Most of us have décor in our homes: Tchotchkes, pictures, bits and baubles, generational curios, memory laden echoes of our time on earth. My house is full of them. They bring a smile of remembrance. Occasionally I endeavor to thin them out. Endeavor being the operative word in that sentence.
Why, oh why, do I need a 10” yellow ceramic duckling in my curio cabinet? Because it was once a treasured keepsake for my mother. It was given to her by a friend she loved and lost many, many years before Mom died. I remember that friend, and I remember how much my mother loved the duckling. How can I toss it? It is a piece of my mom.
Some of the artwork was given as gifts by friends and family. We have porcelain figurines by Lladro given to us by our niece in Spain that are dear to our hearts. There are carved wooden figurines that Mom brought back after our trip to Germany. We have crystal and glass that dates back to great-great-grandparents.
Most of my walls are filled with photos of friends and family from great-grandparents to our grandchild. I can go to any room and reconnect with those people. We love to take out-of-town visitors to Tombstone and have a photo taken in old west period clothes. Our visitors have endured our obsession. Those pictures reside in various rooms. I chuckle about the memories every time I look at them.
We have collected artwork over our sixty-plus years of marriage that has significance for us. We remember the why and where of each painting and print. A print of praying hands by Albrecht Düerer (1508) graced my great-grandparents living room from the time I remember as a small child. On the back is written 1896. I assume that was when they acquired it.
Among our eclectic collection, we have two prints by Michael Parks, a Salvador Dali, a Diego Rivera, a Renoir, an Edward Hopper, native American drawings, as well as original paintings by close friends who are amazing artists. NONE of which I would part with willingly. I love looking at them every day.
Is it living in the past? Well, maybe, but we have so much more past than future, why not? I’m willing to add new mementos as they arrive.
It is popular among my friends to talk about divesting themselves of those “things” that won’t mean anything to their children or grandchildren. Much of my wall art and shelf dwellers were acquired when our children still lived with us and may evoke a memory or two. I admit the things we collected have no monetary value and will probably not be passed along. They still bring me pleasure and will until I die or become catastrophically forgetful. I want to enjoy them for the remainder of my life, and then, I really don’t care what they choose to do. I will be on to bigger and better things.
One of my favorites is a print of The Juggler by Michael Parks that is on the wall of my office. Our writing critique group had a prompt to write about a piece of artwork or a photo in our house, and what it means to us. This is a poem about The Juggler.
Standing on the brink of eighty, I have so much past and a diminished amount of future. I must keep reminding myself of that because I don’t feel a day over thirty-five, and my tomorrows still seem endless. I’m listening to friends and colleagues about all they are doing to prepare for their inevitable end. Things like clearing out closets and storage so their heirs are not overwhelmed with the detritus of their lives.
That’s a good idea even if you are not anticipating the Grim Reaper. It cleanses the mind to get rid of stuff instead of stuffing it in nooks and crannies. The same can be said of ideas and memories. They can be aired out, shared with the world, or discarded entirely.
I have so many wonderful remembrances to look back on, I don’t dwell on woes. Among my very happiest memories, besides my relationships, are my stories. I have written countless stories, character sketches, and poems over the years. Only in the last twenty years have I shared any of them. I wrote for myself. As a matter of fact, no one in my family even knew I was a writer. Of course, I didn’t call myself a writer then because to me that was an exalted status far above my humble reach. You know Hemingway, Huxley, du Maurier, Woolf, Rowling, Fitzgerald, Austin, Dickens, and so many more I admire. When I took my first writing class, I was told that if I write, even in secret, I AM a writer. Hallelujah! Now I can say it out loud.
When we moved from the Pacific Northwest to Southern Arizona, I tossed out volumes of diaries, journals, and notebooks of my writing. I figured I’d never have any reason to revisit them. It was my secret life. By chance, some were overlooked, so I have dribs and drabs of my early reflections on life, including my senior year of high school. I would love to look through all those old notebooks again to see how my perspective may have changed.
