Tag: memories

LAST DAY OF SUMMER

(In the last few days during a late spring cleaning and efforts to eliminate “stuff” I have collected in my adulthood, I came across some of my stories I wrote as a young teenager that my mother lovingly kept because she always believed in me and what I could be. I hadn’t read them since I wrote them when I was 13.)

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Last Day of Summer

Arising at dawn I ran outside, the cool mist of early morning causing me a slight chill, I briskly paced myself on the ruff dewy clumps of grass that had found life here and there in the sand leading to the water’s edge. It was my last day on the island and I didn’t want to miss watching the golden halo arise from the sea. I could see the seagulls, a chorus of sharp squeals, snowy bodies and vibrant flapping of wings swooping and diving over my head.

The quickening pace of the deep blue waves splashing, splashing against the dark wet sand seemed to invite me to join them in their early morning frolic.

I quickened my pace toward the beckoning waves feeling the moist sand coming between my bare toes giving me a feeling of being one with it. Giving in to it.

The strong waves broke against my body as I hurled myself into the sea. I swam to almost where the waves beyond were wearing their white caps. Ha! Just to entertain me on this, my final swim I thought. Just for me.

In the late afternoon with only an apple in my pocket I traveled barefoot one more time along the seaweed clad shore watching a sailboat now and then skim along on the horizon.

Placing myself, after retracing my footprints back up the beach, on an weathered old great piece of driftwood, I sat to dine on the contents of my pocket while quietly watching the waves come and go, come and go, kissing the shore and then disappearing over and over again.

Eventually the waves took on a scarlet hue as the flame in the sky flickered, flickered and as slowly as it arose from the sea at dawn, it slowly ebbed. I watched. I watched and remembered my wonderful summer by the sea until God blew out the candle that lights the day and all was dark and still.

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SWISH….SWISH

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My uncontrollable memory tail has lashed me about recently, taking me to places I would rather not go.

First, the mixed circumstances of joy in reconnecting with a cousin and of sorrow whipping me backward in dealing with the memory of her mother, my famous cousin Carolyn and her illness-which in turn, re stimulated memories of my late husband, Jennings, and his struggles with schizophrenia.

Then this morning on CBS’s Sunday Morning, out of the blue, I was again swished back to a painful time in my young life. Michael Rockefeller.

New York……..1959

I met Michael through my classmate and eventual apartment roommate, Patricia White. She, Michael, Mimi Kellogg and a few others and I would get together the next few years on occasions at parties, either at our apartment or other social events. We were young and all full of life and youthful expectations. All except me, were raised in a social bubble of great material comfort and equally great expectations. I was the anomaly in the group with my Midwestern middle class upbringing. Yet we were all alike in that few of us had experienced great personal losses beyond our grandparents or older relatives. We were invincible with miles of living ahead of us. That is, until Michael.

Michael Rockefeller, just a year or two older than I, disappeared and was presumed to have died November 17, 1961. He was the youngest son of New York Governor (later Vice President) Nelson Rockefeller and a fourth generation member of the Rockefeller family. Our friend disappeared during an expedition in the Asmat region of southwestern Netherlands New Guinea.

At the time we were told that he was believed to have drowned and they never were able to find his body. That was all we knew then. We were shocked and it took so long to accept we would never see him again. It was hard to accept that our intelligent, enthusiastic and sometimes funny friend was gone.

In 2014, Carl Hoffman published a book that went into detail about the inquest into his killing, in which villagers and tribal elders admit to Rockefeller being killed after he swam to shore in 1961.

So once again that memory tail has swooshed, given me a whack and knocked the air from me. As my son’s ‘To Be Young’ lyrics from his album Beauty In Disrepair explains….”As I look back…years of memories so neatly stacked..I forgot about you.”

