I remember / je me souviens

2012-01-25T02:03:00.002-05:00

I remember when I realized I wasn't passionate about birds and ornithology; I just loved it as an intellectual exercise -- matching pictures in extensive atlases to names, memorizing intricate and delightful taxonomies and Latin nomenclature, the trivia, and of course, the pride in my relatively esoteric knowledge. Birds were nice, but not as nice as knowing a lot about them.

2012-01-20T07:47:00.000-05:00

I remember being impressed by the well-defined and effective brown borders at the edge of my sunny-side-up fried egg, and how I vaguely wondered how that was done: it made the egg seem like a manufactured product.

2012-01-17T17:41:00.000-05:00

I remember how cool it was when my father confirmed my grandfather's trick, that to convert decimals into percents all you had to do was move the decimal point over two digits to the right. It seemed such a sophisticated European bit of knowledge and technique.

2012-01-11T12:30:00.003-05:00

I remember doing GoJu Ryu Karate. I remember how I loved my Sensei. I loved to do exactly as she did: count as she did, walk as she did, fall as she did, emulate her rhythm and form in the katas, turn my knee out as she did, breathe as she did, speak with her intonation when I instructed newcomers, make my body do as her body did.

2011-12-25T08:30:00.002-05:00

I remember we never had Christmas, though our next door neighbors did, and I was a litte jealous. One year they came home with a white synthetic tree, which my father disapproved of. I remember that since he was my father I accepted his expertise about a holiday he didn't celebrate.

2011-12-15T14:08:00.002-05:00

I remember walking up Dartmouth Street, from the T, past the BPL, alongside the mall. What I remember is that it was a beautiful day, piercingly beautiful, and I was alone, probably walking to the train at Back Bay. My heart felt sharply full, and I remember deciding that I would remember that moment.

2011-12-15T00:21:00.000-05:00

I remember riding the tricycle in the basement and discovering the three-point-turn.

2011-12-11T00:11:00.002-05:00

I remember seeing Free To Be You and Me and The Jungle Book with Chris and Nina. It's possible this was a double feature, but it's also possible they were separate occasions.

2011-11-29T21:19:00.003-05:00

I remember Luke around age five. We were upstairs in the bedroom he shared with Liana, his older sister, and he was putting on his pajamas. Since we were age-mates, across-the-street neighbors, and hippie children; since we each had a sibling of the opposite sex; and, most importantly, since we considered ourselves married, it was ok for him to be naked. Liana had put me in the room, but I did not feel ashamed—I felt proprietary. Luke wasn't looking for me to be there, and his back was to me as he changed clothes. Reflected in his armoire mirror I could see his tan chest, which I knew well—he often ran around shirtless in our street.

2011-11-17T00:07:00.003-05:00

I remember feeling bored. It's such true wisdom that one never feels bored anymore.

2011-11-08T09:28:00.000-05:00

I remember that I was in the New Yorker bookstore the morning before the first Frazier-Ali fight. I was so glad that Ali was able to fight again, after his principled refusal to go to Vietnam and the grief he took for it. I loved Ali. And I was sure that Frazier, a humorless tank, would beat him. In the bookstore that morning, where people were getting their copy of the Daily News, with a banner headline about the fight that night, I heard two crusty old people talking: one said, "Who do you think will win?" and the other, holding a paper cup of coffee, said, "I want Frazier but I'm afraid Ali will beat him." I couldn't believe that anyone real, anyone I was in the personal presence of, could be rooting for Frazier. I recognized the white right silent majority in this guy, and lost some Confucian respect for my elders. But I was also happy that my own pessimism about Ali's winning wasn't shared: this guy was pessimistic about Frazier. Still, I wasn't surprised when Frazier won, but it did seem unfair to me that Ali missed all that time as world champion.

Later, when he beat Frazier twice it didn't quite make up for the ignominious loss, though I was happy. And later still, I remember a photo of Frazier with a lot of bling leading a funk band he'd put together after retirement. I liked that about him, but still loved Ali more.

2011-11-05T20:35:00.003-04:00

I remember going to the racetrack early in the mornings with my father, to watch the training. My father had no particular connection with horses or gambling. I wasn't that interested in horses myself (not yet).

It impressed me that my father knew this was a thing one could do, and that he knew we could eat breakfast in the commissary with the trainers and jockeys. (Though maybe jockeys rode only during races; I wouldn't have been able to pick them out by their size, since they were all grown-ups.) The breakfast was much more interesting to me than the racetrack. People knew each other, and they knew that they did not know us, and my father had known that they wouldn't mind.

We may have done this only once. It seemed like something we had always done and always would do.

2011-10-28T21:17:00.001-04:00

I remember Twiggy. Some friends -- Marc Bilgray or maybe Michael Hoban or Peter Rogers -- mentioned her, mentioned the name. They were knowing. I didn't know what manner of thing Twiggy was; I think my first approximation was (naturally) a tree: some famous or symbolic tree or tree toy or something. But soon she was just Twiggy. I think I might have seen a photo of her and come to realize that.

2011-10-16T13:07:00.002-04:00

I remember TV images of people with their heads hung low in green fields, or standing in front of pickup trucks, or next to silos, or in ditches, and I remember a sick, despairing feeling every time I heard the words, "Another family farm" on the nightly news.

