Remembery from Clusterflock

On the occasion of my 50th birthday a couple years ago, Danny and I went to New York, got ourselves all dressed up and met friends at the Odeon for dinner. After cocktails then wine with dinner and after dinner drinks and the subway ride back uptown in the wee hours of the morning, I stumbled a little on the stairs as we were coming up out of the subway station. Danny took my hand. We emerged to streets dampened by a sudden brief shower. Still holding hands we began to trot toward our hotel two or three blocks away. In my memory we looked for all the world like Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly, hands clasped, outer arms up and out for balance. We hardly touched the ground, toes gracefully pointed at every step.

 

Coloring Book

I was working furiously on a coloring-book Earth while my father fried biscuit-donuts and side-pork crackles across the room.

At the time I tended to ponder notions of Heaven and Hell more than I should have, given my pedigree. Indeed I had little reason to accept either as anything less than metaphysical certitude.

Hell was buried somewhere on page 23. Heaven was probably just beyond the table’s edge.

“Dad,” I paused, “how far would I have to dig to get to Hell?”
“I guess that depends on how deep of a hole you’re in to start with.” he answered without even looking up from the stove.

I hated it when he pulled that shit.

 

From the Comments

Brother T writes:

“Come here. You’ve got to see this!”

My mother called me out of the house and pointed to the boiling, green sky. The radio chirped about tornadoes to the west. As with you my recollection predates Super-Mega-HD-Mine’s-Bigger-Than-Yours radar and the jockeying for position to translate tragedy to Nielson up-ticks. When we had a storm we turned the television to channel 1. If the screen lit up with snow then the legend was that the tornado was already on top of you.

“Come here. You’ve got to see this!”

We took my father’s truck out of the river valley and up to the high ground south of town where we could see forever. There’s a particular truth in this cliché . What I saw in the distance I will most certainly see forever. A massive, indifferent wedge inching its way across the horizon – silent and black as coal.

As we drove to church the following morning we crossed the tornado’s path and saw chaos where homes had been for generations. Such random and violent devastation.

“Dad?” I asked. “Why would God do this?”
“I don’t know boy.” he answered. “Just sit back.”

We continued on to church where my father delivered his sermon to a numbed congregation and did his best to address my questions as I was not the only one asking that morning.

The truth of the matter was that he really, really didn’t know.

“Come here. You’ve got to see this!”

Indeed.

 

Tornado 1967

I had to google a little bit to remember this.

When I was twelve, if memory serves, a Friday afternoon, for some reason our whole family was home in Cherry Valley, IL. We were watching the clouds outside the house. Dark gray, roiling. A tornado warning had just been issued on the television. The air smelled. As I recall, wet, rainy, metallic. I don’t remember seeing images that day like images I’ve seen since of what tornados look like.

Still the clouds. Roiling. It was exciting!

At some point, Daddy said, “Everybody in the basement!” We went the back door, and down the stairs. We stood near the washer and dryer. We stood there, as near as I remember, just a few minutes. We came back up to see sun peeking through the western clouds.

I remember seeing, later that evening, the news. The tornado in Belvidere. Just six miles away. Destruction at the Chrysler plant. Kids died at a school. I don’t remember talk of it being an F4 tornado. This, before such things were a topic of conversation on television. We can put names on things we don’t understand these days and we think we know more.

 

Winter Wonderland

Shirley came of age in Pittsburgh. Now she lives in Galveston.

I came of age in Dallas. Now I live in northern Illinois.

Just this week I offered her a bald recital of scraping-and-shoveling. This is what I received in return.

 

A Snow from Yesteryear

Morristown Trailer Park, New Muilford, IL.

GrandDad Neece and I. At least according to Mom. I think those are my brother’s eyes and nose. I do have a memory of being on this hill on the sled with GrandDad, perhaps this day, perhaps another. The ride wasn’t particularly smooth. In memory, the day was cold, but above freezing. The snow was melty, the runners of the sled digging a bit into the gravel beneath.

