Words, wool, daydreaming, cooking, crafts, and books (or do those count as “words” too?)
Life continuously seems stuck between the old and the new. New glass in an old rehabbed building reflects the old weathered red brick of an even older building. We live, we learn, we constantly rebuild our lives. Even sinkholes let us rebuild. I could take a ring road around the city, but I’d only be stuck in traffic, missing the morning light as it warms the bricks and makes the windows dazzle. (This picture was taken last year on March 17th, on an earlier St. Patrick’s Day).
In a cardboard box. This last box was kind of a grab bag of the years from the 1970s through 1985:
I’m just grateful there were no records from this decade, shudder. Oh the white suits, teeth, and perfect hair!
Do you find that scent can transport you through time in an instant?
It’s been another day with time to clean out closets, organize things (oh, and unload more boxes my Father packed), and I’ve been tripping the scents fantastic….
My (vintage 1983) bottle of Charlie is now with my other perfume bottles [link to the cheesy/classic ad campaign here]. It’s probably a billionty proof by now. I haven’t found my bottle of Ritz perfume (sadly) or the Windsong perfume. It would be kind of fun to find this Avon perfume bottle, with its kitten on a ball of yarn. It was the worst design ever if you wanted to use the perfume inside the bottle. I think there’s a spot in the old family home which is permanently scented by repeated dropping of the rolling, circular container of Amber.
I also unearthed a bottle of Kolnisch Wasser No. 4711. It still smells lovely, although it’s old enough that I don’t think they sell the flat glass bottles for travelers anymore. I could be wrong, of course.
Meanwhile, I’ve been poking around online, and managed to find the packaging of the perfumed talc that family members used to have. I don’t think I could smell that without invoking ghostly memories.
Today I’ve been going through boxes from my childhood home. I’ve sorted out nicknacks/dust catchers:
Such a lovely surprise to see Walburga Attenberger’s little learning book in among the old newspapers from my high school (we had a Typing Olympics… I never knew). I still love the rabbit following after the hunter and his dog on the Strawberry page.
Thanks for putting this in box 1: I’ve been looking for this book for the past 15 years. I didn’t know you’d kept this memory safe, along with the follies of my pre-teen and teenage years. I’m looking forward to the next box (philosophy encyclopedias — what was I thinking?).
* ??? mismatched shoes from the dolls I gave away? Really?
Sometimes, moments surface like the hopes and dreams of the past. While walking around town one day, after a hair appointment, I found an old car showroom suddenly filled with a car from the past, as though ready to be shown to a new customer.
Beautiful chrome, perfect tail lights, and the chrome logo for the Impala. I’m not a car buff, so I can’t tell you exactly when it would have been new. But when I got home I was pleased to see the mix of car repair shop across the street, 1940s row homes, and modern cars reflected in the window on the Impala’s body.
I don’t know if the car is genuinely for sale, if this is part of a body shop’s advertisement, or if this is a car enthusiast’s dream shelter for his restored beauty. I’m left with a daydream/story of the past being trapped under glass, unaware that visor mirrors are available on the driver’s side too, women don’t wear white gloves much, and most stations outside of New Jersey make you pump your own gasoline.
The egg cup seen in this photo has been around my home (either at my parents’ house or here) since we brought it back from Germany when I was 2. When it was freshly painted, you could clearly see a winking girl with gold, plaited hair and a little ruffle around the neck. Now, you mostly see the wink.
The every day plate fits in with the PS4 North and green theme. It was nice having a day when photography was possible with less flash.
The media keeps talking about the line between the boomers and the rest of us. I just tripped over the line between me and people born in the 80s. A friend just told me she never heard of Hall & Oates.
This is like catching a glimpse of yourself in a mirror while you’re talking with someone and thinking “Good GOLLY I’m short!” or, alternately, “when did I suddenly get tall?” Think I’m gonna just trawl teh Internet for some goofy, fun tunes. If you want come along on my nostalgia trip, visit: I Can’t Go for That (No Can Do), Out of Touch, and Kiss On my List. While we’re at it, who wants to play Chinese Jump Rope? Anyone else’s inner child need some exercise?
Oh Tannenbaum
To everyone who reads this: I hope your holidays are happy, festive, healthy, and safe.
I’m checking my list and getting ready for annual Christmastime events. This will probably be the start of blog silence for a bit. You can’t blog while you’re eating at your parent’s dinner table (at least not politely). If we follow last year’s pattern — there will be Christmas Eve services, possible mad dashes into gift shops, and hoped-for meetings with far-flung relatives who have all gathered to effectively transmit colds across the eastern seaboard.
Drama is added to the season by friends inconvenienced by storms in Oregon (one can only hope they get to safely continue their travels). I also know people in the Northeast who are still without power…hopefully they get service started again soon.
Here’s hoping that everyone gets where they’re supposed to be. That the lights of the menorah stir feelings of hope. And that everyone who is celebrating Christmas gets to spend some time thinking about the phrase, “All is calm, all is bright…” in between all the hectic minutes leading up to 6 AM (or 5 AM if the children are like those I know) on Christmas day.
The construction crew down the block is listening to “All I Want for Christmas (is You)” and “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree” and other music that sounds tinny from this distance. (I kind of wish they’d do Adam Sandler’s song instead.)
PS: If you’re looking for some crafty ideas for wrapping gifts — people who sew enjoy getting some extra fabric wrapped around their presents; brown paper bags cut up and put “wrong side” out, with stamped designs on the outside can be festive; and if you have used wrapping paper, it can be used again.
I grew up in a house that’s hard to define as part of the 60s and 70s, if you believe television’s focus on the Bandstand [the music's hopping... ] era. Mom loved folk music, even minoring in it in college. Dad loved classical. So the sounds of my childhood were filled with Brunnhild dying on a pyre, the Kingston Trio, and Peter Paul and Mary (Puff the Magic Dragon was one of my favorites). Mom was almost always in a choir, and I have fond memories of her practicing at our upright piano.
YouTube (and Nick Reynold’s promotion to the heavenly choir from his role in the Kingston Trio) is bringing back the songs Mom hummed to, while she looked wistfully at the air in front of her while washing dishes. I can even see the kitchen we had before we moved, down to the little catchall nesting bowls that had a glass lid at the top of the tower, filled with wine corks [a slow growing collection for a corkboard], rubber bands, pins, twine.
A favorite song I remember her singing is a wistful, haunting melody called “Four Strong Winds”. Here it is, sung by The Brothers Four. I look at the audience singing along, and realize how young my mother was before she even met my father. And even though she didn’t go to UCLA I couldn’t help looking for her singing along too. More audience signing for their version of 500 Miles (from the 1960s). btw, the Hooters also covered this song (1980s), and it is very different.
I’m in a choir now that’s singing socially relevant music. Kind of a modern spin on all those songs that were background during food prep or while I did my homework on the dining room table. Thanks, Nick, for the music. You really did make your light shine.
Greetings from the temporally challenged.
Recently I’ve been haunted by the small city in Northeastern PA in which I grew up. Part of me is convinced, even when I’m waking, that I could turn down a corner is this large city in another state, and I’ll find the street I lived on when I was 9. I know that’s possibly kind of sad. Maybe it’s because I read too much time travel fiction when I was a kid– Why Have the Birds Stopped Singing, Half Magic, books by Andre Norton, and A Chill in the Lane. (The last one was a required read in 7th grade and gave me screaming nightmares.)
The street that I remember really does qualify as a ghost, in a way. Anyone else out there haunted by “what isn’t now”?
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