Category Archives: Memory

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A thought on tradition

As I sit here writing this post on Saturday night, the virtual fireplace roars and pops in all its high-definition glory accompanied by orchestral holiday music that reminds me of classic black and white movies. Thoughts of childhood filter through, though considering I have memories that go back to the age of two, not many of them are of Christmases. Our family often struggled financially, so I expect this commercialized holiday was rather low-key at our house.

My first Christmas memory is of the year I was five and spoiled Santa for my sister. My next memory is of my ninth, when I got my last baby doll—yes, nine. We grew up much slower back in the olden days. The next one I remember specifically, I think I was sixteen. That was the year my mother bought a silver tree. Silver as in aluminum foil! Due to its nature, we couldn’t trim that abomination with our traditional colored lights, so she’d bought the rotating color wheel accessory. I detested that tree. It took its presence as a personal offense. To this day, I blame that misguided experiment for inciting my slavery to Christmas decorating traditions.

Three years later, I celebrated my first Christmas as a married woman. At that time, we lived in Germany where my husband was stationed with the U.S. Army. I shopped for my decorations in the village, and my husband and his friends drove up in the mountains to cut down our tree. While holiday music played on Armed Forces Radio, I hung blown-glass bulbs and clipped on delicate glass birds. I arranged and rearranged them seeking a perfect display from three sides. When I finished, we went to see a movie on base.

Two hours later, we arrived home to find our beautiful tree on the floor and shattered glass everywhere. My birthday present kitty had wrecked my Christmas tree. Most of the birds survived because they were secured to the branches, but half the bulbs were now glittery pieces. We drove a nail in the wall and secured the tree upright with fishing line. Military pay didn’t stretch far enough to replace the broken ornaments, so I had to stretch the remaining ones over the tree.

The next summer, many of the remaining bulbs and a couple of birds broke during shipment home of our household goods, and others disappeared through the following years. Now I have only one, slightly battered, golden bird left, and I give it a place of honor on my tree every year. Though I no longer have real trees  because of family allergies, mine is traditional in every other way. Tomorrow, I will spend most of the day decorating it. My collection of glass ornaments has grown to hundreds and I still arrange each one with care.

Your turn: What is your Christmas tree like? If no tree, what holiday tradition is your favorite?


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Classically Ignorant

Do you need a laugh today? Have one on me. The other day, for no reason I could discern, I thought of a book I read long ago. I couldn’t remember the title or names of any characters. I couldn’t even remember many details of the story. I could picture the entry hall and main staircase, and a room or two on the upper floors. I saw a young woman in 19th-century dress. The book was not illustrated; these images were only what I imagined.

I had no exact recall how I felt reading the book, but I thought maybe I enjoyed it. Not remembering anything more, I pushed it out of mind. A few days later, during a conversation with my son Daniel, who will soon defend his dissertation for a PhD in literature (Victorian emphasis), it occurred to me he might recognize the book. I told him what I remembered: a young woman is hired as governess by a man who keeps his insane wife secretly locked in his home … and I think a fire figures into it.

Are you laughing now?

My son’s initial reaction was silence. I’m sure he hoped I was joking. After a moment, he said, “Uh … Mom … that’s Jane Eyre.”

Oh, my yes. I am ignorant of the classics. Or possibly, just ignorant of having read them. Maybe I’ve read all the classics, but don’t remember.

Be kind, please. Look away. I’m going to go slink back into my cave, but I’ll understand if you want to pretend you don’t know such a lowbrow.

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Witch Hunt

Lately, I’ve had several vivid dreams, though I only remember snatches when I wake. The other night I dreamed I was standing in the dark, looking at flames. I felt … odd. I woke at that point, but the dream stayed with me as I stepped into the bathroom. I realized what I felt was a mixture of things, a contradiction—power and fear? joy and despair? Not until the next morning did the location of this dream scene flash before me.