Copyright Sandra Hart 2014. All rights reserved.
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Through A Child’s Eyes

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The further we get from our past, the kinder and more forgiving we become of our memories. Haven’t you had someone pass from your life, that has either moved on or really moved on from this earthly life? Looking back on that relationship isn’t it easier to see both sides and be more forgiving now that enough time has passed to retain more of the good memories involved in that relationship than the bad?

I loved my mother. I left home when I was eighteen to attend college , and although I never lived at home again, Mother was the constant force that kept me moving forward in my life, no matter how many miles separated us, or how hard my circumstances became. She was always my best cheerleader. In my heart, she was always someone I wanted to emulate.
A perfect woman.

She pushed me to audition for Romper Room when I had little or none of the required background that the other’s seeking the job had. She had a ‘feeling’ about the man I married, yet when he was diagnosed with schizophrenia, she was there emotionally, a pillar of support when I thought I would not survive mentally or financially through it all. My mother walked through the fire with me. She was my rock. And it was this super strength and will that allowed her to love me unconditionally. No matter what stresses I brought into her life, she never abandoned me. And never a day goes by, that I don’t think if her and wish I could pick up the phone to hear her assuring voice again.

New Jersey…..1987

Studies reveal that as we get older our personality traits become more pronounced. Because I left home at such an early age, the impressions I had of my mother were established through immature eyes. And until I brought her to live with me after my father died in 1987 that is the unrealistic image I had of her.

But it did not take me long to be able to see my mother within an adult’s perspective. I soon came to realize that Mother’s strength actually was a form of control over everything in her environment. As a child, I welcomed the attention, but in my 50’s I needed to breathe on my own. My childlike view that Mother was a saint and could do wrong would slowly erode throughout our remaining years together.

Little things like hiding candy under her chair so she wouldn’t have to share, I attributed to her life as one of ten children where sharing would have left little for her. That never really bothered me, but her strong will finally became quite problematic when she stubbornly refused to give up driving even after mistaking the gas peddle for the brake causing her to break through my double front gates and land in the middle of my side lawn closest to the ocean cliff. She was late for a ride to a wedding, so she walked away leaving the car with its wheels dug into the dirt of what remained of my torn up lawn. A wonderful present for me when I arrived home from New York two days later. Somehow she ‘forgot’ to tell me before I came home.

Mother had a mild stroke later that year and under doctor ‘s orders, she entered a rehabilitation facility for physical therapy after that stroke. This was only temporary, but one would think we had sent her to Siberia. What was I thinking!

Had I been clairvoyant I would have prepared myself for what followed. Just three days into her stay at the facility, I got a call in New York close to midnight from the center saying my mother was missing. My husband an I jumped into the car and sped through Lincoln Tunnel back to New Jersey. I was a wreck, thinking the worst.

Well, we finally found her. There she was, nestled cozily back at my house, looking so innocent. She had talked a friend into taking her out on the guise that she would be returning.

But, in the end, I really should have known better to think she would stay there, because she pulled that stunt once more a few weeks later. She remained totally defiant until we decided to let her do what she was determined to do, forget rehab, and remain master of her own fate.

I was not strong enough to go against her, but I knew we had to somehow make her life safer. Whether she liked it or not. She had to accept that living alone in my big remote house was not good nor the best lifestyle for her. The only thing we could do to keep her somewhat independent was to move her down the hill into our small borough where she would have neighbors to check on her and walking ability to all of the comforts of her day. That was the only concession she allowed me, but I don’t think she ever forgave me, either. And on top of that, made sure she told the world how her daughter had betrayed her.

Mother died two years later of another stroke, but she left me, the way she wanted. Living on her own terms. She asked her nurse for her lipstick. Then, a force greater than her’s came and she slipped off quickly and quietly.

In the end, Mother was in control as much as she could ever be facing the unknown powers greater than herself. And I was left with an overpowering, overwhelming loss. Loss of her, her touch, of her strength.

My having to let go of my childhood vision of who she was, was a hard revelation. Probably the hardest lesson I had to learn. I was faced with the reality that she was indeed only human after all.

