Little by little, I’m thinning out my collection of books. Only books I have loved and respected can stay. It doesn’t matter if they’re ones I plan to read again. I might not. But I want to be able, when I walk past and see their titles, to feel at least the ghost of a memory of the world that’s in them. It’s easy with books from childhood, which I remember well–The Borrowers, Mary Poppins, Tom Sawyer, Heidi, Pooh. Those worlds spring to life in my mind instantly. I’ll keep them forever. Also easy with the classics I read when I was young: Dickens, Jane Austen, the Brontes. Have to keep those. But then in the many decades afterward–all those hundreds and hundreds of novels! Sometimes I open one up and a sense of the contents comes drifting out. Sometimes I open one and find it’s a complete stranger. The strangers should probably go. Although, who knows? I might read them again and love them. And the same with the stack of Books to Be Read. I might read them some day. But if they’ve been on the shelf for years, maybe not. And then there are the non-fiction books, and the essays, and the reference books… It’s a long process, and one deeply connected to my identity. The books I keep will represent me to whoever comes to gather them up when I’m gone.
Memories
I keep memories. The photo is me in 1972 wearing a cherished dress brought from Russia by my maternal grandmother in 1906. It was part of her trousseau, four years earlier. My mother and I were the only women in the family small enough to fit into it. When it became too fragile to wear, I took it to the Lowell Textile Museum (Lowell, MA was a textile hub in the 19th century) and spent a lot of money to have it restored and packed away in acid-free tissue paper. It now resides in its special box above my wedding gown, similarly packaged. I have the neglige my mother wore on her wedding night and the one I wore on mine.
Those who have read my other essays know that I keep old photos. I have loads of photos albums, with the photos in chronological order and annotated. I have old home movies. My brother got custody when our parents divorced and converted them to Beta format…then VHS, which he gave to me. I converted them recently to DVD, but with each transfer, they lost quality. They pre-date my birth.
I have programs from every show I saw or participated in during college and beyond…even earlier. I saw the Royal Ballet, the Stuttgart, and Leningrad-Kirov companies as a child and still have those programs. I save important magazines and now I will reveal my true obsessions. I have three: British royalty, the Kennedys and Daniel Day-Lewis. I have the Life magazine from Queen Elizabeth’s coronation. Since I was 6 months old at the time, I have to believe that this particular interest was passed down from my mother. Nevertheless, I have scrapbooks and clippings and hardcover biographies of various members of the royal family. My favorite is Elizabeth I and the Tudor period.
I have the Life magazine from JFK’s inauguration. I fell in love when I saw the movie “PT 109”, and the assassination came at a particularly difficult moment in my life. We had just moved from Detroit to the suburbs, my mother had had a nervous breakdown and was in bed (for weeks!), my father turned 50 the next day and we had a very sad birthday/house warming party. My mother was too depressed to let me watch any of the TV coverage, so a real obsession was born. I clipped EVERYTHING from the newspapers for years, bought magazines and books, thrilled when I moved to MA and could vote for Teddy. Was astonished one day, pushing my infant son in a stroller, stopped to play with a dog, looked up and saw that Christopher Lawford was at the other end of the leash.
The Daniel Day-Lewis collection began after seeing “The Last of the Mohicans”. I collected every magazine article I could find, went to the library and pulled up old interviews, copying those. I bought the collection of his father’s poetry (Cecil Day Lewis was poet laureate of England at the end of his life). I wrote to his mother, the late actress, Jill Balcon and received a curt reply. I own a copy of every movie he has made. Though the obsession has faded, I still have more primary research on him than most would be willing to admit. I have seen him in person twice, speaking to him once.
Yes, I do have two children, and no serious collector of memories wouldn’t have loads of photos of their kids, a box each for every note I received when each was born. In each one’s baby book, I have special things from each, like a copy of each’s first paycheck, their medical histories, other important memorabilia. I have a file in my study marked “special stuff” for each child. One is 30, the other 27. They are no longer children, but I will always cherish memories with them and making new ones.
Muppets as Musical Influence
The magic of Jim Henson's creations affected my composing style in many ways!
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Sounds like sit’-zen-zee.
Mom showed the German part of her heritage when instead of telling us to sit down she would say, “Sitzen Sie.”
