Tag: memories

This even makes cleaning fun.

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There’s only one thing that can make cleaning more than tolerable: an upcoming visit from a best friend I haven’t seen in years. And that’s exactly what’s on my horizon.

Jeannine and I met as apartment neighbors in our early twenties. Before marriages. Before kids. Before we had any idea what paths our lives would take.

We spent mornings drinking coffee over games of backgammon. We did our nails flipping through magazines, talking about everything and nothing. Sinead O’Connor played in the background before she had the bad taste to burn the flag. We were responsible for nothing but our cats, our day jobs, and the rent.

We bought jeans together when comfort wasn’t on the radar. When all clothes had to do was accentuate our positives to make it to the register.

Jeannine introduced me to Earth Day when it was in its infancy as a global movement. We spent the day at the National Mall in DC against the backdrop of the monuments, considering how – if we all just pitched in – we’d have a healthier planet. Before climate change went mainstream. When environmental damage seemed a few household recycling bins away from remediation. Before keeping the planet inhabitable became a politically polarizing undertaking.

And so today I found myself steam-cleaning rugs to freshen the house, and ready it for my much-anticipated guest. The excitement lightened the effort as I spent much of the time reminiscing about the fun we’d had in the past, and the new memories we’ll soon make.

If I were smart, I’d invite her up more often. Think of the projects I’d get done with all the extra energy!

No, I don’t want a seat at the counter.

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The slog through struggles to solve relationship issues, tease out how I really feel, or plan my future often unfolds and resolves in restaurants. It’s true. Along a spectrum from fast food to fine dining establishments, I find the change of venue helps me think best. In work and personal matters, getting out of my seat and into a new environment jump starts my brain.

You may recall from an earlier blog post my realization that everybody and his brother has published a book…except me. So when I began to find it hard to break from work long enough to find an optimal flow for writing, I revived my go-to: Dining Out.

It’s a two-fer remedy because it offers the stimulation of a divergence, and also demands I carve out a block of time for the experience. Now at least once a week, you can find me in a restaurant with my iPad, ordering breakfast, and writing. I go at times that aren’t busy, don’t overstay my welcome, and place a substantial order and tip so it’s fair for the restaurant, the server, and me.

I’m comfortable dining alone, since starting during my college days abroad. Some of my best journaling, life planning, and tough decisions have taken place at tabletops with emptied plates and coffee refills. Recently, though, an innocent question caused mental blips. The past two times I went to the diner closest to home, hosts greeted my approach with, “One?,” and followed my affirmative with, “Would you like to sit at the counter?”

It’s not the first time I’ve been asked, but I felt an unexpected interruption of emotion, neither welcome nor warranted. I declined and took a table, but felt irritation veering toward offense at what I believed to be a suggestion that I didn’t rate a table like those who dine with companions. After all, at a relatively empty restaurant, parties of three rarely get offers for counter seating. Still, my response seemed irrational, and led me to wonder what lay beneath.

I have very fond memories of sitting at the counter of this diner with my boys in their younger days. I often sat in the middle, one sweet child on each side of me, ordering chocolate chip pancakes for dinner. My earliest counter memory is sitting with my dad at a stop on the way home from Pittsburgh. It was just the two of us that night nearly fifty years ago, but I can close my eyes and be there today.

We were losing my favorite grandmother in a year filled with the loss of family members on both sides. My mother had flown back to Jersey, and my dad and I pulled up the rear, driving home. He needed a coffee and bathroom break on the long night drive. Sitting at the counter, I ordered an English muffin, and he asked if he could help me butter it. I was old enough not to need the help, but I remember feeling very small and very young. It was a simple offer filled with love and strength. I took the help.

He did such a great job. No one in the world butters bread like my dad. He butters generously, patiently waits for the butter to soften on the warm bread, then spreads it. He did it that way for me that night, and then topped it with grape jelly. To this day, English muffins with well-melted butter and grape jelly remind me of my dad taking care of me when we all needed it.

My favorite counter memories aren’t times when I’m alone. They’re times when I’m seated close to people I love, closer than I would be at a table, and enjoying their company in a different way.

My host’s counter offer reminded me that I’m flying solo. Though loneliness wasn’t along for the ride at my arrival, it glommed onto me at the host stand after our exchange. Couldn’t the host see the laptop in my hand and realize that although I need only one seat, I am accompanied by my work? And must I now, having been unwittingly and silently labeled “alone”, put my solitude on display at the counter for all to see, the single diner who can’t possibly need a table? I suppose there is sediment stirring in my otherwise clear waters.

