Just about every Friday night, at least three of our grandkids come over for Dinner. I'm typically a bit late ... not always easy getting out from the office with visitors. Yesterday was much like other Fridays. This week, I experimented with a Barley Soup with Tomato and a sisterhood of vegetables ... pre-stir fried in some olive oil to give them a trace of smokiness. 5 of my 6 grandspawn are vegetarians and their parents have memories of being served savory stuffed peppers ... stuffed with a bread pudding with too much green pepper in it to make it sweet ... these were cooked up by my Father with just a trace of snarky humor related to his grandkids' vegetarianism. The tomato/barley was pretty good. One of the ten-year olds tossed in some laudatory superlatives ... She tries very hard. I, also, contributed some mildly candied sweet potatoes with walnuts and an experimental Vegan Pesto ... using toasted sunflower seeds instead of my usual cashews ... ?? ... it was OK to Good. Eaters liked it. M inherited the rest of dinner except for a salad brought by "our baby" ... my office partner ... and mother of a 15 yo and two nearly 10 year old twins.
But all of this brings back memories. My parents enjoyed to cook and to feed others. Really good memories of them pleasantly puttering around in kitchen. I don't recall any tension until the days when my Dad would sit at the stove and watch either M or I cook ... shaking his head on the horizontal ... "Nah ... I wouldn't do that." I remember tension, as well, when my Father's bride began slipping into the fog of Alzheimer's. Like my Dad, it wouldn't quite feel right or manly to use a recipe ... it would be something similar to having to shut off a circuit on the fuse box before changing a light switch . "You just gotta be careful," he would say, "slow and easy."
I have many other memories ... some of which are not .... some of which are not memories, that is.
One of my favorites has my WWII Soldierboy Papa carrying his four spawn on his shoulders to the beach ... 4-5 blocks, away. My three sibs would be on one shoulder (maybe? aged 12, 9 and 8) and I'd be ensconced in regal solitude upon the other. As folk say: 'Them Dogs don't Hunt' ... "It doesn't compute." .... Put simply? It's a memory that ... isn't a memory but a pleasant narcissism.
Another has to do with dropping a watermelon down a flight of stairs ... coming home from shopping ... heading up to the apartment where we lived about my religious leader Grandpa Adolph ... or Abraham, as he became known after WWII. My two Sisters, not my Brother, and I each believe that it was that person who dropped the sacred watermelon ... kbump-kbump-kbump-k-squoosh down the stairs ... mussing Daddy's Divine Dander, lighting the soldierboy's fuse. There, I figure, I have a one third probability of it being an accurate memory.
The others that come to mind come from repetitive dreams. The memory part is right on ... I have had these curious component parts in Dreams for Two Quarters, if not more.
1. After we left Brooklyn, Dad's work as a Printer took him to Toledo and then to Providence, In both places, we lived in old houses. In the Dreams, there is a staircase that goes way to the top of the house and then a secret passageway that lead to a loft space some steps down -- where old things were kept. Others might be able to look up to that space, though I was not typically visible. .... Hidden parts of myself? Aloneness? Old Things? In the Providence House, I would, indeed, develop film and print negatives in a dark spot under the eaves. But not the same place!
2. Again, in one of these houses, there was a large glassed room ... the kind that might exist in an Old Mountain Resort ... with outside kind of chairs and tables .... maybe 40'x80' ... That room was associated with happiness and playfulness and yellow sunlight, though I cannot recall bumping into anyone I knew. It was easily accessible. Indeed, I've spent many Dreams going in and out of that space.
3. Then there's the dualism that misses the point. ... I think it's younger than the others ... maybe since M and I lived in New Hampshire ... 40 years, ago, with the older kids ... We lived just in front of a Beaver Pond in Beaver Hollow ... very cramped quarters for two parents, 6 and 7 year old sons, and a St. Bernard who wanted to play with the Beavers ... Alas, dogs can't seem to dive to find the submarine entrance to Beaver Lodges. We were there living at a residential facility for very bright schizophrenic and autistic adolescents. Freezing valley in the Winter of the Oil Embargo when only crud was available ... crud that would not infrequently fail to fire the furnace. Saint B. Kazimierza would keep the adults warm -- or was it herself -- by sleeping between us under the covers.
It was after leaving there and moving to Philadelphia in 1974 that in many dreams, I would need to get to a town ... over hill and dale. The access roads were not all that easy to find and up a short bit of the Mountain to a parallel road. If I went right and missed the left hand turn, I'd get caught in a development full of split levels or something. I would always find the house ... a country kind of New Hampshire house. Small outbuildings, all set back off the road. On the left of the house was a bumpy, not very well paved, heavily treed road that went up and over the hills for maybe something less than ten miles. On the right was a clearer path ... a smooth road. I always tended to go up on the left more primitive road but I might return with either. I have long enjoyed getting lost while driving, hoping and allowing for new discoveries. Nah! These roads just went up to this town ... and I was gonna come back. Most recently, I was coming down the mountain and a pickup truck and a Semi were getting onto the road from my left. I passed the pickup but motioned for the Semi to go ahead. I was exhausted and, indeed, I've been tired for the past several months .... Not enough Thyroxin flowing through me we'll see what last week's scan shows ... something? I couldn't keep my head up and was laying down towards my left. Not easy to do that in a Left-hand-drive car and the last Right-hand-drive car we owned was a 1973 Citroen DS-23 that came via England to New Zealand to States. Couldn't be that one, except in a Dream, for we sold that one to a crazed Steeplechaser who mounted horns on the front, drove it disrespectfully and totaled it. I might add: I've never gone into that house on the bottom of the hill, on either side of which a road ascends and remember nothing of the destination. Life? A journey without a destination ....
I have many real memories, as well. Playing in the Last Quarter is full of Memories ... Mine and M's.
Tomorrow is 48 years since 22 December 1965 when we married. A Long FFFFFFine Time, as the kids might almost say. And, still, I've never stopped by at the house on the bottom of the hill or held memories of the end of the road.
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