I remember what I wore - a navy A-line linen dress with a short white same fabric cape with blue piping and navy, fabric covered buttons. I remember the size 4.5 AA shoes with the tiny heel that G'ma and I went into The City to buy.... because all the other Long Island girls apparently had larger feet than I did. I remember doing The Twist. I remember that I was the first girl he asked to dance.
He took someone else to Prom. He married someone else. We were all friends. It seemed that everywhere you turned, someone was crushing on him, big time. It's one of the cornerstones of my higher education in Oceanside. I haven't had this much fun thinking about my youth in a long time.
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I'm going through old photos, throwing out negatives and duplicates, sending classroom and team friends to the appropriate child, losing the landscapes entirely. I have pictures of places - I'd be hard pressed to say where or when they were taken.
But the pictures of Murphy the Wonder Dog, of the Cuters when they were small, of the living rooms and kitchen and hallways of their lives - these have been appreciated by the spouses and offspring. Queen T thinks Big Cuter was adorable (he was) and FlapJilly is obsessed with the dog, and everybody likes pictures that tell a story.
I had lots of stories as I sorted. No music, no podcast, just the photos and the memories kept me occupied for hours.
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I was repotting the indoor plants that I've (most recently) killed, in the vain hope that fresh surroundings will save them. Yes, I am the only person on the planet who was unable to keep a peace plant alive. Too much water? Too little water? Too much sun? Too little? I tried it all, as the advice givers shook their head at this obvious flaw in my character.
It was a messy task, and the soil needed sweeping.... only there wasn't a broom handy and I was too achy to go searching for one and then I looked to my right and saw one of my heirlooms
The metal dustpan hung on an S hook on the wall adjacent to the stairs to G'ma and Daddooooo's basement. I claimed it as my own when we cleaned out their house, and there it was, at my elbow, on top of the red and orange shelves we painted one boring winter afternoon when my siblings and I were young... which is another heirloom.
My parents and I communed as I scraped and scooped and then deposited the contents over the fence, into the wild. I could hear Daddooooo wondering why I don't compost (no one can assure me that animals won't nest in it) and see G'ma gently pruning the tips of the gomphreda.
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There's a reason people keep stuff. It's for found moments like these. My friends can
Nice walk down memory lane for you. Source of wonder at the tiny shoes for me.
ReplyDeleteI was so little. I didn't fit into Junior sizes and kid clothes were babyish. And shoes, oh how I cried.
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