2011-10-12T13:34:00.002-04:00

I remember shutting down in ninth grade. After February vacation, I stopped going to school. Well, almost: I went in on Thursdays, most weeks. Things at school had become terrible, but they did not get better when I stopped showing up. No one from the school called, that I know of. I stayed in bed, or in my room, not well enough to face my class, not sick enough to need any attention.

2011-10-06T21:21:00.005-04:00

I remember that the girls in the grade ahead played an elaborate pretend game during every recess, every single day. It was the perfect game--a story that went on and on, where each person played her role perfectly, with autonomy, yet adhering to the generally agreed-upon outline of "what happened." I watched them every single day, apart, silent. It looked so fun. I was so shy, though, that even when they invited me to join, which eventually one of the nice ones (Emily, was that you? Or you, Ayelet?) did, I could not bring myself to accept my heart's desire.

2011-09-26T20:02:00.002-04:00

I remember that my great grandmother, Babette, always had sucking candies in a special bowl in her sitting room.

2011-09-25T18:50:00.002-04:00

I remember doing yard work. I hated it. I hated raking--or maybe I remember raking most, since there was so much raking to do. I remember the boiling screaming fury I felt at my parents for making me, and how my rage would drive me at the work. And I remember how, even worse, once I'd finished the section or the task, despite my determination to stay angry, I did feel proud.

2011-09-23T08:29:00.000-04:00

I remember "pucker power." The line repeated several times, and ending on a lower note than it started -- a little sourly, like what it was describing. It was I think a sour candy or gum, something to freshen your breath: "hour after hour: Pucker Power!" I remember the puckered mouths of the actors on the commercials.

2011-09-11T09:15:00.002-04:00

I remember what everyone remembers: how blue the sky was on September 11. I remember what everyone remembers: a screen that showed a plane hitting a tower, a screen showing a tower falling. I remember what everyone remembers: two kinds of bewildered confusion—one from before we understood that the plane hit on purpose, and another after. I remember what everyone remembers: the sense that this had happened to me and that this grief belonged to each and all of us, and that everything was now different. But I also remember distrusting that last feeling—how could this be true, any more than it is always true—especially if we had to discuss at length whether to cancel Shakespeare class that afternoon. I remember feeling hinge-less and very afraid, and I remember that the movements of my fetus, my daughter-to-be, soothed and rocked me to sleep.

2011-09-11T00:20:00.000-04:00

I remember Windows on the World, and the speed of the express elevators up there, how you had to swallow to keep your ears from popping, and how lovely the view was at night.

2011-09-03T13:51:00.000-04:00

I remember when the big noisy "push-button-to-cross" boxes appeared on traffic light polea. They were very slow and noisy, and made me miss the slim elegance they displaced from the fluted lovely vertical columns. They seemed confused, like big dumb friendly animals. They'd pause to consider what you'd wanted (to cross!) for it seemed like forever, clicking and clucking. Then finally, as though shaking off some last vestige of a deep ursine nap, they'd make a sound like a metal cube turning over, and the light would change.

2011-08-26T00:51:00.000-04:00

I remember posting this entry about "the hurricane" (Donna, I believe) over nine years ago:

I remember the hurricane that came through New York when I was about six. My parents had been married the day before the hurricane of 1954, which was, I am told, a doozy, and my mother worried about hurricanes when they came through New York. She told me all about them -- this was the first time I'd heard the word -- and I stayed home waiting for it to come. I remember how dark it was, and looking out of my window onto 90th street (this is when we lived on the 2nd floor, in apartment 2-G) when it came through. I saw only one man on the street (though I was surprised to see any, because she'd warned me that people could be blown away), struggling East against the wind, holding his hat tight on to his head. It was clear that this weather was a serious anomaly, and yet somehow not as serious as I'd thought it was going to be. As with the total eclipse a while later (see earlier entry) it turned out that this major experience of the dangerously exoctic was less major than I'd been led to believe. I remember these things more because of my anticipation of them than because of the actual experience. But the actual experience was, in retrospect, quite important too: it somehow confirmed a sense of safety even in an interesting world. My room was my room, even as I wondered where that man had to go in that weather; my father was my father, even as I looked up into the blinding eclipse, which wasn't so blinding after all. The things that mattered stayed the same: at least that's what I felt (without having to think it) then.

2011-08-24T00:55:00.000-04:00

I remember sitting on the front steps, waiting, waiting, waiting, and finally he would come, scoop me up in his arms, and ask me if he thought he'd be allowed to come home again. I remember him smelling like Old Spice, Budweiser, Camels, and shoe polish. When I see a homeless person drinking Budweiser or smoking Camels, I remember the extra dollar in my purse.

2011-08-19T10:45:00.000-04:00

I remember how good my grandmother was at saving burnt toast. She'd scrape it with skill and patience, and it was good as new! This was my downtown grandmother, but she always did this at our house, since that was where I would use the toaster and burn the toast.

2011-08-09T09:01:00.003-04:00

I remember Tisha b'Av: I remember sitting on the floor of the Dunbar Street building, leaning on my mother, listening to Eikha, words lit by candles wrapped in tin foil. I remember sitting on the ground in front of the Kotel on the trip my brother and I took alone. I was 14. I remember sitting there into the evening, and as darkness fell I finally felt the full front of loss and grief, and wept, and a tanned old woman in a dress like a housecoat came over and told me to get up, get up, there was a time to cry, but now it was time to break the fast.

