All posts in Influences

I look to my left and see Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer, a stuffed animal with a cute red ribbon around his neck. He always sits on that book, centered in the window of my parent’s cabin. Another Rudolph rests on a shoebox to the side of the window. My mom likes Rudolphs.

We write so many articles about how to feed our children nutritious food. How will we coax our children to eat their veggies? How will we prevent Flaming Hot Cheetos from becoming a breakfast staple?

No one seems to write articles about convincing parents to eat fruits and veggies, though. I watch in disbelief as my mom and dad pour chocolate soy milk on their chocolate cheerios.  My mom wanders around the house carrying chocolate chip cookies to nibble as she goes. Honey Bunches of Oats with Almonds is about as healthy as it gets in my folk’s house.

I throw rotting veggies from the bottom fridge drawer under bushes in the backyard’s overgrown garden.  I resist efforts to feed me chocolate muffins. I try to duck endless low-cost, high-fat American restaurant meals.

But in the end, a parent’s gotta do what a parent’s gotta do, I guess.

“List each of your aunts and uncles and tell one thing about each of them,” the slip of paper says.

Yesterday I did blood relatives. Today I’ll tackle the spouses.

I’ll also recommend family reunions. Whether you are journaling or not, I strongly recommend to readers that they put together a family reunion if feasible. After we grow up, cousins disappear, scattering to jobs in distant places. The family events that brought us together are complicated by geography, work schedules and finances.  Setting aside a regular summer week-end can help us to combat this separation and reconnect.

The spouses on my mother’s side:

Marvin — He always had a beer in his hand in my memory. Loud drinking happened when we visited, not the norm in my life but something my dad did seem to enjoy.

Gordon — He ate the stuffing without complaints, worked hard, and helped raise four fine cousins. I wish I could have made it to his birthday party this year.

Larry — A very sharp guy, my dad enjoyed drinking and analyzing the world with Larry. They did some real thinking together.

Lynn — A good and thoughtful man, I always liked the image of Mary riding off on his motorcycle to a new life.

Yvonne — I never knew this aunt, and only vaguely recall an attractive blonde woman from my early childhood. She battled demons for a long time.

My dad’s side:

Marie — She held down the fort in Houston when I was at Rice and housing prices collapsed, giving me a chance to meet this warm and welcoming woman at last.

Orvis’s wife — Orvis married but I never met his wife  or wives.

Jack? — To my cousin, I apologize that I’m not sure of your dad’s name, but I never recall meeting him.

Betty — On my life list of regrets, I’ll add the fact that I never flew out to Reno to see Betty when Sam was a baby. She knitted a little green blanket for Sam and I know she would have loved to see the baby. But with the new baby, new life, and all those details to manage, somehow I never put that one together. Betty came out every year of my childhood, bearing gifts and love. (Hippie teenagers did not seem to appeal to her, however.)

Merrill’s partner — No one knew about that side of Merrill’s life, except probably Delois who kept his secrets.

Susie — A likable woman with an Eastern-European, straightforward manner, she always seemed to be working.

Roger — Intelligent and thoughtful, I enjoyed his visits. My folks liked him a lot and he remained my uncle always, even after his divorce from Delois.

Bill — Bill vanished after his divorce from Delois.  I had fun hanging out at their house when I was little and his oldest boy gave me an Elvis album. I think we might have been crushing a bit on one another.

Sybil — An  honorary aunt, the woman who married my Uncle Roger gets included in this list because she visited us, we visited her, and I had a number of genuine conversations with this physician-aunt, who seemed able to control the colonel in Uncle Roger.

I broke format in this post and made a few thumbnails larger than the others. In truth, many of my aunts and uncles were mere thumbnails in my life, but a few have played bigger parts. The family reunions of the recent past have helped, giving me a chance to talk to aunts and uncles as an adult.  For maybe 16(?) years now, my maternal family has been getting together every two years. I know cousins, aunts and uncles much better than I would have otherwise. We party on, filling in recent gaps at picnic tables and lake floats.

I cannot recommend reunions highly enough.

 

Uncle Eddie and cousins Melodi, Carol, Dustina and Jessica at a reunion.

“List each of your aunts and uncles and tell one thing about each of them,” the slip of paper says.

Hmmm. My grandparents were rather prolific and I’m not sure about reader interest here in my family members, but the paper has spoken. I’ll do blood relatives first, spouses later. If you are journaling, this is the topic for the day. Please feel free to take a whack at it.

