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Purpose of this blog: memoir
Monday, January 3rd, 2022 09:09 pmI restarted this blog in an effort to write a memoir while there is still time, if, at 75, I still have the memory needed. Just now I'm working on finding my 'voice' for this work, so if you think I might still be vamping, you're right.
Those of you who only want Memoir should probably only read the second part of this post. Those of you who are only interested in Current Events should stop about halfway through, or maybe sooner.
Some entries are likely to be long -- don't feel you have to read to the end unless you want to.
So it begins.
_____
It's cold out tonight -- 30 degrees colder than last night, a strange way to run January from yesterday's high of 62F to 24F at 9 pm at this moment. Now that I've soaked in a hot bath for half an hour and toweled off under the heatlamp (is that too much information?), I'm sitting in my favorite chair wearing longjohns, warm socks, a turtleneck, and a flannel nightgown. Just now I'm still warm enough, though later I may need a cup of tea or chocolate. This weekend I finally cleared off the massage table that had been serving as a clothing catch-all for about four months, and set up a meditation cushion and actually sat for nine minutes. Then I cleared off the wing chair that had been holding a stack of inboxes with a few essential files, plus an assortment of clothing, gifts, books, paperwork ... since sometime before the pandemic.
Did I mention the pandemic? In greater Philadelphia it seemed like the world shut down on March 13, 2020. I was on my way to visit a Hospice patient, in my part-time roll as Hospice Chaplain, when I got a text message from management: "Don't make the visit. Go home and await instructions." By the time I got home, the instructions were 'quarantine for the next two weeks.' We came out of strict quarantine -- 6 am grocery shopping only, otherwise home -- at about week six or seven, but we're still in the pandemic. We've reached Variant Omicron of the Covid19 virus -- that's 15 named variants, so far. It's 661 days later and we're still here, still overloading hospitals, still dying. Or living with double-vax plus booster plus mask plus caution plus good luck, like me at the moment.
Today I restarted wearing a life-alert device. Living alone at 75, finding myself occasionally unsteady on my feet, you do the math.
But I want to be writing memoir, so here goes. First draft, obviously. Critique welcome, please include improvement opportunities.
The first home I barely remember was a little two-story on Forest Glen Road in Silver Spring, Maryland. My parents had to wait for it during the post-World-War-Two suburban building boom. Two bedrooms, I think, with a stairway leading straight up from the front door to the only bathroom at the top of the stairs. I mostly remember it because of a recurrent nightmare that was eventually traced to the play of headlights on the wall as traffic thinned late at night.
I wish I knew when we moved from there to Noyes Drive -- sometime after my brother Chuck's birth in 1949 and before my brother Bruce's in 1952. I wish I could remember, but there's nobody left to ask unless I want to go research the deeds in the Hall of Records. I remember a little more about the Noyes Drive house, mostly that my first 'best friend' lived next door, and that we were both devastated when my family moved away the summer before my seventh birthday. I've written about that at some length elsewhere -- ask me about it, if you want to read it.
The house I want to talk about tonight was on Mountain View Drive in West Hartford, Connecticut. We arrived there in 1953. As I think about it now, I realize that much of the furniture came from my Cleveland grandma's house -- but she had died in 1950. Was everything in storage for three years? Did it take that long to settle the estate? There were only the two heirs, my mom and her older sister, and Aunt Sabra lived in an apartment in Westchester County, New York, so the furniture certainly wasn't stored there.
In my room there was an Eastlake dresser with a gray marble top, and a matching platform rocker that came from my other grandma's house, and a bookcase with leaded-glass doors that came down separately over each shelf. And an enormous glass display case with grandma's entire doll collection, which must have been a couple of hundred dolls from all over, everything from cheap souvenirs of faraway places to elegant porcelain antiques. I loved looking at them but was forbidden to touch them without supervision until I was in high school, by which time I had lost interest. When my mom moved from that house in 1970 the dolls were packed carefully away, but I don't remember what happened to the cabinet. Maybe one of my brothers knows.
In the room my brother Bruce shared with Doug, the only one of us born in Connecticut, there was a dresser Mom described as a captain's chest, and a small rocker that I recovered once and reupholstered once, and finally let go of in 2013 when we sold the big house we had built in 2000.
In the room Chuck had to himself was a desk that I dimly suspect had belonged to my grandpa who died when Mom was 12. I can't quite recall what his dresser looked like, but I bet it came from grandma's house too.