I started blogging as a marketing tool for a book I co-authored three years ago. It was fun. I was hooked. I started asking my husband to read stories I write for my critique group and blog. He was surprised that I wrote. Fortunately, he likes my writing. At least he says he does. He is not a literary critic, only a reader. He has never liked reading books, so my short essays or reminiscences are just the ticket. Longer projects I have written require an editorial type of review. For now, I’m enjoying the interaction I receive from readers at the Oro Valley Writers’ Forum, my critique group, and my online blog.
I encourage EVERYONE who likes to put pen to paper or tap away on a computer to consider themselves A WRITER. Find a writers’ group that agrees to read and critique your stories. It is a way of strengthening your skills and receiving feedback for your ideas. Writer groups are formed in writing classes given through Pima or the U. of A. The Oro Valley Writers’ Forum at the Oro Valley Library is another place to meet writers and share ideas. It is never too late to share your perspectives with the world. Everyone has a story. Every day is a story. Don’t live in a secret world. Clear out your closet of ideas and reveal your insights through fiction stories, non-fiction, memoir, or poetry. Your voice is an important thread in the fabric of humanity. We have so much more in common than in opposition.
I apologize to anyone who was misled by the title of this piece, thinking there might be some delicious salacious tidbits in the offing. Eighty years have been filled with a myriad of highs and lows, disappointments, and missteps. My deepest, darkest secrets are still locked away in my journals. Some are delicious in retrospect. They may see the light of day at some point.
My family moved into our home on Burns Avenue in the Riverside District of Wichita Kansas when I was three years old. It was an area between two rivers, the Little Arkansas and the Big Arkansas. The rivers were just a few blocks from us, one to the East and one to the West of our house. To the south, in the fork of the two rivers, is Riverside Park, less than two miles from our house. Our neighborhood was built prior to WWII. Our house, built in 1940, had grey asbestos shakes and white trim. It was about 900 sq. ft. with two bedrooms, one bathroom, and an unfinished basement. The detached garage was a few feet behind and to the side of the house. The entire neighborhood of homes had a tree-lined street with sidewalks. Behind our house was an alley and across the alley was a church. Sunday morning delivered raucous music, loud singing, and righteous preaching that we could hear from our backyard. Around the corner and down the block on another corner was an IGA grocery store. Across 18th Street from the IGA was a drugstore with a lunch counter where we could get ice cream sodas, a rare but delightful treat. In the other direction around the corner in the middle of the block was a tiny mom-and-pop grocery. The old man would soak toothpicks in cinnamon oil and keep them near the cash register. He gave them to neighborhood kids who stopped by on the way to or from school. We chewed on them as we walked. He also stocked the best penny candy.
One of my best friends moved into the house next door within a few months of our arrival. His name was Billy. He was my age and we hit it off, playing cowboys, hide and seek, and climbing my big backyard tree. My very best friend, Lois, lived two blocks away on Woodland Avenue. When we were five we all attended Woodland Elementary which was two blocks in the other direction from my house on Salina Avenue. John Marshall Jr. High was three blocks further south. I left after sixth grade and didn’t get to attend John Marshall.
My room was at the back of the house and had two windows. The wallpaper on my wall was white with bouquets of lavender posies and yellow ribbons. My bed resided between the windows and I could see the backyard and my tree. It was an enormous maple tree. I sometimes made a tent over my bed with the open side toward the window and would pretend I was camping.
As soon as I was big enough, I climbed into Old Maple’s comforting branches to spend hours daydreaming or reading. It was well over thirty feet tall and, for a couple of years, I needed help to get up to the fork in the trunk that enabled me to climb higher. I could go far out on the limber bottom branch where I straddled it and bounced, pretending I was riding a horse. Dad built a swing attached to the side of the garage – another place to think and dream.
