“SOMETHING OLD, SOMETHING OLDER…A REDISCOVERY”

What is “rediscovery?” Of course it is discovering again. There are infinite stories rediscovery can tell.

Maybe you’re moving or just doing some Spring Cleaning. You open a drawer or find a box that’s been sitting in the back of a closet, and there it is:  A “Rediscovery!” You hadn’t seen it for years – probably decades, but finding it now brings back all kinds of memories. Maybe it’s a kitchen utensil or a throw pillow or a photograph or a stapler your father had on his desk when you were growing up. Hold it in your hands and allow the pictures it generates come to you. You could write a chapter of your personal history based on that one rediscovery.

Then your mind starts chugging away – it’s not only an item, it’s an era. That throw pillow sat on your grandmother’s living room couch as long as you can remember. On one particular visit, you and your brother had an argument, and in a fit of frustration, he picked up the pillow and threw it at you. He knew it wouldn’t hurt you, he just felt it would end the discussion. But he was wrong. 

Your grandmother intervened. She grabbed the pillow and held it to her chest as tears came to her eyes. You and your brother were startled at her reaction. After she explained, you understood. The pillow was designed and crafted by her own grandmother. It had been a gift when your grandmother and grandfather moved into their first home. The pillow was made of the fabric from her grandmother’s wedding gown – it was a family treasure. It had sat quietly on her couch for years until your brother picked it up. Your grandmother feared that it was harmed and you were remorseful and apologetic.

Eventually, your mother placed the pillow in a box to preserve it, and there you found it. That simple item could bring back all kinds of memories about visiting your grandmother, the fun you had together, the rules of the house that were sometimes strange to you, and her glorious apple pies.

What do you have in your attic or basement that reminds you of times past? Write about it. Let the memories flow – wander off-subject if you want to.

JG Entry

I knew it was there, but hadn’t seen it for more than thirty years. In the carton were stacks and stacks of sheet music and books I used when I was learning to play the piano.

After two attempts to get me interested in playing the piano with professional teachers, my grandmother decided to take over the chore. Was I really unteachable? I could carry a tune, sing a song, had some kind of musicality in me, but learning how to make music on an instrument was not going well. Instead of JohnThompson’s Teaching Little Fingers to Play and then graduating to Mr. Thompson’s more advanced First Grade book, my grandmother brought along her own lesson plan. Scales, fingers curved, and more scales. Where was the sweet “Nana” who played gin rummy with me and treated me to ice cream when the Good Humor Man came around? Who was this task master (mistress) who wouldn’t allow me to get a drink of water or go to the bathroom during the thirty minutes we spent together twice a week. “You’ll never learn if you don’t practice,” she told me. She was right, but when hop scotch or roller skates were calling to me, how could I spend my leisure time sitting on a piano bench?

Of course I regret that I never became truly proficient. Eventually I grew to play some of the songs in the old, falling-apart books that I would never have seen from a “real” piano teacher. I mastered the traditional “Fur Elise” and even got pretty good at “Slaughter on Tenth Avenue” and a few of her other selections. I never reached my goal of “Rhapsody in Blue” and probably never will. I could go on forever with memories stimulated by those old, yellowing sheets.

What about you? Did you ever play an instrument? Do you have another story of Rediscovery?

I Can't Believe You Were Once a Kid

Tell me about your children or your grandchildren. That’s a tempting invitation we don’t often get, but your Personal History is an opportunity to expound on their intelligence, good looks, and talents. You can even include a note they wrote to you when they were in first grade telling you how much they loved you. If you’re anything like me, you kept all those treasured notes.

The point of writing your Personal History is to tell them who you are – and who you were during the years before they were born. Times were different and so were we. You might have been raised before television. What did you do for fun after dinner and before you went to bed? Read a book or play a board game with your sister? Maybe you listened to the radio with your family. Did you walk to school – and were your parents concerned that you would be molested or kidnapped along the way? You probably did walk to school, and your parents never imagined that anything would happen to you along the way. What did you and your friends do on a weekend? What “naughty” things did you hope your parents wouldn’t find out about?