 

‘Twas the Night Before…

My sister was born. It was February 1, 1964.  My brother and I stayed with Grandmother and GrandDad Neece in their mobile-home, in Morristown, a trailer park on the far south-end of Rockford, in New Muilford. They made a bed for us on the fold-down couch in the living room. Along about 9:00 that evening, my brother and I were “in bed,” Grandmother was already asleep, my brother asleep, too. GrandDad was still sitting up, watching The Outer Limits. I was listening, hearing a story of a bee-queen in human form. I was nine. I’d had “unpleasant” experiences after “scary” shows. Bad dreams and what-not. I lay awake listening. At the end, I raised my head in the blue light to see a woman with her nose in a flower. The image morphed into a bee’s face drinking nectar from the flower.  You know? That show? Not so scary. My survival of the image that evening gave me strength to look at scarier things later. Some scary things that, at that time, you wouldn’t think you’d ever find yourself looking at on television, or in magazines, some years later, and think that that isn’t so scary, either.

 

First Remembery

Baby’s First Memory? Clambering into her slatted Junior Bed (a step up from the Crib in sophisticated styling) and sucking on a sugar cube (one of two), a customary treat courtesy of staff at The Torch of Acropolis, a Greek restaurant her parents frequented.

But when – and how? – did she assign the designation First Memory to a mental event, an association of sugar cube and Junior Bed? She was four years old, perhaps, or five (no more) when the scene reconstituted itself unbidden on her mental stage with such force that she said to herself, “That is My Earliest Memory,” then wondered, “Did I know how to talk then?” and asked herself, “Where has that Memory lived until now?” (She was a precocious and introspective child, inclined to converse with herself.)

Then she considered how it came to pass that she recalled the source of the sugar cube – The Torch of Acropolis, its waiters. Surely her memory of The Torch sprang from a later time – or might it have been an earlier?

And so she formed the habit of lying awake at night and contemplating the past.

 

Remembery, remembered

May 6th, 1984

Standing at the glass, my mother-in-law standing beside me. Me wondering how it might be years from now, when I’ve failed to live up to her expectations. Or your mother’s. Or yours.

I knew then, didn’t I? Or was it just a sensation? Was it a conscious thought as I stood and looked at you through the window. Me with my whole hands, my nose, my face pressed into the glass? That’s what I remember. That’s how the memory feels in my mind. I know I wanted to be close to you as possible. The glass was in the way. But the other? Did I know? I don’t remember. It’s possible, there was a sensation.

Me standing there, nearly overwhelmed. Overwhelmed. Eyes welling. Maybe I had my hands in my pockets? It is a way I stand when I stand.

Me looking at you. You were such a tiny thing. Well, maybe not so tiny. You in your state, as opposed to others in that state. You know, some come early and are very tiny, others come on time and aren’t so big. I think you got it from me perhaps. I was 9 pound 14 ounces, you were 9 pounds plus if memory serves. Maybe your mom was big, too, but I don’t remember. There was a story like that I think. Memory, here, isn’t serving. She certainly was not a big woman. I suspect it is still so.

Me looking at you through the growing blur, Dana beside. Me saying, or was it she? Was it she who said it? Who said, “What will it be like for him in the future? Will it be happy or sad?” Happy I hoped. In memory, in retrospect, me thinking, “I may never know.”

From RICK ruminating, May 2006

 

Stitches

I was playing with a group of friends, the last day of summer. I ran to hide in a garage where a flat-bed trailer was parked. There was dusty dirt on the concrete. I slipped and fell forward, cracking my eyebrow on the fender.  I felt nothing, but wet drops splattered the dust at my feet as I stood. I put my hand to my head, pulled it down to see my palm drenched in blood. I ran two doors down to my house, to Mom, who took a cloth, cleaned the spot and shrieked, “Oh my goodness, Ricky Cameron! You have a hole in your head! We’re gonna have to get that sewed up!” That’s when I started to cry. She rushed me to the ER where I wound up getting a couple of stitches, without anesthetic, the Doctor saying, “It’s too close to his eye.” The Doctor saying, “You might feel a little stick.”

I started sixth grade the next day with the bandage across half my forehead. As kids asked me about it, the story grew in the telling: How I could take it–getting stitches. Pain.

It was sixth grade, it was just a little stick. What did I know? It was among the first thin layers of callous I’d build upon for years, until I could really take it.