2011-07-28T09:49:00.002-04:00

I remember that matchboxes were the perfect sized containers for little handmade books.

2011-07-23T10:21:00.002-04:00

I remember how cool 35 millimeter film canisters were: first the metal ones, later the plastic. Good for pot, sure, but really it worked the other way: pot smokers were cool because so many of them were photographers, and had all these film canisters at hand.

2011-07-11T15:51:00.002-04:00

I remember that the shapes of Africa and South America fitting together led to the hypotheses about continental drift. I liked how a scientific theory could take its start from a simple, almost childlike observation like that.

2011-07-09T16:49:00.002-04:00

I remember the Sports Illustrated cover that showed a smiling Willie Mays, about to drop his full-swing bat behind his back, and the words "Say Hey, 3000 Hits."

2011-07-07T19:50:00.001-04:00

I remember my father trying to open a cellophane package that I'd failed at opening, using his teeth to try to rip it in the same frustrating, frustrated way we did.

2011-05-31T23:32:00.002-04:00

I remember understanding the chirp of cicadas as a mechanical sound.

2011-05-19T22:24:00.002-04:00

I remember that after my nap on long summer Shabbat afternoons, my father would give me a cold roast-beef sandwich for my supper. And I remember sleeping on the back porch on Locke Street, on that grimy green vinyl-covered settee. Waking sweaty and stuck to the surface of those cushions was good.

2011-05-11T22:05:00.000-04:00

I remember my grandparents teaching us to play cards. We played Black-Jack (21), Poker (five- and seven-card stud, mostly), and we played Bridge. I remember my grandfather trying to teach me to think about my hand: Not just how to hold my cards or count my points, but how to think about what contract I ought to be in, and what was out against me. "Count your losers," he would say, "count your losers"—but I would get so caught up in what I imagined doing with the cards I had been dealt, my enthusiasm would cloud my sight.

2011-05-06T12:17:00.002-04:00

I remember my mother forcing hyacinths: bulbs set in colorful jars for weeks and weeks on the steps under the bulkhead, where it was cold and dark. I remember the sweetly wafting, dreamy scent of wisteria at night in the streets of Baka.

2011-05-06T11:22:00.005-04:00

I remember smells, but how can I say more than that? When presented with them, I remember the smell of leaves decaying and the smell of lilac and gardenia, of rubber erasers, of bike-chain oil, of copy machines and hot paper, of wet dog, of roses and of soil, the smell of a gerbill's cage, of clean wood shavings, of acquarium water, chlorine, pepper, lemon verbena (and other herbs/spices but the point is not to say how many), of diapers (infant and toddler) and of chicks that need their newspaper changed. I remember a lot of other outside smells I don't know the names of but that I walk into like a wall of past. I notice that this year, as every year, the viburnum spreads its scent over the whole garden, so that I have come to associate that flavor with the smelless muscarii, even though they contribute nothing to it--they just show up around the same time.

2011-05-01T20:25:00.002-04:00

I remember lying in the back seat of the car and looking up at trees' waving canopies and the sky. I remember the glory of a night city from afar, perfect tiny lights defining streets and buildings. I remember the urgent race of the evening highway: red lights vs. white. I never could tell who was winning.

2011-04-26T12:37:00.002-04:00

I remember that my uptown grandmother used Roman numerals for the month when she dated letters and checks: 26 IV '11, e.g. I remember learning that you're not supposed to draw parallel lines linking Roman numerals together, at top and at bottom, though that's how my mother taught me to do them, and how my grandmother did them.

2011-04-14T13:02:00.002-04:00

I remember the gluey, wood-shaved smell of Frameworks. I remember the little pieces of glue-paper in paper cups, and the spray bottles, and the low piles of paper towels on the cardboard-covered tables. (My father didn't like those paper towels; he only used newspaper to clean his glass.) I remember picking staples and tacks out of the carpet, though I was told repeatedly not to play with sharp things. I remember the colorful magnetic corners on the wall, and the amazing array of mats: so many colors, but my father never chose anything bright. He built somber (hindsight says tasteful) wooden frames, sometimes gold or silver, and I remember him measuring and remeasuring, and putting in his orders at the counter at the back of the store (which one? they're all conflated). He was an expert frame-builder--he never had to ask for help. He was friends with the people who worked there, especially with Barbara, who had a horse and a house she shared with her sister. I remember how bleak and grey Mass Ave always seemed, and the sticker (stationery?) store that was only a few doors down from--the second location? When we were bigger, we were allowed to go there on our own and buy stickers with our own money.

2011-04-13T00:15:00.002-04:00

I remember envying kids who could swing easily across monkey bars. I could manage it (effortfully) in kindergarten, but got progressively worse as I grew older, so by the time I was about ten years old, I'd give up after one or two bars. I remember that because a boy around my age in the Bowring Club playground challenged me to an obstacle course race that included swinging across the monkey bars that connected one slide to another. I was extremely embarrassed when I couldn't even complete the race.

I remember my father helping me do pull-ups on the same monkey bars. While I was trying (and not doing very well), a lady came up to me and said I shouldn't do it because it would develop my biceps, which would be unattractive on a girl. I think this motivated me to try harder.