Your answers to these questions will probably read like a history book to your grandchildren – and to great-great grandchildren you’ll never know. But that’s the point. Make yourself a three-dimensional being in your Personal History. If you don’t think they’ll appreciate it, think about everything you’ll never know about your grandparents. Don’t you wish you had had the foresight to ask them when you had the opportunity?

True Confessions. If my friend Caroline reads this, she will certainly remember our decadent past when we visited her grandmother’s beach house at Atlantic Beach, New York. We were about ten or eleven, I think (Caroline can correct me if she disagrees) and we had active imaginations and plenty of time to ourselves. Caroline’s mother, Adeline, visited with her mother at the house while we were supposed to go to the beach. Our detour on the way to the beach at the end of the block was our little secret. We headed the other way to the stationery store on the corner where we dug into our pockets and pulled out enough change to purchase a stack of romance and movie magazines and two bags of roasted pumpkin seeds. We wrapped our purchases in our beach towels in case someone saw us, and we went to the beach.

 It was a small piece of beachfront where few people visited. The sand was very clean and soft, and the ocean waves visited the shore with each wave. But we weren’t interested in the beauty of nature. We retrieved our treasures, tossed our towels down and sat on them. After a short decision-making session, one of us would open the most seductive-looking magazine and read the first story aloud. Now, before you say, “Oh, my, Judy. I never knew you were one of THOSE girls,” let me tell you about the magazines. This was in the sanitary days of the early 1950s. We were awed when we read the word “kiss.” Nobody in those stories ever went further than that. But they were beautiful women with equally beautiful men and they “wanted” one another. Once they actually got together, they apparently didn’t know what to do with their victory.

But we ate it up as we chomped on our pumpkin seeds and giggled. Of course we dumped the magazines and the empty pumpkin seeds bags in a garbage pail before we went back to grandma’s house. “Yes, the water was nice,” “No, there weren’t many people there,” “Yes I put on suntan lotion before we went” we reported. If they noticed our sly smiles, they never questioned us.

Talking about the stories when we got home kept the memory alive for several days. As far as we knew, nobody was ever the wise. Ah, the innocence of youth in mid-century Long Island.

Cats, Dogs, Birds, and Horses

Memories surrounding our childhood pets evoke some of our best stories.

Indulge me, please, while I tell you about my dog.

Well, then, why don’t you tell me about your dog? Or cat? or bird? or horse? or whatever non-human friend meant the world to you.

Was he a puppy when your family got him? Did you help select the kitten you wanted? Did he sit at your feet during dinner time knowing that he would be the beneficiary of the Brussels sprouts or broccoli on your plate? Did you sneak her into your bed at night even though she wasn’t allowed on the furniture? Was your grandmother or a neighbor afraid of him or allergic to her? Did you have more than one pet at a time? Did you own a Great Dane when you lived in a studio apartment? Was your cat a good mouser? Was your bird permitted out of her cage to socialize?

Did you always want a pet but your parents said “no?” What was their reason, or didn’t they give one?

Tell about it, even if it’s about the pet that popped into your imagination after you saw your first Lassie movie. Maybe a friend had the pet you wished for. They’re all memories that tell about you, your family and the times.

JG Entry

His name was Toodles. I have no idea why my mother named him that. He certainly had poodle blood in him, but nobody had any idea what other breeds might have been part of his heritage. He was the puppy of a neighbor’s dog and my grandparents were happy to give him a home.

By the time I was aware of Toodles, he was an elderly rascal who ruled my grandmother’s household. He had no use for a leash – he went out when he felt like it and he came back when he was ready. He ate mostly “people food” – almost anything would do. And he loved my mother beyond anyone else. After she married my father and moved from my grandmother’s house, she visited him several times a week. My grandparents said they were thrilled at the frequency of their daughter’s visits with them, but they knew who she was really there to see.