On my mother’s side:

JoEllen — She painted amazing seascapes and landscapes, many-colored strokes of chalk that could take you right to Pleasant Valley or the Oregon coast.

Patsy — She never learned to sauté the onions in the stuffing, but she relieved my mom of all but the most meager holiday duties (canned yams baked with butter and marshmallows) for many years, ensuring that we had holiday traditions.

Mary — She rescued Macaroni at a past family reunion, giving a big, smelly, homeless black dog a second chance.

Eddie — His personal life often seemed inexplicable and I have sometimes felt curious about his personal moral code.

My dad’s side:

Willis — He wrote poetry and made violins, and I would have liked to have known him better.

Orvis — I saw  him once in an airport with my dad, but he did not recognize my dad. My dad wished him Merry Christmas as he stared in bafflement at dad, me and my friend Emel.

Ada — She struggled greatly with personal demons and an unfortunate marriage.

Vernon — He looked like a movie star from his time, handsome and debonair with a bit of the swashbuckler about him.

Merrill — He walked with long strides and had no idea how to talk to kids, making him a particularly likeable if mostly absent uncle.

Arthur (Art) — A bit bombastic, he lucked out in his marriage to Aunt Susie, a patient and tolerant woman.

Delois — Hoarding complicated her life enormously, but she always had style, grace and wit and retained vestiges of a young beauty  until the end.

My maternal family has been integral to my life, my paternal family mostly absent. I was glad to recently rediscover my cousin Joan from dad’s side, a large group of relative strangers now mostly long-gone.  I did know Vernon and Delois who visited sometimes. My father’s twin, Vernon, came out with my Aunt Betty every year during my childhood. Joan is the only paternal cousin I’d recognize. Those other cousin-strangers could be in Timbuctoo for all I know. Another maternal family reunion is coming up this month, one more large gathering by Mineral Lake. I’m excited to see everyone.

 

I almost put this slip back. “Too big,” I thought, “not to mention too personal.” But how do you write a biography without getting personal? The size of this task could be daunting.  I see my life as a factor tree and I am well out onto some branch or another, other paths left long and irretrievably behind. I also see my life as a game of sorts where each play leads me toward my own unique outcome, no takesy backsy allowed. In the words of a First Aid Kit song, My Silver Lining,

“Regret, remorse, hold on, oh no I’ve got to go
There’s no starting over, no new beginnings, time races on
And you’ve just gotta keep on keeping on
Gotta keep on going, looking straight out on the road.”

We just play.

Reflections of Life

www.topxgames.com

I may stay on this topic for a few days, picking and choosing through time. Let’s start with the red nasturtium. I think I was about three years old, maybe a little younger.

I was visiting my Aunt Patsy’s house from the apartment in Milton; we did not yet live across the street from her. My aunt had an apple tree in the center of her yard, surrounded by bright, many-colored nasturtiums. I happily ran outside and stuck my nose in a beautiful red flower. I’m sure I screamed. Within a minute, my eyes had swollen shut, the world had gone black, and I hurt like never before in my short memory. People were putting ice on my head.

After that, I inspected all flowers, bushes and trees. I never trusted nature as a child.  Who knew what lurked in the crevasses?

A new category of danger had entered my world. The idea of danger had solidified in my mind. I knew what danger looked and sounded like. I hate buzzing noises. I’m still a bee woose. At sixteen, a girlfriend and I abandoned my car on a hill to wait for a bee to leave. We thought it was pretty funny at the time — she at least had a valid allergy excuse — but I have always known I’d have to steel myself in a similar situation on a busy road. I’m confident I’d manage without doing anything stupid, but …

As my girls got older, I could see I was creating a new generation of bug wooses. Every so often I’d feign bravery to help them out, but I did not manage the consistency needed to convince them that small life forms, weighing about 1/544,310 what they did, were not a threat, given the absence of allergies. For one thing, I grew up without depth perception and there was always a real chance I’d swing that fly swatter and miss. I’d been known to miss a 2 inch millipede.

I used to give the boy across the street a dollar to kill bees and wasps for me. No doubt he thought this was the best deal in world. I’m sure I was creating some unfortunate, sexual stereotypes too. What!? A buzzing bug!? Is Ted home? Where is Captain America when we need him?

I’m older. I’m wiser. I’m saner. I can swing that swatter if it’s essential. But that bee in the red nasturtium may be my first solid memory and I became a considerably more careful girl after that brief, dark encounter.

For readers: What is your first memory? Or one of your most powerful early memories? That might be today’s journal or calendar entry.