In the front hallway, between my room and the master bedroom, was a table with a heart-shaped opening in its base, and a white marble top, with a Tiffany lamp that my mother said stood on her bedside table when she was a child.
In the master bedroom my mom had a heavy mahogany dresser and my dad had a tall dresser that was the mate to the two sleigh beds on the third floor of his mother's house in Philadelphia. I always thought that meant it had been his father's, but it turns out the sleigh beds came from the Cleveland house and only landed in Philadelphia because that grandma had room for them, and wanted to have enough beds for the growing hoard of grandkids to be able to stay over at holidays. So I guess my dad lived his 40s and 50s using a dresser that came from his father-in-law. (Do I imagine that meant anything?)
The rest of the furniture in the second floor was pretty mundane and likely purchased new or second hand -- hollywood beds with no headboards, just mattress and box spring on a metal frame with wheels, bunk beds that might have come from Sears Roebuck, a desk Mom bought at auction. I remember when my parents bought a second TV for the master bedroom, with a 21-inch screen, so much bigger than the screen in the huge console TV we'd all watched together in the den.
In 1953 nobody in the neighborhood had television. Dad bought the big wooden RCA with the huge cathode-ray tube sometime before 1955, and for a few weeks the whole neighborhood dropped by to watch Howdy Doody, or the six o'clock news, or maybe the Friday night fights (boxing, that was, sponsored by Gillette, maker of fine safety razors).
The first floor had the TV in the den with a wall of built-in bookshelves and a day-bed. The dining room was mostly furniture from the Cleveland house: a fine oak dining table that could seat four to more than twenty-four (the dining room topped out before the table ran out of leaves), a matching sideboard, and a glass display case full of china from grandma and from Mom's first marriage -- plus a cherry sideboard and hutch that my parents had bought while we lived on Forest Glen Road.
Both my parents had been divorced before, and we kids knew the names of their exes but never met them. Dad didn't have any children in that marriage and Mom's son had died in a tragic accident in 1939. I probably should write about the stories we heard about that, but not tonight -- it was so long ago and all of it hearsay.
The living room had another short wall of built-in bookcases, and Dad's stereo in a cabinet underneath them. A grand piano built in the very early 20th century that came from my Cleveland grandma's house, a modern sofa, a wing chair, two big overstuffed chairs. A table in front of the front window with a lamp or a vase of flowers or something. A huge corner speaker cabinet holding a tweeter, a midrange, and a woofer. End tables by some 1950s maker, and a coffee table that was really a leather chest, which over the years became substantially sway-backed from people sitting on it until Mom yelled at them to get up before they fell inside.
I feel like I haven't said anything, but more details come forward as I write. When we first moved in, the dining room, front hall and stairs were carpeted in a deep solid maroon. I don't really remember the wallpaper in the downstairs hall, but the dining room wallpaper had medallions the size of Dad's spread hand. The upstairs hall and the tiniest bedroom were papered in a pale gray with silver medallions much smaller and spaced out. Except for the striped wallpaper at my Philadelphia grandma's twin, this was the first wallpaper I'd seen, and I didn't like it. I don't recall the paper in any of the bedrooms, just that I asked if we could paint over it, and we did. My bedroom was yellow that first year, and then I painted it myself during high school, a pale blue. Or was it the other way around?
Sometime around 1960 or 1962 my parents redecorated, carpeting the dining room, stairs and hallways in a brown-and-beige pebble pattern. Was the front hall that, too? Or was there an oriental in the front hall? I wish I could remember -- maybe my brothers know. The living room always had an oriental rug over narrow-board hardwood. I know the rug came from grandma's and Mom always said they bought the house for its large living room that would take that rug. They picked a wallpaper that had pictures on it, little scenes of Japanese villages, people wearing kimonos, geishas with elaborate hairdos, horse-carts. I recall that vividly on the stairs but can't remember if it was also along the hallways -- and what about the dining room?
At the same time, they slipcovered the two big chairs and replaced the couch. And put a painting of a sailboat above the couch, painted by Mom's sister. I think Mom chose the fabric for the new couch to match the color of the water.
At the back of the living room was a screened porch with a slate floor. We used to eat there during the hottest days of summer -- this was well before air conditioning. I still remember when Dad's office got air conditioning, and he complained that the shift from the office to the hot car in the parking lot was giving him sinus trouble. But we never had more than an attic fan and canvas awnings to cool the house.