I remember accompanying my brother to the playground whenever my family went to Bowring Club, well after I outgrew the slides and swings. I secretly enjoyed playing on them, although I pretended I was only there to watch over my brother.

2011-04-09T09:32:00.002-04:00

I remember my uptown grandmother telling me to shake the sand out of my shoes when we'd been to the sandbox. I didn't know I had sand in my shoes! She did though, and I saw that she was right as she tilted my shoes over the toilet. The whole thing was really neat.

2011-04-07T13:14:00.003-04:00

I remember the wooden cuckoo clock that someone (who?) got us from Switzerland. Switzerland! My brother and I were in love with it, and it was put in our room. But it got annoying quickly, not just the frequent sounds, but because it had to be wound up every 12 hours, and the pendulum had a tendency to get stuck. Then, we had to adjust the time, and the cuckoo would pop out every time it hit the hour as we were turning the hands.

2011-04-05T09:01:00.002-04:00

I remember the little kid who lived in the apartment above us charging around his house for what seemed hours at a time, making the light fixture in the hallway rattle annoyingly every time he crossed over it.

2011-04-03T23:47:00.005-04:00

I remember my friend R's older brother, D. I stayed at R's house many times for Shabbat. D was sly: he caught me out watermeloning the words to the Bentsching (Grace after Meals); he made the most of R's moods (she probably got sick of me sometimes) and would invite me to play Sorry or Chutes and Ladders in his room when she got tetchy; and he was the only boy I can remember who propositioned me with the traditional "I'll show you mine if you'll show me yours" (I didn't). I liked him fine, most when we hung out with his friends. Their jokes flew so quickly, and they teased without meanness. I remember wishing I had an older brother.

2011-03-31T23:29:00.002-04:00

I remember my mother's shoes. Tons and tons of them in her closet. I somehow recognized them as pairing the way my own shoes did. I think maybe that's a huge developmental moment, the moment when you recognize that shoes come in pairs. (I remember learning that socks could go on either foot. This after the hard lesson that shoes had to go on the right foot!) Women's shoes also paired up, despite their exoticism. I liked that, somehow.

2011-03-28T20:35:00.006-04:00

I remember learning to type: asdfg hjkl; In bed for much of 1985, recovering from one laser surgery after another, I sat with a tray and an old manual typewriter on my lap and practiced drills off a library book. asdfg hjkl; asdfg hjkl; asdfg hjkl; The dry cramped experience I hated most bitterly: meaningless repetition of meaningless marks--no plot, no character, no rise or fall beyond my clumsy, disobedient fingers. No one forced me. That book was my own hateful choice, trapped for all those loathsome blank weeks, asdfg hjkl; asdfg hjkl; asdfg hjkl; asdfg hjkl; asdfg hjkl;

2011-03-23T11:26:00.003-04:00

I remember the first time I saw a photo of Elizabeth Taylor, in Life Magazine, and how struck I was by how much like my mother she looked. She was forty, I think? They both were. (I once mentioned their resemblance by-the-bye, eight years ago.) I still don't know whether I thought she was beautiful because she looked like my mother, or whether I thought my mother was beautiful because she was styled like Elizabeth Taylor.

2011-03-20T14:17:00.002-04:00

I remember from the biography of Houdini that I read in fifth grade that he could stay under ice-covered water for an hour or so by pressing his nose against the rough bottom surface of the ice and breathing the air trapped there.

2011-03-14T21:49:00.002-04:00

I remember the menacing words "Three Mile Island."

2011-03-05T22:17:00.004-05:00

I remember watching the Camp David Accords with my father on TV. It must have been Indian summer, because I remember that it was hot in our house, and my father was wearing his undershirt with no shirt over. Still, the men were outside, wearing suits.

2011-03-01T22:12:00.001-05:00

I remember rubber pants. They were itchy and uncomfortable, and poorly fitted, and often leaky.

2011-02-21T04:16:00.001-05:00

I remember the clean cut wigs I read about in Time Magazine, worn by hippies in court. I remember being impresses by one photo of a guy who seemed to have notably short hair, but who in fact had very long hair.

2011-02-21T01:41:00.002-05:00

I remember "Yes, I remember Adlestrop", and thinking of the poem on train journeys when we stopped at empty, rural stations. I think I read it in a poetry craft book, where the exercise was creative translation or rewriting or something. I misremembered it as being by Ted Hughes, until I saw it again today.

And now it makes me think of the British Library, because so much of the poetry I read was from there, and was like that, all meadowsweet and haycocks and Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire. Yet, it never felt too foreign, because I grew up with books that were very English from the time I started reading, and all those words were still a familiar (and beloved, because reading was beloved) part of my experience of the world, even if the objects they referred to were not.

2011-02-14T17:18:00.002-05:00

I remember that money and paper/books are both sacred (and somehow related, Lakshmi & Saraswati). I remember that when I was around five or six, I tore a ten rupee note while trying to stuff it into a piggy bank. This upset me terribly, not for the monetary loss (I had broken toys of greater value before), but because I thought it was sacrilege, worthy of divine punishment. I went into the prayer room and begged forgiveness. I think I glued together the note with cellophane tape, and didn't tell anyone -- not that anybody noticed. A few years later, I was made to stand on a piece of cardboard in school for some logistical reason. This was almost as bad -- I think I prayed all the time I was standing -- but I felt a little less culpable, perhaps because I was older, and because someone else made me do it.