This morning, though, was different. Rather than subject myself to another sparring of innocent inquiry and simmering sentiment, I set off to a diner a bit farther away. It’s larger, with an expansive counter in comparison, so I could have been setting myself up for more of the same.

I was greeted by a host who asked, “One or two?,” despite the fact that there was no one standing near me. “One,” I replied. He looked at me with my iPad case in hand. “I have a nice booth for you over here, and it even has an outlet so you can plug in.” Now that’s the kind of host we all need.

NOTE: My very accommodating host and serving staff were at Amphora Diner in Herndon, Virginia. Thanks, Amphora!

Getting Back to a Beatles Christmas

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My teenagers don’t like the Beatles and don’t even understand their attraction. It’s hard for me to bend my mind around, because my experience of the Beatles has been their timeless and global presence. They show up gloriously in so many memories.

Twist and Shout’s “Shake it up, Baby!” brings me back to a college luau with my besties. I sang along to Hey Jude as it played on repeat during car rides on winding roads in Europe. Lucy In the Sky With Diamonds played the first time I’d seen the Apple label spinning on a record player. I instantly loved the song, and begged my cousin to play it over and over while I danced around in the platform heels I’d taken from her two older brothers, both sporting the long hair look the Beatles inspired.

Perhaps I should have played the Beatles more for my own children, because at this point neither shows any interest, let alone the reverence the music deserves. It was with this reverence that I anticipated watching Get Back this holiday season. I expected to hear many of my favorites in the course of its seven plus hours. What I didn’t expect was how much I would enjoy watching their creative process.

While I’ve been a fan of their music, I’ve never explored the history of the Beatles as a band. At the beginning of the documentary, I couldn’t figure out how – or even if – they would pull off anything resembling success. Having allowed themselves around 14 days to write more than as many songs, and entering the scene with dour looks and a constantly present Yoko, I had my doubts. It was a bit of a nail biter.

By part three, though, as they worked out the final versions of some songs and were just beginning the writing of other recognizable classics, I got a lump in my throat as the messiness resolved. Lennon’s early reminder that he did his best work when their backs were against the wall was a testament to their comfort with the chaos, and the payoff it would yield. Creation has to include a level of tension, a willingness to explore without perfection, and an ability to disassemble and reassemble to bring out the best in anything. It was an unexpected treat to watch all of that transpire on the screen.

It was also a treat to watch producer George Martin’s interaction with the group. I had been impressed by his 1998 release of In My Life, featuring a cadre of celebrities covering Beatles classics in unexpected but undeniable style. Sean Connery’s voice on the title track was about the only way I could imagine that song getting better. Get Back hints at Martin’s ability to do that, though. His understanding and appreciation for the music, and his commitment was obvious. You could imagine him having enough of a handle on the essence of it to give it a second life.

It was personally fitting for me to watch Get Back during the holiday season. Some of my earliest Christmas memories include decorating the tree while listening to the Hard Days Night soundtrack. We usually listened to Christmas music, but when this album surfaced among the LPs, I liked it too much to take it off. I played it over and over again, dancing around to it.

Perhaps the best encapsulation of how much the Beatles have meant to the world and its people shows up in the movie “Yesterday”, which I caught on the big screen with a dear friend before the pandemic drove us from theaters. In it, a phenomenon leaves the world with no memory of the Beatles. Main character, Jack, however, recalls and begins to recreate their music to wild worldwide enthusiasm. When Jack learns that several others with memories know what he’s doing, he expects to be turned in as a fraud. But no – they wouldn’t do that. They’re grateful that someone is able to fill the world with the Beatles again.

It’s a construct that wouldn’t work for most other bands, but it completely makes sense when it comes to the music of the Fab Four. A world without their music is a world less grand. Having a bird’s-eye view of how it came to be is Get Back, and it’s worth the time to watch.

Note: Get Back is streaming on Disney Plus at the time of this writing.

How I learned the high price of lying.

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For young children, the line between what they hope is true and what they know is true can blur. This is probably a gradual process for most, but for me it came all at once, with a painful splash.

When I turned 5, I began kindergarten and my mom enrolled in college. Among the benefits to me was better access to recreational classes, like swimming. I already loved the water, but lessons made it even better. The pool even had diving boards. One was low, and the other went up forever.