So much to remember. Writing about the house has brought back memories in every room. But I'm tired tonight, so will stop here. Maybe tomorrow I can write about some of what happened.
Thanks for reading. Love, light and laughter to you all.
Those of you who only want Memoir should probably only read the second part of this post. Those of you who are only interested in Current Events should stop about halfway through, or maybe sooner.
Some entries are likely to be long -- don't feel you have to read to the end unless you want to.
So it begins.
_____
It's cold out tonight -- 30 degrees colder than last night, a strange way to run January from yesterday's high of 62F to 24F at 9 pm at this moment. Now that I've soaked in a hot bath for half an hour and toweled off under the heatlamp (is that too much information?), I'm sitting in my favorite chair wearing longjohns, warm socks, a turtleneck, and a flannel nightgown. Just now I'm still warm enough, though later I may need a cup of tea or chocolate. This weekend I finally cleared off the massage table that had been serving as a clothing catch-all for about four months, and set up a meditation cushion and actually sat for nine minutes. Then I cleared off the wing chair that had been holding a stack of inboxes with a few essential files, plus an assortment of clothing, gifts, books, paperwork ... since sometime before the pandemic.
Did I mention the pandemic? In greater Philadelphia it seemed like the world shut down on March 13, 2020. I was on my way to visit a Hospice patient, in my part-time roll as Hospice Chaplain, when I got a text message from management: "Don't make the visit. Go home and await instructions." By the time I got home, the instructions were 'quarantine for the next two weeks.' We came out of strict quarantine -- 6 am grocery shopping only, otherwise home -- at about week six or seven, but we're still in the pandemic. We've reached Variant Omicron of the Covid19 virus -- that's 15 named variants, so far. It's 661 days later and we're still here, still overloading hospitals, still dying. Or living with double-vax plus booster plus mask plus caution plus good luck, like me at the moment.
Today I restarted wearing a life-alert device. Living alone at 75, finding myself occasionally unsteady on my feet, you do the math.
But I want to be writing memoir, so here goes. First draft, obviously. Critique welcome, please include improvement opportunities.
The first home I barely remember was a little two-story on Forest Glen Road in Silver Spring, Maryland. My parents had to wait for it during the post-World-War-Two suburban building boom. Two bedrooms, I think, with a stairway leading straight up from the front door to the only bathroom at the top of the stairs. I mostly remember it because of a recurrent nightmare that was eventually traced to the play of headlights on the wall as traffic thinned late at night.
I wish I knew when we moved from there to Noyes Drive -- sometime after my brother Chuck's birth in 1949 and before my brother Bruce's in 1952. I wish I could remember, but there's nobody left to ask unless I want to go research the deeds in the Hall of Records. I remember a little more about the Noyes Drive house, mostly that my first 'best friend' lived next door, and that we were both devastated when my family moved away the summer before my seventh birthday. I've written about that at some length elsewhere -- ask me about it, if you want to read it.
The house I want to talk about tonight was on Mountain View Drive in West Hartford, Connecticut. We arrived there in 1953. As I think about it now, I realize that much of the furniture came from my Cleveland grandma's house -- but she had died in 1950. Was everything in storage for three years? Did it take that long to settle the estate? There were only the two heirs, my mom and her older sister, and Aunt Sabra lived in an apartment in Westchester County, New York, so the furniture certainly wasn't stored there.
In my room there was an Eastlake dresser with a gray marble top, and a matching platform rocker that came from my other grandma's house, and a bookcase with leaded-glass doors that came down separately over each shelf. And an enormous glass display case with grandma's entire doll collection, which must have been a couple of hundred dolls from all over, everything from cheap souvenirs of faraway places to elegant porcelain antiques. I loved looking at them but was forbidden to touch them without supervision until I was in high school, by which time I had lost interest. When my mom moved from that house in 1970 the dolls were packed carefully away, but I don't remember what happened to the cabinet. Maybe one of my brothers knows.
In the room my brother Bruce shared with Doug, the only one of us born in Connecticut, there was a dresser Mom described as a captain's chest, and a small rocker that I recovered once and reupholstered once, and finally let go of in 2013 when we sold the big house we had built in 2000.
In the room Chuck had to himself was a desk that I dimly suspect had belonged to my grandpa who died when Mom was 12. I can't quite recall what his dresser looked like, but I bet it came from grandma's house too.
In the front hallway, between my room and the master bedroom, was a table with a heart-shaped opening in its base, and a white marble top, with a Tiffany lamp that my mother said stood on her bedside table when she was a child.