(I'm pretty sure tearing a currency note wouldn't at all affect me spiritually now, but I'd still feel very uncomfortable about standing on paper for an extended time.)

2011-02-13T21:38:00.003-05:00

I remember my counselor Julie changing the lyrics to "Ah-ban-ee-bee-oh-boh-eh-beh," which was one of the first songs we learned the steps to in Israeli dance. She sang, "I want to be a polar bear: I want to be a polar bear when I grow up"--and then she would add, under her breath, "As long as Greg is." I loved her sass and her uncool (to us) music (CSNY), her big-hippie style and the fact that she was in love with Greg. I stayed up late to confide in her. She left camp halfway through the summer, sent home for smoking pot.

2011-02-13T08:44:00.002-05:00

I remember not understanding what tether ball was. I saw an ad for a tether ball kit on a cereal box, and I just had no idea what it was. Every other ball game I knew could be parsed from its elements: baseball, football, handball, basketball. But what was a tether? The word was completely opaque to me. I still have that atavistic reaction when I hear about astronauts tethered to their spacecraft.

2011-02-12T15:26:00.002-05:00

I remember my mother saying it was fine to leave our money on the table with the bill when we ate at a Chinese restaurant once. I assumed everyone was always suspicious of each other, and so of us, and most of me. In stores I tried not to look like the shoplifter I was sure they suspected me of being. But my parents didn't seem sensitive to others' suspicions, an insensitivity I was mildly embarrassed about. I always made sure to tell the ticket-taker at the movies that my father had all our tickets, as though this was a foible of his. They never seemed surprised, though. They'd dealt with other fathers, it was clear.

2011-02-11T09:12:00.002-05:00

I remember the photo restoration shop on the East side of Broadway that I would always pass on my way home from the Hotel Bretton Hall. They showed before and after sepia photos, with amazing results. But what I remember about it most was the card in the window, assuring immigrants with tattered photos (I now realize) that: WIR SPRECHEN DEUTSCH / SE HABLA ESPAÑOL and then the same in Cyrillic. I somehow knew that "se" could not mean "we" and I was distressed by the fact that there wasn't a one-to-one correspondence between the assurances on this cardboard Rosetta Stone. I so wanted the Cyrillic, which my grandparents and mother could read, to just fall into place, word for word. But if didn't.

I remember finding a teach-yourself-Russian book at about the same time at our house, when I was eight or nine, and racking my brains over trying to learn the Cyrillic alphabet, but failing. The book was a black hardcover, printed on cheap paper. The lists of letters were set down in columns. But the book didn't give you any exercises, and somehow it was impossible to test yourself. And the photography shop might be able to restore what was lost, but it couldn't give me the Cyrillic I never had.

2011-02-05T15:43:00.001-05:00

I remember that ski lift tickets on your parka jacket, especially after long winter weekends or vacations, were a badge of cool.

2011-02-01T11:20:00.003-05:00

I remember babysitting for Yitzi and Ashi. I remember when Ashi was a late toddler: how I loved to hear him speak, to name objects for him and get him to repeat the words. I remember pointing to things in their fridge: Broccoli. Orange Juice. Tabasco Sauce. What did he want? Cheerios.

2011-01-24T19:00:00.002-05:00

I remember being fascinated by physical constants -- that you could attach a number to an object or process, and that the number was essentially unchanging in space and time. Where in the universe did these numbers come from? Even more wonderful were constants that were limits, like the speed of light or absolute zero. It was strange enough that things like light and temperature were bounded, but that we could also put a number on those bounds seemed crazy.

2011-01-23T13:25:00.001-05:00

I remember my father trying to scare me out of the hiccups with sudden fake-punches. Probably the only time he didn't scare me.

2011-01-23T12:51:00.002-05:00

I remember always finding my pajamas under my pillow (then later folding them and putting them there myself). It was so comforting to find them there, waiting.

2011-01-18T23:39:00.004-05:00

I remember the phone system at Columbia. I remember knowing how to do amazing feats of voicemail acrobatics from anywhere on campus. I remember recording myself singing The Obvious Child and sending it to my friends' mailboxes during finals sophomore year. "And in remembering a road sign / I am remembering a girl when I was young / And we said, these songs are true, these days are ours, these tears are free / The cross is in the ball park—the cross is in the ball park." I must have re-recorded it six times, and now that I think think about it, I wonder if I chickened out or finally sent one. I hope I did.

2011-01-17T09:04:00.002-05:00

I remember that my father would never read the sentiments inside a sentimental birthday card (your standard Hallmark card with its short italic poem). He went straight to whatever was written in ink. This was an interesting lesson to me about what counted (the real, the personal) and what didn't.

2011-01-09T20:12:00.002-05:00

I remember hating school. I remember the loathsome boringness of it, the long hours of tedious repetition. Aching hand writing the same Hebrew letters over and over again. Exercise after language arts exercise in the Red Book, the Blue Book, the Green book. The same mouth-twisting prayers every morning. One math problem after the next, ad infinitum.