At some point I learned to dive, and began diving off the low board repeatedly. My mom would watch me to my delight, though it must have been boring watching the same moves over and over.

One day I ran to her and told her she’d missed a great dive. She asked if I’d gone off the high diving board. I don’t know what possessed me, but I said, “Yes”. I immediately wished I could take it back. She said something like, “Oh, I missed it.” I don’t know if she prompted me to “do it again”, or if it was my own idea. Either way, for some reason, I thought that if I simply did the deed, my lie would become a truth. And so off I went, wet feet splattering water everywhere, toward the high dive.

My mom must have thought that faced with that prospect of doing anything from that height, I’d own up to my lie. Years later she shared that she had watched me go, thinking that I’d turn around at any moment. She watched as I climbed up the ladder…and up…and up…and got to the diving board, and stood at its edge. And she thought I’d turn around. But I never turned around. I was doing this. I dove off.

That dive was the most painful of my life. I attempted to do a shallow dive, but my chest and legs hit at an angle that made it feel like more of a belly flop. It felt like death by a thousand slaps. I resurfaced quickly but the pain made it hard to catch my breath. Eventually I did catch my breath. I swam over to my mom and confessed that it was actually my first time off the high dive.

It was a good lesson. Sometimes it’s easy to think that if we say things and believe them hard enough, they’ll be true. But it’s good to have a reminder that it doesn’t really work that way.

You don’t have to go far to make a memory.

Categories Memoir, Personal6 Comments on You don’t have to go far to make a memory.

Travel advertisements seem to always promise that you’ll make memories if you simply join them on this cruise or at that resort. I have made such memories, and would never trade them. But I’ve also noticed that many of my fondest memories come from everyday experiences. The slightest objects, smells, or sounds can bring us right back to a moment past. Here’s what I mean.

Sometime in the early 1970s, on a hot summer night, my dad introduced me to plums. We were huddled in our TV room – which we called the Blue Room because it was – you guessed it – blue. He sat down with plums and asked me if I wanted any. I said I didn’t think I would like them. He responded, as he did many times, “You don’t know unless you try.” So I tried. They were black plums, deep purple on the outside and deep red inside. They were juicy and they were delicious! They were so refreshing in the summer heat.

Over this past summer, that night came back to me, as if I were a small child in that blue room, talking to my dad. I’d bought a variety of plums and to my delight found that some were exactly the same as those I remembered. The second I cut into the first, saw the inside and smelled it’s sweetness, it all came back. It tasted like our smiles in the light of the television.

Cherries reminded me of my mom for many years, and still do. It’s because one summer she’d put a bunch of washed cherries in a big metal bowl, we took them out on the very green grass of our front yard, and she taught me how to eat them while we picnicked. Now they also remind me of my son, who also enjoys them.

Grape Kool-Aid reminds me of childhood days at the beach with my mom. She’d fill up a Tropicana glass gallon jar full of ice and grape Kool-Aid, and I would help mix in the sugar. The cold jar beaded condensation by the time we got to the water’s edge and spread our towels. It was too heavy for me to lift, but she would pour it into the cup for me. I loved the sound of the ice rattling against the glass jar, and how it tasted when the ice was melting, watering it down. I still love watering down flavored drinks, like Gatorade, and even orange juice.

Kiwi reminds me of my college friends. I had never had a kiwi before college. My friends got one or two to cut up and try. We all decided we liked them, even though they looked pretty gross. Because I was extremely opinionated and largely unfiltered in college, I am sure I said exactly that upon trying it. But when I eat kiwi now, I always think of the girls we were and the women we were becoming on that day.

Touching fresh mint springs brings me back to a tender scene with my grandfather. He would make iced tea and add fresh mint from his garden. I remember him bending down and asking me sweetly in his Italian accent if I’d like some. Sometimes when I drink something with fresh mint, I’m back at his summer home by the bay, the breeze blowing through the house from front to back, the hydrangeas on either side of the front door, and the pea gravel back yard where we sat enjoying those summer days.