A GIRL WITH MOONLIGHT IN HER EYES

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Her white hair was pulled tightly away from her face knotting on top of her head, stretching her wrinkled skin so that it morphed her face into something scary. Her high collared black dress disappeared into the colorless quilted cover that fell to the floor from the high four poster bed. I stood there looking at her, not moving. I was afraid. She looked like the witch I had seen in Snow White.

This is the only memory of my father’s mother that I have stored. Wherever those things go that are catalogued in my brain, I’m not sure, but that is all I have saved. That one experience, that one moment in time, the snapshot saved of my grandmother when I was four. Interesting. Maybe she was not at all what I remember but somehow I am convinced that a child’s insight can be right on the mark, more often than not.

Things I have learned since about my grandma fortify that perhaps I was able to see things through a child’s eye more clearly than the adults around me.

Mother said I came into the family one cold Sunday night exactly one week af- ter the New Year rang in joyously. Evidently my arrival was less spectacular. There was no bassinet waiting for me. I was placed in a dresser drawer that was lined with a blanket and then placed on my parent’s bed. Why there was no bassi net was quite curious since my
parents could afford better. The answer seemed all to clear. Perhaps it was the presence of my father’s strong-willed mother. She ruled the house, so I am told, and deemed that such foolishness for a cradle or such non- sense was a waste since a drawer would do just as fine!

And thus my life began with memory-erasing visions and events relative to my father’s mother.

When I was about the same age, four or five, remember sneaking up behind the family cat and pushing it out the third story window, wondering if it would fly. I hope it did. But the finale of that event has been erased from my memory for whatever reason.

But I do remember playing house in cardboard boxes with the janitor’s daughter and Daddy paddling me all the way home when he found me. I was having such fun. How could I know, my southern father’s prejudices were hard to die and well ingrained.

I remember the best of days was when the garbage out back near the alley got full up and we would look for treasures in the barrels and cans. I don’t remember the smell or the treasures, if there were any, but I do remember what fun it was just looking through the mess.

But try as I might, I can only remember that one frame in time about my paternal grandmother. And thus, begins the embryo of my story. Memories that I have been able to imprint beyond today from my past.
I have written several books about my life and journeys that I have taken, but this book, A Girl With Moonlight In Her Eyes, is more about those lived memories and those experiences I have unconsciously filed away and which have strong emotions attached to their recall.

(A Girl With Moonlight In Her Eyes will be published late summer of 2014)

OH THOSE ’70’S

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I received a photo and text from my oldest daughter on Tuesday that at first made me laugh, then whisked me down memory lane forty-two years and just as quickly, jerked me into the present and just on the cusp of shedding big whopping mama tears on my iPhone.

Maybe it was because it has been raining for three weeks, or maybe it was because my husband inadvertently forgot how to read labels and put a lethal amount of pepper in our spaghetti sauce, or maybe it was because I had a milestone birthday last week, or maybe it was because I am beginning to have unexpected moments of mourning my youth. I don’t know and, honestly, really can’t explain the sanity of a picture of sheets putting me over the edge. Sheets!

But something real definitely triggered emotions within me seeing those “oh so 70’s” psychedelic sheets. The very same sheets that I bought for the girls’ twin beds when we moved to New Jersey. The ones that the pink and orange crazed decorator in me loved so much. And you guessed it, I just had to continue the theme by buying extras to make curtains.

Maybe those sheets reminded me that I was once young, hip and full of surprises. They reminded me that the children are gone, grown and on their own. No more bedrooms to decorate, clothes to pick up, or beds to make. How fast it all went. And where oh where did that 70’s girl go?

P.S. Yes, I still do have one. I use it to carry leaves to the leaf pile in the fall.

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The Memory Wrecking Ball

Whoosh! A great big recking ball is smashing, smashing my childhood memories. With each giant swing it is right now as I write, taking down Roosevelt Elementary School on LaBelle View in Steubenville, Ohio.  Or at least this growing pile of wreckage is playing havoc, trying to obliterate my time within its rooms.