Dad showed the I Don’t Know What part of his heritage when he would randomly interject, “Rowdy dowdy dowdy dow.” You don’t often hear this term anymore, but on a couple of occasions he called me a knucklehead. I didn’t mind all that much because, admittedly, I was actually being one at the time.
A running joke was telling about a guy who was eating a real mountain of food and going back for seconds, one would exclaim, “Wow, I wish I had your capacity.” Another running joke was when there were guests for dinner, the not so secret codes referring to the amount of food available were FHB (family hold back) or MIK (more in kitchen).
Different Types
My parents were very different. We were never quite sure why they married in the first place, or how they stayed together as long as they did. Dad was a home-spun philosopher, having come from a difficult family situation. His mother was bipolar, started in and out of mental institutions when my dad was 8 and was permanently institutionalized when he was 12. He was the youngest of 8 siblings (Grandma had the last two to “cure her”; evidently she was more stable with pregnancy hormones onboard, but no one understood that at the turn of the 20th century). My dad tried to keep a positive outlook his whole life, read Norman Vincent Peale and practiced “PMA”: positive mental attitude. I think it got him through a lot of tough times.
My dad used to say, “To have a friend, be a friend”. I repeat that often.
He wrote this to me on my first day of college:
“Fears result from loneliness.
Boredom and fatigue follow.
Let your smile open the door to friendship.
Excel in something – so that you have something to give.
Give generously and receive graciously.
To be happy – have a friend – be a friend.
Friendship is man’s greatest treasure.”
He was quite a guy…I miss him dearly. He’s been gone 26 years.
My mother was something else entirely; hard to please, stingy with compliments, full of self-loathing and bigotry. She was smart, very cultured and I got that from her, but steered clear of the rest. She referred to gospel singing as “coon shouting”. She already had dementia and was in a nursing home at the time of the 2008 election. A life-long Democrat, I tried to get the nurses to not allow her to vote, as she really wasn’t capable of making an informed decision. I had her at an eye doctor appointment when I discovered she had already voted absentee for McCain – unthinkable for her in her right mind! I asked if she knew any of his positions? She finally admitted that she wouldn’t vote for the schwarz (Yiddish for black…Obama). Yes…a very different point of view from my father’s. One parent wrote encouraging words, the other ranted nasty stuff. I chose to take after the former.
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The café on route 66 on the corner of Campus and Foothill in Upland CA was called Martinez, not Martinez’s, just Martinez. Most locals called it THE LONG BAR. My wife and I had been married for a short time and met her mom and pop there for dinner. I was, and still am unfortunately, a stone contractor and her pop was the general foreman of utilities at the Kaiser Mill in Fontana CA. More than a little intimidated we had a short conversation and he asked if I wanted a drink and I said hell yes!! My mother in law gave the stink eye and said ” Men don’t say those words”.
My Father-in Law, that has since passed, looked at my Mother-in Law and said quietly….
“The F**K we don’t !!!!!
One of my favorite lines, EVER !!!!….chardog
Be careful what you ask for…
My grandmother was quite a woman. A gardener, a fantastic cook, a healer, and for this granddaughter – the best grandmother ever. I felt she died too young for my development into womanhood in our family. I was 16, she was in her 70’s. I missed her immensely and to this day when I garden I offer the garden up to her spirit in an act of gratitude. Whenever I needed her intervention with my Mom and I asked her for that help – she would always say “be careful what you ask for, you just might get it”. She said this in a slightly warning, slightly encouraging, slightly sarcastic way as she slightly shook her head side to side. This saying influenced me for years well after her death. Their have been a few times when I did not ask for what I wanted because of fear of outcome and times I did ask and wish I had not. Because of my contemplating that sentence I learned to be more clear about asking for life to deliver – and when I am specific and have clarity the universe provides. So although at times I felt that sentence confused me more than helped me – she actually taught me to think the ASK through and that has served me well.
They’ll Laugh Someday
Laughing through tears, I can tell you, is really a thing.
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If I heard it once
"Oh, Warren."
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Stanley Mouse and the little white pill
I wrote this piece in 2016 for the Retro prompt Altered States. I hope you enjoy this '60s tale of a little white pill. — CD
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