2011-01-07T00:52:00.002-05:00

I remember that adults wrote with pens. When they made mistakes, they crossed them out, instead of erasing them. I remember that this seemed a mystery to me, like script. I couldn't read script and I couldn't even imagine what it would be like to read something that had illegible crossed out parts in it. It somehow didn't occur to me that you just skipped them. So the technique of crossing out seemed an amazing adult attainment (like script). I could barely imagine how interesting what was said in this esoteric writing must be.

2011-01-03T16:04:00.003-05:00

I remember going to visit Floyd and Lynn and Jesse and Sarah every February vacation. Another way to say this: I remember going to the Smithsonian Museums. I remember the Air & Space Museum. Because it was the place my brother felt most at home and happy, we went there often. But I also remember the zoo and the natural history museum and and the botanical gardens (though they are not Smithsonian) and hours on the Mall and art, art, art. I remember when Jesse and Yossi and I were old enough to be able to visit galleries on our own: We synchronized our watches with my parents, agreed on a meeting place, and set a time to return to it. I remember going to what must have been the Hirshhorn: We walked around and talked about the works by ourselves. I don't remember anything we saw that day except a large, grey Henry Moore that I liked, but I remember the satisfaction of recognizing the artwork, the conviction that the works were my particular friends, just as Jesse was, even if we saw each other only once a year. Walking those galleries released me from being poor, being uncool, being 13, being awkward, and deep, and ugly. Artwork does not love you less for any of these reasons, and neither did Jesse.

2010-12-31T13:12:00.002-05:00

I remember the sudden cruelty of friends and just as sudden reconciliations.

2010-12-30T10:46:00.004-05:00

I remember giving Nina a box of fat crayons for our second birthday. I remember wanting to keep them for myself. I remember a conversation on my father's lap in which we reviewed our agreement that when I turned two, I would give up the bottle. I remember the feeling: something inevitable, final, unavoidable.

2010-12-29T12:39:00.003-05:00

I remember whole conversations with my friend Avri made of lines quoted from Beatles songs. We could say anything with their words.

2010-12-29T00:58:00.001-05:00

I remember that Mayor Lindsay's failure to dig Queens out of a snow storm for a week was a mortal blow to his political career. I remember the V was for Vilet.

2010-12-25T19:14:00.001-05:00

I remember that my father would stick his tongue a little bit out of the side of his mouth as he concentrated on putting various "assembly-required" toys together. That expression of concentration-demanding hard work is one you can find in Peanuts characters passim. It seemed to me natural and obvious, but I notice that I never do it, and I don't think anyone else does anymore.

2010-12-20T23:39:00.001-05:00

I remember books I read in fourth grade because books were so precious in Israel: Little Women and Little Men and The Swiss Family Robinson and Dr. Doolittle (and from my Lipincott reader which I had brought from school and which struck me as utterly insufficient, The Walrus and the Carpenter and Riki Tiki Tavi) and The Little Princess and National Velvet and Black Beauty and The Secret Garden and the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Or maybe I don't remember them: I'm sure I had access to Miri's library, and I don't remember what I borrowed from her, only what my extended family sent me. I remember writing in the little red Record book my parents gave me as a diary that year. I remember drawing a map, in color, of our first apartment, the little place on Rechov Haportzim, in Katamon. I don't remember learning how, but I did learn to crochet in school that year, and I remember that it was hard for me. With great difficulty, I made an ugly piece of uneven pink crochet-work, but it was sufficient to get a passing grade on the assignment. And later I improved. I also made a beautiful hand puppet boy, with yellow yarn hair and embroidered features, whom I named Dan. I remember stitching his yarn curls into his fabric head, one by one. I loved making him.

2010-12-06T20:38:00.002-05:00

I remember how little pleasure nursery rhymes afforded me once I could read.

2010-12-02T19:30:00.002-05:00

I remember seeing Yellow Submarine in the theater. I remember Steve's Ice Cream. I remember going to Harvard Square on summer nights and the street magicians singing If I knew you were coming I'd have baked a cake. I remember playing in a park outside a Catholic high school and my mom's distress that the girls all smoked while the boys played ball. I remember a sunny field at MIT. I remember a park a car-ride away that had a herd of letter-animals in orange plastic. I remember ball games late on Saturday afternoons. I remember the bitter cold, sitting in the yellow VW, and the realization that it just wasn't going to start.

2010-12-01T21:18:00.001-05:00

I remember the morning that Shandy could not stand up. My father tenderly picked him up and took him to the vet to be put to sleep.

2010-11-30T23:20:00.003-05:00

I remember brushing my teeth with Nina at Chris's house. We could not have been more than 4 or 5. I don't know when he moved to Lexington, but it was before we were in first grade, and this was at the apartment before that--in Watertown maybe? I remember debating the merits of a variety of toothbrush strokes: side-to-side and up-and-down seemed to make sense, but we had heard that they just moved the bits around. Circles were supposed to be better, but why?

2010-11-29T00:05:00.002-05:00

I remember the chocolate-covered cookies at Nilgiri's. They were sold individually, wrapped in red or green foil. It seemed decadent to have both chocolate and biscuit in the same item... decadent more in a gluttonous way than an indulgent one. I remember that some girls who had family members in the Middle East would sometimes bring Kit-Kats and Mars Bars to school, which would have partly melted and become a gooey mess with the heat by mid-day.