Anything made of Mother of pearl reminds me of my grandparents in New Jersey, and of being at their home as a child. My grandfather had a business that made buttons. They mixed shell scraps into the cement for the sidewalk at their home. I thought the sidewalk, which ran along the house and next to a big apple tree, was beautiful. I would crouch down to trace the shell scraps with my fingers, little half-moon cut-outs where buttons had been successfully punched out at the factory. Other pieces were broken buttons damaged in the process. They were shiny and reflected light unlike the chalky-feeling outer shells. I marveled at the layers of shell that could be seen in some pieces. When my mom told me that they were scraps that weren’t needed after the buttons came out, I couldn’t fathom how anything so beautiful and interesting could be unwanted. I don’t have mother of pearl in my sidewalk, but I do have some picture frames that bring me joyful memories of those days.

Creeping phlox in my garden remind me of another grandparent. I think of her when their flowers emerge in my garden each spring. My grandmother planted long borders of them along one side of her sand-colored brick house. We would sometimes visit the home in Pennsylvania for Easter, and would be met by a long row of neat, mounded pink and purple blossoms visible as we approached over the hill. Everything about my grandmother’s house was very neat. Yes, even the creeping phlox.

Her husband – my grandfather – was just as neat. His garage was literally as clean as the inside of the house. Every tool shined and had a place on peg boards or in drawers. The floor was a shiny gray. Though the house and garage were relatively small, there was space around everything, and no clutter to speak of. Having lived through the Depression, they lived out the “waste not, want not” principle. Sometimes when I look at my own garage I have an urge to get everything out, wash it, paint the floor a shiny gray, and find homes for all that remains. Alas, I came of age with the saying, “He who dies with the most toys wins,” and my garage reflects that. So it’s a little easier said than done. But a girl can dream!

Music transports me to many places and experiences from years passed, but in a different way than objects. I don’t think there’s anything else that can move me across a variety of decades in the way music can. And there are both special days and every-days that surface for me. If I give in to the memory as the music plays, I find that my mind moves rapidly on to related memories. It’s as if I’m at a buffet, and there’s just one table after another of deliciousness to choose from.

Hearing Styx’s “The Best of Times” through the car radio, with its own nostalgic quality, I was immediately back at my cousin’s wedding as he married his high school sweetheart. I was in that room dancing and watching them dance, surrounded by cousins and aunts and uncles and other relatives that I loved then, and love still though some have passed on. As I gave in to the memory, it shifted. I was at my own wedding many years later when that groom was a guest watching me get married. Then I was at a pool in Las Vegas celebrating my aunt’s birthday with our families, yet another wonderful experience.

We have so many precious gifts locked away in our brains, just waiting to be brought back to life. We can miss them on days when we move too quickly through the logistics of just getting things done. We should give ourselves the time to pause in the present, and to enjoy our experiences. Then we not only make new memories, but we are sometimes rewarded by moments of unique beauty past.

A blooming pink rose on piano keys

You never know where you’ll find some heart and soul.

Categories Memoir5 Comments on You never know where you’ll find some heart and soul.

When I was five, my family walked across the street to our neighbor’s house for a party. The homeowners were a young couple. The man’s name was Neil. I only vaguely remember what he looked like, and less about his wife on that day. I don’t recall going back afterwards, although we may have, children’s memories being what they are.

What I do remember is that Neil had a piano, and he let me sit down and play it. In a matter of minutes, Neil taught me to play one part of “Heart and Soul”, and he played the other. Then we switched parts. Those minutes must have appeared completely inconsequential to observers. They were not. The making of music with black and white keys reached right into my heart.

Before I go on, please know that I did not become a professional musician. Don’t wait for me to tell you when I hit the big time or about all the lives I’ve touched. It didn’t happen that way for me. This is just a story of a girl and a piano, and how an encounter with Neil and his piano cleared an enchanted, winding path that I still revisit from time to time.

After the Heart and Soul experience, my parents made a stretch investment. They sank $400 into a gently used Winter piano and signed me up for group lessons at our community college. But I hated practicing things like, “My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean” and “Mary Had a Little Lamb”. What was a bonnie anyway? In class, the short electric keyboard heard through headphones didn’t sound anything like the piano at my house or at Neil’s house. I wanted to play songs that sounded big and had lots of notes. I wanted to make real music.

My teacher, an accomplished Romanian concert-pianist, tried to keep me on one-handed scale exercises and one-clef songs. Finally, though, she broke the news to my parents: I had too good an ear for my own good, and not enough discipline to follow her lessons. They were wasting their money. And so, for the next six years, we dusted, polished, and walked past a silent piano in our living room.