They say there are strangers who threaten us,

In our theaters and bookstore shelves,

That those who know what’s best for us

Must rise and save us from ourselves.

from “Witch Hunt” — Lyric by Neil Peart

This was a scene from my past. A memory of the night I stood in the parking lot of Windsor Village Baptist Church and participated in a book burning. This was the mid-70s, the era of The Exorcist, and my church was in the midst of Satan-mania.

Whenever this memory surfaces, I try to remember what books I burned, though I’m sure I’ll never have the complete list. I had little money to buy books, and probably owned no more than twenty—mostly paperbacks and used library books. Ironically, Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 was one of the books I burned.

Other fiction thrown on the pyre was Ira Levin’s Rosemary’s Baby, Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House, and Jacqueline Suzanne’s Valley of the Dolls. But even non-fiction like Jess Stearns’ The Search for the Girl with the Blue Eyes or Marian L. Starkey’s The Devil in Massachusetts or—unbelievably—Maya Angelou’s I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings did not escape my zeal. Nor did Khalil Gibran’s poetic The Prophet. I ruthlessly routed out their potential “demonic influence.”

I was a different person then. I was one of those the Rush song refers to, thinking I knew what was best, I became one of those strangers—to myself. The memory of that frightens me. The thought I might again be so easily influenced, frightens me even more.

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Remember imagining aloud?

Was there any time we made better use of imagination than during childhood? Hours, the whole day, spent pretending with friends, or siblings, or alone. I remember what I requested for my sixth Christmas: a cowboy hat, guns and holster, and doll dishes. Boys or girls, I was ready to play with anyone.

I think I must have been the chief “imaginer” in my circle, the director of play. I might have been bossy. ;-) I remember using the phrase “Now you say …” quite a lot. Sometimes I preferred to play alone with my dolls, probably because they always did what I said.

One of my favorite things to do was clothes pin one side of an old quilt to the backyard fence to make a tent—excuse me, covered wagon. This was during the era I read Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House series. What adventures my children and I had as pioneers.

Baby dolls turned to Barbie’s, played with alone or with friends. And favorite movies had to be reenacted, with or without dolls. Oh, and then there was school! Not real school, which I loved, but play school, which I also loved. One particular friend and I played this until junior high—yes, this was back in the dark ages, when children were children.

We had an elaborate set up in her basement, with books, and notebooks, and real school papers we’d saved. In our schoolroom, we had a world map and a globe, fancy. Even better, we had a chalkboard, a real slate one, and fairly large! Her father hung it on one wall for us. We took turns being the teacher and the student. This was serious stuff.

As children, we were actors. We were writers. Some of us still are. Using my imagination, I play. Only now, I do it on paper, and I’m still saying, “Now you say …”

♦ ♦ ♦

After I wrote this, it sounded familiar to me, so I checked my blog archives, Sure enough, I’m repeating myself. :oops:   Here’s a link to my earlier post about childhood play, if you care to read it: http://lindacassidylewis.com/2009/11/07/cultivating-a-fiction-writer/

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Eat, read, remember

When my sons were young, we had a rule that dinner was served at the table and all family members were required to participate, unless they had a good excuse … like traipsing through Africa or being plague ridden. (“But Mommm, I’m about to break my high score!” garnered only a short delay.) Then, one by one, they grew into sports or band practice, jobs, or girlfriends. Now, it’s just me and my husband and we eat most of our dinners in front of the TV.

If you read the title of this post, (I’ll wait) right about now you’re saying, “Nice walk down memory land, Linda, but what does that have to do with “the nourishment of reading”? Well, of course, reading nourishes your soul, feeds your mind, builds strong bodies twelve ways, but yesterday morning as I sat trying to recall the names of all the books I’ve ever read, I had an epiphany!

As book titles and author’s names rose in memory, so did thoughts of food. It took me a minute to realize why. Awhile back, I wrote about how certain songs bring back vivid memories, but guess what? So do certain books. For me, oddly enough, some of those memories involve food or drink.

I read J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit while sitting at my kitchen table, eating hard salami and cream cheese on thin rye bread. Cups of Constant Comfort tea was my accompaniment as I sat at my dining room table reading C.S. Lewis’ The Screwtape Letters. (A more serious book requires a more serious table?)