2010-11-26T11:32:00.002-05:00

I remember an anti-littering short we were shown in school. A guy on the street couldn't believe all the cavalier littering going on around him. He kept picking up other people's trash and putting it in the trash basket just a few feet away. There were no cops around, so he was the representative of the good citizen. Then he picked up one more piece of trash and tossed it, and suddenly noticed money in the trash basket. He tossed some litter away from the basket on to the street to get the money out, and with a smile of virtue rewarded, which made us smile too, he fanned the bill out into 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 dollars! And suddenly two cops appeared behind him and wrote him out a $25.00 ticket for littering. Unfair!

2010-11-23T12:04:00.002-05:00

I remember playing with Eden in the woods behind our house in Sharon. We were allowed to go to the first stone wall, not beyond without a grownup. The stone wall was really only the foundation: a line of boulders, one after another, but nothing between them or on top. The reminder of a wall. If playing boat, we would jump from stone to stone, wary of the sharks between. The stones also served anyone determined to play house: several had flat surfaces (beds), and three tall ones in a row served for table & chairs. At the edge of the path, at the end of the wall, there was a huge old tree with huge old vines hanging from it, and we used to swing on these. I always worried we would pull them down on top of ourselves, but that did not stop us (either of us) swinging.

2010-11-13T08:29:00.003-05:00

I remember when my parents first showed me a rowboat, on Lake Carmel, near Stormville. I was surprised that a boat without a motor could float. They explained that what kept it up was the fact that it was scooped out, that it had air in it. (My mother told me that wood floated anyhow, but I think that was on a different occasion.) This seemed very mysterious to me. How did the lake know that above the floor of the boat there was air, that it wasn't a solid?

This was another of the mysteries of Stormville and of the lake somehow kept from seeping away by springs. The lake itself had that eerie authority of entities that are alive and that know how to be in the world and to interact with it, and how to use interesting items like the springs to be found in my toys.

2010-11-04T11:41:00.003-04:00

I remember visiting my Florida grandparents during winter break of my freshman year. I had written to them with my dates and announced that I wanted to come down to see them, and that they should send me airfare. So they did. I flew by myself to the happy little airport on Key West, and they drove me home to the house on Little Torch Key. After New York, especially in winter, the Keys are blindingly colorful, so bright it took me a few days to get used to the intensity. Everything reflects: azure sea and creamy coral rock make a backdrop of glowing contrast for neon hibiscus flowers. Against that palette, my grandfather's turquoise slacks made sense.

2010-11-03T21:40:00.010-04:00

I remember Angela. I learned the phrase, "Tuck in," at her huge round laden dining room table in Dursley. Her kitchen had a wall of copper pots—or I've produced them, for she was the sort of cook who would have a wall of copper pots. Her nails were always perfectly manicured, red. She had auburn hair, a wide mouth, good teeth, and smile wrinkles around her eyes. She was tall and slim and impressive and self-assured. She loved her dogs, big Airedales with names like Poppy. She was the kind of woman who could make smoking seem elegant, a long-fingered activity. In part thanks to her smoking, she had a sexy, deepish voice, and in no way related to the smoking, she had a refined accent and a languorous way of speaking: she would never rush, but when she reached a pronouncement, it sounded remarkably decisive. She volunteered in the open prison system. I first met her at a marathon card-playing session during my first visit to Steve's home in January of 1997; somehow the feeling I got was that that was Steve's family—Audrey & Arnold, Tracey & her husband, and Ian & his first wife Maggie, and Tony & Angela.

2010-10-30T10:48:00.002-04:00

I remember that Michael C. pronounced "new" without the enya or y after the initial consonant in my pronunciation. And Mr. Stern pronounced "Beautiful" "bee-ootifel" (so the first syllable was different from the first syllable of "beauty"). None of the other Sterns said it like that, so his way sounded to me like a wonderful affectation, a kind of demonstration that the beautiful thing he was praising was so good that it could survive his corny pronunciation, even flourish. As though its beauty had made him a goofy kid again, and made it okay for us kids to see that beauty was part of the array of the pure, transcendent, childish fun he was so good at encouraging and joining.

2010-10-18T19:10:00.002-04:00

I remember one lovely pleasure of running cross-country: the way school opened out to space and solitude. We'd start running and as a mid-level runner I'd be more or less alone after a couple of miles, a few hundred yards behind the leaders, a few hundred yards ahead of the stragglers, running up and down hills and through the woods. So it was as though the more or less broad social splotch of school was suddenly pulled into a very long corridor of space, sunny and crisply cold and free. I knew I'd end up back where we'd started, at school or the buses, but in the meantime there was just a lot of ground I didn't know but that was where I should be, space that I was the only person passing through, landscapes that had nothing to do with school or anything interior or any concerted effort or task or assignment. Yes, we were supposed to run, but what cross-country is about is running through spaces not designed for cross-country, unlike soccer fields or basketball courts. I was on a school team, but not at school, I was doing what I was supposed to be doing, but not at home, I was with my friends but not with them since they were elsewhere, ahead or behind. Where I was, nothing was making any demand of me; nothing was interested in me. I think this may have been the first experience, and maybe the last, where I could just look around.