My grandparents’ home in Brooklyn, New York, was a Cape Cod style house with a large dormer overlooking the front of the house in the upstairs bedroom. The dormer’s casement windows were left opened when the weather permitted. Toodles visited his favorite place when those windows any time he knew he could get out. He would jump onto the bench seat under the windows then make his way through the window to sit on the overhanging roof. To me, and to the family, it was commonplace. But when strangers passed the house, they pointed and laughed and even stopped to take a picture of the dog on the roof. Sometimes people rang the doorbell to inform my grandparents that their dog was perched precariously on the roof. Others, assuming it was a statue up there, were shocked to see Toodles stand up or move to scratch himself.

He was not groomed, never learned how to “sit” on command, and he was as happy as any dog could be. One day, when he was seventeen years old, he went on one of his independent strolls and never came home. I don’t think the family ever recovered from it, but they had to think that he died of old age in one of his secret haunts near their house. The fact that I am relating his story shows that our memory of Toodles lives on. When my grandchildren read this, Toodles will be part of a new generation.

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"Worth a Thousand Words"

They are probably hidden in a box (or several boxes) in the attic or the basement. Maybe they’re on the top shelf (the one you can’t reach without a step ladder) in the closet. And they are the key to memories that will invite you to write about them. Whether your photos were taken with a Kodak Brownie camera or a new Smart Phone, they capture moments and people, past and present, that lead you to your huge memory bank.

    I don’t have to tell you that keeping them in a box won’t help anybody. You know that. Every winter one of my friends says she plans to go through the boxes and sort them when it’s too snowy to go outside. After the winter we just endured in the northeast, she should have them all  neatly placed and captioned in acid-free pages of her albums. Of course it didn’t happen – but maybe next year. 

   For the sake of your descendants, PLEASE identify photos. Make it a family project and invite all generations to participate. Don’t wait until old photos elicit blank stares and the question “Who is that?” Keep your ancestors alive through your stories about them and photos that bring them to life.

    The mechanics of identifying photo subjects can be a tricky business. Most archivists prefer writing on the back of the photo rather than the front. The tool you use can be very important – you want to avoid bleeding through and you want to avoid using an instrument that requires pressure to write legibly. A good source for knowledgeable recommendations is your local photo or scrapbooking supply stores. If you decide to use a permanent felt-tip marker, a popular choice, test it in a corner first. Then be sure to allow the ink to dry before you put it away or stack it.

   Choose the photos that tell a story, that remind you of something or someone and make your memories come to life. Jot down notes about what you want to write, put the photo with the notes and make this the next project in your Personal History.

   Don't forget that you don’t have to worry about writing your Personal History chronologically. Just write.

JG Entry

 Our family photos are sorted by year with each album representing a span of time and the segment of the family it represents. I admit that it wasn’t my doing, but my determined husband who took on the job years ago. One of the perks of having them so well organized follows:

     When my cousin Cora invited me to visit her in Encino, California three years ago, I looked forward to spending time with her and her husband, Oliver. She and I are two of the last remaining members of our family, each of us having our own memories and stories. As with many families, a rift between her grandparents and mine during the 1950s resulted in the unfortunate fact that we had not known each other until we were adults. We needed that week together to exchange recollections and fit some of the family puzzle parts together.  

   I lost a night’s sleep when I realized that I had no idea what to bring as a house gift. Having never visited her home, I didn’t even know her color scheme or style. I asked Cora’s daughter, Molly, who was nearby attending NYU at the time. “They love roses,” she told me. “The main color scheme in the house is earth colors.” My creative juices were drying up.

   About ten days before my trip, I woke up one morning with my idea. I pulled out the albums with the appropriate years and family designations and started looking through them. There they were: photos of Cora’s mother as a teenager and me as a toddler, family holiday photos showing her parents and mine, summers at the beach with her grandparents and mine.

   Taking my cue from scrapbooking friends, I took the originals to Milford Photo and made copies of each photo I chose. Then I carefully trimmed them in silhouette and organized them into a collage. A visit to the framing store finished the unique gift that Cora placed in her family room the moment I gave it to her. Success!