In the master bedroom my mom had a heavy mahogany dresser and my dad had a tall dresser that was the mate to the two sleigh beds on the third floor of his mother's house in Philadelphia. I always thought that meant it had been his father's, but it turns out the sleigh beds came from the Cleveland house and only landed in Philadelphia because that grandma had room for them, and wanted to have enough beds for the growing hoard of grandkids to be able to stay over at holidays. So I guess my dad lived his 40s and 50s using a dresser that came from his father-in-law. (Do I imagine that meant anything?)
The rest of the furniture in the second floor was pretty mundane and likely purchased new or second hand -- hollywood beds with no headboards, just mattress and box spring on a metal frame with wheels, bunk beds that might have come from Sears Roebuck, a desk Mom bought at auction. I remember when my parents bought a second TV for the master bedroom, with a 21-inch screen, so much bigger than the screen in the huge console TV we'd all watched together in the den.
In 1953 nobody in the neighborhood had television. Dad bought the big wooden RCA with the huge cathode-ray tube sometime before 1955, and for a few weeks the whole neighborhood dropped by to watch Howdy Doody, or the six o'clock news, or maybe the Friday night fights (boxing, that was, sponsored by Gillette, maker of fine safety razors).
The first floor had the TV in the den with a wall of built-in bookshelves and a day-bed. The dining room was mostly furniture from the Cleveland house: a fine oak dining table that could seat four to more than twenty-four (the dining room topped out before the table ran out of leaves), a matching sideboard, and a glass display case full of china from grandma and from Mom's first marriage -- plus a cherry sideboard and hutch that my parents had bought while we lived on Forest Glen Road.
Both my parents had been divorced before, and we kids knew the names of their exes but never met them. Dad didn't have any children in that marriage and Mom's son had died in a tragic accident in 1939. I probably should write about the stories we heard about that, but not tonight -- it was so long ago and all of it hearsay.
The living room had another short wall of built-in bookcases, and Dad's stereo in a cabinet underneath them. A grand piano built in the very early 20th century that came from my Cleveland grandma's house, a modern sofa, a wing chair, two big overstuffed chairs. A table in front of the front window with a lamp or a vase of flowers or something. A huge corner speaker cabinet holding a tweeter, a midrange, and a woofer. End tables by some 1950s maker, and a coffee table that was really a leather chest, which over the years became substantially sway-backed from people sitting on it until Mom yelled at them to get up before they fell inside.
I feel like I haven't said anything, but more details come forward as I write. When we first moved in, the dining room, front hall and stairs were carpeted in a deep solid maroon. I don't really remember the wallpaper in the downstairs hall, but the dining room wallpaper had medallions the size of Dad's spread hand. The upstairs hall and the tiniest bedroom were papered in a pale gray with silver medallions much smaller and spaced out. Except for the striped wallpaper at my Philadelphia grandma's twin, this was the first wallpaper I'd seen, and I didn't like it. I don't recall the paper in any of the bedrooms, just that I asked if we could paint over it, and we did. My bedroom was yellow that first year, and then I painted it myself during high school, a pale blue. Or was it the other way around?
Sometime around 1960 or 1962 my parents redecorated, carpeting the dining room, stairs and hallways in a brown-and-beige pebble pattern. Was the front hall that, too? Or was there an oriental in the front hall? I wish I could remember -- maybe my brothers know. The living room always had an oriental rug over narrow-board hardwood. I know the rug came from grandma's and Mom always said they bought the house for its large living room that would take that rug. They picked a wallpaper that had pictures on it, little scenes of Japanese villages, people wearing kimonos, geishas with elaborate hairdos, horse-carts. I recall that vividly on the stairs but can't remember if it was also along the hallways -- and what about the dining room?
At the same time, they slipcovered the two big chairs and replaced the couch. And put a painting of a sailboat above the couch, painted by Mom's sister. I think Mom chose the fabric for the new couch to match the color of the water.
At the back of the living room was a screened porch with a slate floor. We used to eat there during the hottest days of summer -- this was well before air conditioning. I still remember when Dad's office got air conditioning, and he complained that the shift from the office to the hot car in the parking lot was giving him sinus trouble. But we never had more than an attic fan and canvas awnings to cool the house.
So much to remember. Writing about the house has brought back memories in every room. But I'm tired tonight, so will stop here. Maybe tomorrow I can write about some of what happened.
Thanks for reading. Love, light and laughter to you all.