Whoosh! The dark red brick walls that weathered six feet snow drifts, baking sun and mis-guided baseballs  rebounding  off the impressive structure. Gone.

Whoosh! The wooden floors that always smelled of linseed and Pinesol that always squeaked a chorus of ‘foot’ notes. Gone.

Whoosh! The piercing sound of the siren that let us know we had to fly up the two blocks from home as fast as our legs would allow on those days we lingered too long at breakfast. Gone.

Whoosh! My wooden desk that someone decided to immortalize with his initials “PJ” that always filled with my rubber erasure dust. Gone.

Whoosh! The cement steps we ran down at noon to go home for lunch, my girlfriends peeling off at each house they called home. Mothers would always be there with a hot lunch waiting and a kiss goodbye at the end of the hour. Gone.

Whoosh! The second floor windowsill my friend Donna and I leaned from to wave goodbye to her dad’s cousin, Dean Martin with Jerry Lewis after they visited our school. I so hoped to get discovered and go to Hollywood. Gone.

Whoosh! Gone are the memories of leaving the blue collar steel town, filled with smoke from the mills that covered the tall statue of General Von Steuben in front of the court house.

Whoosh! Whoosh! Just as easy as that. Gone.

©SandraHart2012

Time Travel

Aunt Thelma’s heart still ticking after all these years
It was 1945. I was six years old. I was close to death.

Snow was so high that year. I remember that. I also remember my older brother’s friend chasing me and putting snow balls down my back. What did I know. I stayed out in our backyard with my brother for hours enjoying the snow in freezing temperatures in wet clothes.

They say you can’t get sick by getting cold, but I did. I had influenza and double pneumonia at the same time. My fever spiked to 106 and in the miraculous days when doctors made house calls, I had two doctors sitting by my side through the night for two days. One doctor, Dr. Sink, had delivered my mother in 1907 and the other, Dr. Healy, called him in to help. They both practiced homeopathy.

I only remember being in my room and seeing these men sitting in high back chairs near my bed and not really caring about much except being hot and wanting to sleep.

How long I was that way, I don’t know, but I do remember hearing the loud unfamiliar sound of tick, tick, tick when I finally opened my eyes. I looked. There on my small side table was a little clock made of green glass. Bright green glass with gold riming the hands of the clock. I closed my eyes again and went back to sleep with the tick, tick, tick soothing my fevered dreams.

Thank you Aunt Thelma where ever you are. Sorry I never told you how much I loved the clock. Or maybe I did and in my over-fifty state don’t remember. But do know I found that clock again today and it is wound, polished and set to 2012 time ready to sooth my dreams tonight. Tick, tick, tick. And life goes on.

My Berlin Post Script

Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church left as bombed during WWII

As for my Berlin connection, my daughter and grandson and I visited Berlin in 2008 during Octoberfest. We stayed at The Upstalsbloom Hotel in East Germany close to the rail lines that took us to Alexanderplatz and access to all points in Berlin. We took the Hop-On-Hop-Off Bus around the city and saw the best of Berlin. It is the easiest way to independently tour the city highlights.

Berlin is such a beautiful city that has been reenergized in the best architectural way.  They even have left a few WWII buildings in their bombed condition for remembrance of what humanity can do to one another. The Holocaust Museum is free to all visitors and is a moving testament to the past history of what can easily happen in a society driven by a mad man.

So I leave my memories of Ursula with this posting and have to move on to today. But I will never again forget  and set aside my letters from Ursula. Back in the Balfour box they go again, but this time not forgotten. I promise.

Brandenburg Gate
My family at Checkpoint Charlie
Billboard at Checkpoint Charlie
Portions of Berlin Wall are left along old all and markers mark the wall line where no longer standing.
Hop On bus with a big furry traveler along for the ride