Now it’s your turn.

If you’re not sure how to move forward with this, email me (judy@as-you-recall.com)  to arrange a complimentary consultation.

What's That I Smell? Your senses are a minefield of prompts

The scent lingers for years, bringing you back in time. What a perfect subject to explore as you start your Personal History.

Picture yourself coming home from school and opening the door to the scent of your mother cooking your favorite meal. If you lived in an apartment, you might have been able to identify what your neighbors were having for dinner that night, too.

Think about leaves burning in the fall (too bad our grandchildren won’t be enjoying this one, but we can tell them about it,) Christmas trees (the kind that grew in the ground – not the kind that grow at WalMart.) There’s the sachet in your mother’s underwear drawer, the smell of your grandfather’s cigar. Each can spark a new story about your experiences and each stays with you through the years. Here's my example:

JG

People complained about the smell that permeated my grandmother’s house: cigar. Long after my grandfather passed away when I was eighteen, the cigar smoke lingered. And I liked it. It reminded me that he once lived there and it reminded me of the quiet, hard-working man who loved me unconditionally.

As the oldest grandchild, I guess I was the one who first called him “Poppop.” My other grandfather who died when I was four, was “Poppop Phil” but my mother’s father needed no further description. He was “Poppop.”My mother inherited his classic good looks, dark eyes and hair and aquiline nose. He was born in Amsterdam in a middle-class family of 8 children. His father owned a butcher shop and Barend followed in the family tradition.
I wish I knew his version of the story, but it is rumored that he was working as a butcher aboard a passenger ship when he decided to jump ship and stay in the United States where they landed.

How he and my grandmother met, memories of their wedding and early life together are lost memories. 

Pages of stories about Poppop and my grandmother, Mommom can be generated from the recollection of his cigar smoke. You can do the same. Whether it’s a cigar, baby powder, or a pot of homemade soup or spaghetti sauce that stirs a memory, let your mind run free through the familiar aromas. Where were you and what were you doing? Who was with you?

Now it’s your turn to write!

If you’re not sure how to move forward with this, email me (judy@as-you-recall.com)  to arrange a complimentary consultation.

ME WRITE A MEMOIR? ARE YOU KIDDING?

Here’s the first of several rules that will help you create your Personal History:

Write it down as you think of it. Don’t try to be chronological and don’t worry if your writing seems disorganized. There’s plenty of time for that after you’ve put your memories on paper.

In each new blog I will give you a start toward writing a chapter, a page, or a memory. It will be followed by an abbreviated example (in italics) from my own personal history to show you one possible way of doing. Follow your own lead. Mine might not be comfortable for you.

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We have to start somewhere, so let’s go to some of your childhood memories.

If you were writing a play or novel, you’d have to make up a setting where the action takes place. Let’s start with your personal childhood setting: your bedroom. Walk into the room and look around. Write it down as you go. Talk about color and whether your shared it or had your own room. Did you have any part in choosing furniture? Where were things stored? Were there shelves on the wall? An armoire? Boxes on the floor? Was it bright or dark, neat or messy, was the floor carpeted? Most important – was it your special hideaway where you felt safe or was it not? What did you do there?

JG Entry

Two big windows brought morning light into my corner bedroom. Even when I closed the venetian blinds, the eastern sunrise filtered into the room reflecting on the pale yellow walls. I wonder if I was a natural early-riser, or if this daily experience throughout my childhood was the impetus for my “morning person” reputation.

My mother’s preference for period décor spilled into every room in the house. While I voted for a black, white and red color scheme, she chose dusty rose, green and cream. (I promised myself I would one day decorate in colors of my choosing. It took nearly twenty years, but I finally did when I decorated my first kitchen.)

Twin beds made “sleepovers” easy and comfortable. Secrets shared in the dark are better than any others, and many confidences were revealed in that room…

Now it’s your turn.

If you’re not sure how to move forward with this, email me (judy@as-you-recall.com)  to arrange a complimentary consultation.