Memoirous

I’m highlighting a few random memories this week. President Richard Nixon resigned on August 9, 1974. About that time I was a sophomore in high school sitting in a world history class. The teacher was somewhat tired, weary perhaps of the world, the weight of current events. Anyway, he said what we were living through would one day become subject matter, part of the curriculum for future students of history. I had no doubt about that. But what really struck me was how long it would take. I mean it would be part of my story, embedded in my psyche and how I approached government. Feed my mistrust of leaders.— To be clear: I was NEVER a Nixon fan. My parents voted for him and souped up all the bs put out about why Vietnam was important (the Domino Effect) and why so many had to go over and fight and die. We watched the draft lottery on television. My brother had a low number and went off to college. He would be safe. Now, fast forward to JD Vance and his insipid comments about rede...

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 ...

Yesterday my daughter and I took Jack to the library for a program. The Music Lady was there as well as a roomful of toddlers. I’ve been at the forefront of taking Jack to the library for storytime—ever since the first disastrous beginning. That first time was pure toddler chaos: hugging other children to the ground, trying to share bottles, picking up other’s people cellphones and carrying them around. The fact that there was a program or agenda meant nothing to Jack. This was my daughter’s first program at the library for Jack. She was horrified by how unfocused he was. Of course, there were other children equally unfocused and not listening. That’s why I’m committed to taking him—to socialize him to the idea of programs, structure, on the art of listening. Some mornings go better than others. She came away dejected—“he’ll never be ready for nursery school!” Maybe not, but I remembered a time when I was quite young, when I went to my first puppet show. I’m not sure where it w...

As I mentioned in my last post, Peter Orner has a shtick. He’ll maybe start with a memory, an anecdote and then weave in family details that then leads to a wider context, perhaps a contemporary perspective. He’ll also tie in a book citation, a detail from something he once read—usually an author that has flown under the radar and deserves to be read or revisited. For example—every time I pass a rock, the kind left behind as glacial debris, moraine, of which there are many such random big rocks here in the Great Lakes region (I grew up in Ohio) I always remember 1) I live in a post-glacial region, we are formed by our environment, remnants left behind litter our past 2) my sister falling and chipping a tooth on our neighbor’s rock on Princewood Avenue in Kettering. I don’t know how old she was? Nine, ten, eleven but this incident followed her. Not only did the initial fall leave her with a jagged tooth (it was a permanent one, something that as a kid I always wondered about?? perma...

I was talking recently to my friend, the MFA writer struggling to complete her thesis—a draft of a novel. She complimented me on my flash (which I haven’t done much of lately). Flash is about looking, seeing things through a writers eyes. When we wear our writer’s hat we understand that EVERYTHING is fodder for the pen. We just need to be looking, alert to what is going on around us. Or not. Lately I want to turn off that hyper sensitivity—especially when the news is bad, when there’s a mass shooting less than 3 miles from my house, when the suspect is at large, when my daughter texts me when I’m in bed to be sure and lock my door. I wanted to stay under the blankets and hibernate. I want to shut out the world and squeeze my life down into a comfort zone of cycling, the baby, reading books. It doesn’t really allow for epic stories, a narrative arc, for something to happen. Peter Orner has written two books of essays, Am I Alone Here and Still No Word From You , that are highly autobio...

Today you hardly ever see kids outside, let alone walking around by their self. I was maybe 5 years old and coming home from a friend’s house. I might’ve been carrying skates or dragging a sled. It was nearly dinnertime, the sun was sinking and the light on the snow had gone purple. Lights were on in the windows I passed, little squares glowing. I wanted desperately to be inside, warm and cozy. But, I had a ways to walk—today I imagine it being no further than a few blocks. Nevertheless, it seemed far to a kindergartner with snot running down from her nose. I might have contemplated quitting, lying down in a snow bank like some character from Hans Brinker and the Silver Skates or the Little Match Girl in Hans Christian Anderson’s fairy tale. Anyway, I knew that wouldn’t work. I might have considered knocking on a stranger’s door, begging admittance, but again that was creepy—who’d want an extra mouth to feed! No, I just needed to keep trudging, one boot in front of the other. And, ...

 This--a reprise from last Dec, 2020 NOW at Smashwords you too can learn how to write your flash memories: Flash Memories: Writing Prompts to Get You Flashing is FREE to Download at Smashwords https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/725948 The Joy in the Journey  I remember as a little kid waiting in line for Santa. This is one of my earliest memories so I was very young. I must have been told who Santa was and that he was responsible for bringing my presents. I understood I had a duty to tell him what I wanted. So we showed up at the department store and rode the elevator up. We got off into a cottony world of sparkly snowflakes. We wandered through colored lights and fabricated gumdrops. We winded through what looked like a workshop manned by elves with jingle hats and bells on their toes. It seemed to take forever. Finally we made it to a studio where there was a camera and helpers, and sitting on a throne was a fat man in a red suit with a fake beard. The Big Kahuna. The mai...

There are these half-second yet intense random moments when suddenly I remember. I had one at the bike shop I work at the other day. A mechanic was sorting out a box of weird collected stuff and brought me string wound around a card. “You want this?” It made me think of my daughter. We were so poor when she was growing up. I used to scavenge the loose toy bin at the front of the thrift store for ten cent items to add to her “People” menagerie. These consisted of McDonald’s Happy Meal cast-offs, figures from movie promotions, and other odd pieces. It was impossible to gather a cast to make a whole, for example we had Esmeralda and her goat but no Quasimodo. The Hamburglar but no Ronald. Strays from discontinued campaigns. Before it was a thing, we had a multi-ethnic, multi-racial, multi-anamorphic family of people. It was the little things that made her happy: cheesy Goldfish crackers, stickers, a ball of string. We had a sticker book and plastered the pages, Disney characters sur...

Since becoming a grandma I’m still trying to figure out what it means. He’s still pretty small and doesn’t do much. The first week or two while I visited his eyes were never open. My most basic interaction is giving him a bottle while my daughter showers or cooks dinner. We’re working on a schedule—meaning we’re thinking about how that might look. At this point he dictates. Meaning my daughter doesn’t get a lot of sleep. I stopped at the grocery on the way up the hill on my bike to get a few things for dinner. I saw Goldfish crackers were on sale. These were the go-to snack when she was little. I remembered her little head with a blonde top-knot bobbing up and down the hallway, and her dropping a trail of Goldfish crackers like breadcrumbs always to find her way back home. Once at the house and catching my breath after the ride, I pulled the Goldfish out of my bike bag. There was an audible gasp. I needed these! she exclaimed. I can’t tell you exactly what it feels like to be ...