Our house had arched doorways between rooms except the two bedrooms and the bathroom. In the hall that led to the bedrooms and bathroom was a niche in the wall for the telephone. The living room had a fireplace with a floor-to-ceiling bookcase notched in beside it. The dining room had French doors out to the back porch. The kitchen was long and narrow, and my mother painted it Chinese Red. A window over the sink looked out to the backyard. At the end of the kitchen was an alcove where stairs led to the basement. It also had a side door leading out to the driveway where a honeysuckle vine grew on a tall white trellis.
A story I remember about the phone in the hallway was when I was four, I went swimming with the fishes. My mother ran my bath with nice warm water and bubbles and, before I got in, the phone rang. She went into the hall to answer it and began a conversation with someone. I was buck naked, running around the house. I decided to have company in the tub so I climbed on my little red chair, I got my goldfish bowl from the top of my dresser and dumped the fish with their castle, green ceramic mermaid and algae figures, and shiny rocks into the tub and climbed in. I began chasing the fish around in the tub and Mom heard the commotion. She was not amused. The fish were removed along with their paraphernalia to their bowl with clean water. The tub was emptied and washed out. Then I was tubbed, and scrubbed, and put to bed. I don’t believe the fish lasted through the night.
Another story that involved the phone was when I was six. I refused to clean my room. I put up a tantrum about something that was important to me at the time. My mother was at her wit’s end to get me to comply or at least calm down. She tried threatening and yelling at the same level I did with no positive result. Finally, she became very very quiet. She went to the phone in the hall. She dialed a number. I watched from around the corner to see who she was calling – the police? my Dad? No, she called the Indians. She put her hand over the receiver and told me she was going to send me back to them since I was acting like them and wouldn’t mind her. I begged her to let me stay and promised to try to be a better girl. She relented and told them over the phone I wouldn’t be going to live with them, at least not that day.
The basement was where Mom’s washing machine resided. We had clotheslines in the backyard to hang clothes to dry. The brown and white hide of my Dad’s horse Knobby was slung over the top of a folding roll-away bed. I sometimes climbed atop it and with a broom stuck in the crevice for a horse head, I pretended to ride the range on my paint pony. To this day I don’t know why my dad had his old horse pelt at our house. I do remember Mom did not appreciate its sentimental value and when we moved from that house it was left behind – who knows where?
I remember a year when the waters of the rivers rose above flood stage. All the neighbors went to the riverbanks to put sandbags along the edges. Even with that precaution, our basement held a few feet of water. The heartbreaking loss for my mom was the letters she received from my dad when he was overseas in the war. He wrote daily and she saved them in bundles with ribbons around them stored in the basement – until the flood when all were lost.
I loved my house, my neighborhood, and my school. The kids played kick the can, hide and seek, cowboys and Indians, a form of baseball across the front yards and into the street all through the year. In summer we’d roller skate from one end of our block to the other. Of course, in the winter we had snowball fights. The neighbor across the street raised chickens and when he decided to make one or two into their dinner he would let us know. The kids would line up to watch him catch a chicken from the coop, lay its head on an old stump in his backyard, and chop its head off with one mighty blow of a sharp axe. Then he let it go and the body would run around the yard and eventually flop over. A bloodthirsty gang we were.
I was eleven when Dad announced he received a promotion, and we were packing up and moving to Seattle Washington. It meant that when fall rolled around I wouldn’t be able to go to John Marshall Jr. High with all my cronies. The promotion I ached for – to be in Junior High. I was devastated. Mom was elated. She did not like living in Wichita. She was from Denver, a big fashionable city. To her eyes, Wichita was a cow town in the midst of the prairie. She yearned for the more cosmopolitan environs of Seattle. I remember trying to strike a deal with them to stay with my great-grandparents on High Street instead of going to Seattle. They reminded me that even if I did stay behind, I wouldn’t be able to go to school with my friends because my great-grandparents lived across the river about two and a half miles away in a different district. I went with them and met my destiny in Seattle.
wonkagranny 