While reading Stephen King’s ‘Salem’s Lot, I consumed copious amounts of sea-salted wheat berries. I drank bottle after bottle of Faygo Rock ‘n’ Rye soda as I read Communion by Whitley Strieber. Chips and salsa may be my last book-related snack. I was addicted to that the first time I read Breathing Lesson’s by Anne Tyler.

I realize that I no longer eat something consistently while reading a book, not so much because I no longer go through food phases, but more that I rarely sit reading for more than fifteen minutes at a time. I’m too busy writing. I don’t snack as I read; I read as a snack!

What about you? I suspect I’m the only one who associates food with books, but what memory does a certain book evoke for you?

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Waiting for the words

You may have noticed that I got off schedule in my blogging. I’ve been de-stressing. I decided to quit the numbers game … I’m not watching my blog stats or Twitter follower counts. If any of you leave comments, I’ll know you’re still reading … and if you don’t, I’ll still assume you’re reading, but have nothing to say. I had forgotten how “de-stressful” cello music can be until Lydia Sharp shared this video on her blog yesterday. So I’m sharing Cello Suite No 1, “Prelude” by J.S. Bach with you and suggest you let it play while you read this post.

Part of my stress was caused by worrying about not writing. I have two novels, two poems, and one short story started, but the flow of words had stopped on all of them. Some of you regularly write from prompts. Christi Craig usually sets aside Wednesdays on her blog to share her results of this method. But for the most part, using prompts has not worked for me. I try. I read one prompt and get nothing, then I go to another site and read that prompt, but still nothing comes to me. I can force myself to write something, but my heart isn’t in it. So what works for me?

Most (all?) of us in the U.S. observe daylight savings time, so on Sunday we rolled our clocks back one hour, and when I woke up at my usual time on yesterday morning, it was still dark outside. A short time later, I stepped out on the back patio just as the sky began to lighten over the mountains. The scent of damp earth wafted up and brought with it a memory of waking in my grandparents’ house.

Then, my writer’s mind began to play with that memory. I was not a little girl; I was a woman. But that woman was not me; she was a woman who had fled something. This house was not her house, yet it wasn’t the house of strangers either. And so it went.

As soon as I could, I sat down at the keyboard and began to write. I worked in spurts, writing until I didn’t know what was coming next and then doing laundry, or vacuuming, or reading while I waited for more to be revealed. By the end of the day, I had written 2600 words. It seems a complete story. Maybe the best I’ve written.

I think, for me, it’s best not to force the writing. That’s not to say I do nothing while I wait for new inspiration. There’s always something to edit, or story ideas to jot down, or blog posts to write. But creatively, my mind balks at being forced. If writing prompts work for you, use them. If they don’t, look—and listen—for inspiration elsewhere. And wait … it will come.

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Do you believe in make believe?

The Christmas Eve I was five, I woke my little sister, took her by the hand, and made her sit at the top of the stairs to watch our parents take our Christmas gifts out of the closet below the staircase. My objective? To prove to her that Santa wasn’t real. I don’t know why I did that. I don’t think I was a particularly mean sister. I can’t even remember how I knew Santa was make believe.

The odd thing is that I believe in make believe. My  parents didn’t discover us peeking, apparently my sister didn’t rat me out, and I went along with the Santa storywishstar for years after that night. Science can’t explain everything. Religion tries. Children simply believe. As we get older, we lose some of that capacity for hope against all odds, the certainty that, if we wish hard enough, it will be so. Star light, star bright …

I reserve room in my imagination for the magic of fairies, and elves, and unicorns, of ghosts, and Nessie, and Bigfoot. I think that’s only fair. When I offer you my writing, I ask you to enter a world of imaginary people, in imaginary places, doing imaginary things. I ask you to believe in my make believe.

And I’ll do my best to write it well, so no big sister will whisper in your ear and destroy the illusion.

Endnote: If you read this post and took any comment as a slight to your religious beliefs, please know that I had no such intent.