come home from school and change into play clothes. It was possible to climb a windbreak of hedge apple trees separating our backyard from an undeveloped field. Starting at one end, I could go from one tree to the next without touching the ground. I’d carefully navigate the branches, trying to avoid inch-long thorns, slowly making my way through the canopy. Sometimes I’d just sit in the crook of a tree and make up stories inside my head. I was largely left alone by my older brothers and sister. I knew it was dinnertime when the sky began to darken.

1 st Grade Hard to believe how short my bangs are in this picture. I might have tried to cut them myself and then a hairdresser had to even them out. I remember telling my Dad I had a loose tooth, and he tied a piece of string around it and the other end around a door knob. Then slammed the door shut. I screamed seeing the bloody stump of my tooth dangling at the end of the string. My brothers and sister were like planets orbiting around me—or perhaps I was a satellite circling my family. None of us seemed to fit together. A picture I hold in my head is sitting in front of our console black and white TV, a newspaper spread before me and my sister Nancy, eating popcorn before bed. I remember one night the show was very boring. A man was taking numbers out of a capsule inside a tumbler. I came to understand that if unlucky my older brother would have to go away to a place called Vietnam. I also came to understand that no one knew what was going to happen—not even the adults.

Kindergarten My mother cut my bangs and set my hair in pigtails all askew. She suffered from depression and would go to the hospital for “treatment.” During summers a neighbor lady would watch me so Mom could rest. I was often left alone. I remember exploring the woods behind our house on Princewood Avenue. One time, pretending to be an Indian, I stealthily stalked a man walking ahead of me. When I think about this now—I cannot blame my mother for being so anxious. I’d return home late for dinner with muddy shoes. Funny—no one would ask me where I’d been all day.

This one goes into the column of—What Was I Thinking, not so much a question as a statement. As a teenager I loved playing tennis. I had a wicked backhand—a two-handed one like Chrissy Evert. And, since I could never find anyone to play me, I was constantly challenging myself, hitting a ball off the wall of the elementary school down the street. I’d scoop and dive for the long shot, recover and return the volley back to me. It was actually a bit pathetic. I was desperate to play but could never find a partner. Something that happened regularly that was a blessing and a curse was that I’d lose my ball on top of the roof. There was always the ball boomeranged off the wood or handle, the off-shot that went bonkers. I found a way to scale the wall (though in my memory I can’t recall how it was possible. There were no fences etc to give me a head or foot up. And, the wall was perfectly flat. Go figure.) Once on the roof I’d be rewarded not only with my own ball, but sev...

As a child I was anxious, prone to a wild imagination. Upon hearing news of some catastrophe half-way around the world, I would immediately assume it was happening here, happening now, going to happen to me. Impending doom. Maybe this is the result of too many fairy tales where girls were always the victim. Or perhaps this was the actual fallout from the Cold War—to be ready for any eventuality. I remember one night hearing on the radio about a volcano erupting. I could imagine liquid fire pouring out of the mouth and down the sides of the volcano like icing on a cake, pulsing and ebbing ever closer. I could hardly sleep. In fact I was so terrified I sprung from my bed and opened the door and ran outside into the night. It took both of my parents to convince me that this eruption, this volcano was thousands of miles away. I soon learned to brace myself for earthquakes. I practiced ducking and covering, diving under a wobbly card table. My classroom at school would ofte...

 When I was five years old and we lived on Princewood Avenue I woke up one morning, looked out my window, and there was a parade. I saw cars decorated with streamers and shaving cream. The neighbor lady down the street sat on the hood of her husband’s car wearing a funny costume with feathers and scarves and bright lipstick. She waved as they drove slowly by. I recognized her daughter and another son from the upper grades at my school. The girl twirled a baton and the boy carried an instrument, possibly a shiny brass horn, in which he made terrible marching music. The family hound wore a bucket hat tied under his doggie chin; he high stepped to the beat. Bringing up the rear was their youngest son sitting on top of the back seat, waving from an open convertible. His face swollen from what my mother told me was the medication. A few months later I learned he had passed away. Just yesterday I programmed parade music on Pandora. I wanted to remember that impromptu par...