Then in seventh grade I met new friends at a new school. They played piano…really well. Watching them play, I longed to make music again, and declared myself ready for lessons. My parents’ response can be summed up as, “Been there, done that, done pouring money into this.” They reminded me that I should feel free to break out any of the several books they’d bought last go-round, and start practicing. It was a reasonable and understandable response. And I took the advice.

After seeing the musical “Annie” and loving all the music, I got the score, and set about teaching myself to play. I broke out the old books. I learned the notes, scales, and how to read the symbols. I had a good memory, so I wrote notes to guide me, learned a few measures, memorized them, and moved on to the next measures. I spent hours each night at the piano. Eventually, I had taught myself to play most of the songs comfortably. So I asked again: Could I have lessons?

My parents agreed to give it another go with private lessons from a friend’s teacher. Each week he would put new progressively difficult sheet music on the stand, and tell me that frankly…truly…honestly…he thought this piece was beyond my skills…but maybe I could give it a go. The psychology worked. By the following week, I had learned and memorized the piece, and we’d start the same dance over again.

This continued for several years, during which I learned my favorite pop songs, show tunes, and all manner of classical including Chopin waltzes. I still didn’t have the patience for music theory, sight-read poorly, and didn’t get a thrill from public performance, so I was never going to make any money at this thing. Still, I experienced incalculable hours of enjoyment, escape, and accomplishment during that time. It was something of an addiction. When eventually my teacher shared that he had taken me as far as he could, we tried to find an advanced teacher, but could not.

Without new weekly challenges, my mind became occupied with other high school concerns. The passion remained, despite playing only occasionally. I nixed the opportunity to go to a college where the admissions officer sneered when asked of the possibility of taking music electives. I chose a college that had a recognized music and drama school. I’d agreed not to major in music as a condition of my parents footing my very expensive college tuition, but there was no way I was spending four years at a school that didn’t see its value. And while I didn’t take lessons, I did visit practice rooms from time to time.

In my senior year, that Winter piano moved to my college apartment. It has followed me to four other homes since and is still one of my favorite possessions. I’ve played other pianos in many places over the years, including a digital Yamaha in our home that can make anyone sound like a one-man-band. The most amazing experience was playing a Bösendorfer grand piano left unlocked for a concert by some happy accident. It was big. Its sound was bigger. I had a lump in my throat from the beauty of it.

Still, the sound and feel of my Winter is warmest. The sound of my Winter is the sound of my life. It has spent so many hours with me for pleasure and for comfort. I played Christmas carols by twinkling tree lights, and welled tears of joy hearing my children practice on the same keys I loved so well. I played to heal when I was devastated, tears streaming down my face onto keys. I played when I was frustrated, and life was complicated, and nothing made much sense. Many times after playing, my head rested gently on the music stand, one hand on a key block, the other tracing the grain in the polished golden wood or fiddling across keys without any pattern or point. Those were moments well-spent, and gratitude for distractions or memories remembered.

A few years ago, after decades of my own version of carpool karaoke to anything that came on the radio, I decided to take voice lessons. I was not a natural. Still, by some good fortune and destiny, my teacher introduced some theory as part of our lessons. After decades of not caring, I was finally interested in how musical phrases came together to convey different emotions, and how the patterns and structure of a piece could feel predictable or unpredictable to a listener. It was fascinating. Although I wasn’t able to continue the lessons and focus on theory, I may resume some day. I have a feeling that when my nest is empty, I’ll again look for comfort in the keys. This time, I’ll be interested enough in theory to experience playing in a new way.

Would I ever have stumbled into this had we not gone to our neighbor’s house that day? What if we’d gone, but Neil hadn’t stepped over to help me play? Every day we meet people and have seemingly innocuous interactions. Sometimes we don’t know whether or how they touch our lives. I’m sure no one at that party understood that they’d witnessed the exchange of a gift that would keep giving throughout my life.

And what if my parents had simply gone home from that party and thought of it as an entertaining evening? Instead they discussed how they could nurture me, looked through classifieds to get an instrument, found teachers, and drove me to and from lessons for years. What if they’d sold the piano when I was seven, impatient to use the space for other things and recoup at least some of their losses given my allergic reaction to structured teaching? Surely I wouldn’t have taught myself those songs from Annie, or went on to learn so many others.

We can never know how our everyday actions may shape the future for one or for many. But if we lead with our heart, lean in with our soul, we do make beautiful music together.