“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.