2010-10-14T00:33:00.004-04:00

I remember power-cuts. (Should I say blackouts? The word doesn't convey the same thing to me. A power-cut is a temporary, normal interruption of electricity; there is something sinister and unexpected about a blackout.) They were usually on weeknights around dinner time and it was usually dark and raining. Depending on how hungry we were, we'd postpone dinner, or eat it by candlelight. Food is strange in that light -- familiar dishes suddenly look foreign and something about their taste is subdued. We weren't allowed to read under candles, so we had to set aside homework and sit together and do nothing and talk. I remember that if I had a test the next day, I would try to quiz myself in my head -- not very effective. At some point, we got a battery-powered lamp, but it wasn't really much better than candles, just a harsher light. I think I was allowed to study under it on occasion, if it was particularly important. I remember the annoyance of mosquitoes and sometimes, heat, and I'd often think how strange it was that comfort relied so heavily and almost solely on fans and electric mosquito mats.

I remember that the power would come back on with a sudden burst of light and the less sudden whirring of the ceiling fans. The sound of them turning on would start with the light, increasing within a few seconds, but only a few more seconds later would the coolness hit. I remember that my brother and I would race each other to blowing out the candles.

2010-10-03T22:39:00.003-04:00

I remember that one evening, my father brought a pack of cigarettes home and lit one. It scared me, not because I knew or cared about what was wrong with smoking, but because it was in my mind a forbidden action. A parent doing something that they had (abstractly) instilled in me was wrong was contradictory and confusing, and I guess also signified their fallibility, and the idea that I'd sometimes have to tell them what to do rather than the other way around. I was also disturbed that my father was amused at my yelling at him to stop -- wasn't it serious enough, then?

2010-09-28T13:55:00.002-04:00

I remember George Blanda, one of those players who played from the paleohistory of the world as it was well before my life began all the way into my adulthood. He played in color, and on TV. But there were dozens of famous, grainy pictures of him in black and white, some just blown up frames form super-eight movies.

2010-09-27T10:29:00.003-04:00

I remember writing an essay about gender and abandonment in The Grapes of Wrath. It was eleventh grade, while I was living in Israel. The paper was not assigned. The novel was not assigned. I missed my friends, my life in America, myself, so much that year that I read their literature curriculum (except Hamlet--which I was supposed to be reading in Hebrew in school) and wrote the paper because I wanted to. Our friend Alan Rosen, who taught (teaches) English at Bar Ilan, read the essay, and spent a long time discussing it with me. After that, he invited me to attend one of his American Lit classes; I remember loving his discussion of Billy Budd.

2010-09-26T00:12:00.002-04:00

I remember a few sukkahs from my youth: the one on the top of a low part of the building where Bnai Jeshrun is housed, on 89th st. It was a sort of roof-top area which was usually closed, though I guess it was intended either for a garden or for kids to play handball. (I still think of that as a kind of intent, because I think of the city as an intended but natural place, that is intended for whatever uses it lent itself to.) I was impressed by the size and beauty of the Bnai Jeshrun one, though I don't think I ever ate in it or saw anyone do so. But sukkahs were few and far between in New York.

And I remember one that the Sterns family put up at their house. It had an esrog hanging, with lots of clove, and it smelled really wonderful. We did eat there, at least once. Geoffrey told me the esrog was the fruit that Eve and Adam ate, and it made me happy to have that grandly esoteric knowledge.

2010-09-21T00:50:00.001-04:00

I remember posting an early entry here about jill johnston, nine years ago. RIP.

2010-09-15T17:15:00.002-04:00

I remember for the first time in years that my black (or was it yellow?) goalie jersey had elbow pads sewn in -- part of what made it cool. I remember more generally that things sewn into linings were very neat, as though two dimensions had come apart and left a place between them for secreting things not quite belonging to this world where everything was either inside or outside.

2010-09-15T10:31:00.002-04:00

I remember purple loosestrife everywhere, filling the marshland and waterways on either side of the commuter rail tracks from Sharon to Boston. I remember commuting with my mother in the summer to a job at Coolidge House. I remember going to Pier 1 to check out the beautiful fabrics on the dresses there (the cuts were always appealing looking but plain old ugly on) during my lunch break, and sometimes getting frozen yogurt with my mom on the way home.

2010-09-12T07:33:00.003-04:00

I remember that it would sometimes feel strange -- especially when code-switching -- to not be able to use honorifics in English.

2010-09-11T10:00:00.005-04:00

I remember in seventh grade English the high-spirited Peter Rogers talking to our teacher about the Neapolitan flick of the fingers outwards from under the chin. Our teacher was mock-scandalized at Peter; we were puzzled and interested, so Mr. Donahue (or was it Mr. Baruch?) explained that the gesture ("never do it in Naples if you value your life!") meant "Nuts to you!" I'd never heard that phrase before either. But it really didn't seem so bad. And it was interesting to learn two new insults simultaneously, each somehow explaining the other.

2010-09-06T13:04:00.002-04:00

I remember the fact that the Mets performed a triple play, and also I remember putting together how the unassisted triple play Hugh told me of (a different ohadn't an unspecified team) had to have occurred.

2010-08-25T22:10:00.003-04:00

Your Prell post reminded me, so I remember "Don't hate me because I'm beautiful"--the Pantene commercial from when I was in 6th grade. I had very long hair then, and the girl who sat behind me would tease me, in a faux British accent, that my hair belonged in that commercial, or that I thought it did. She wanted me to make sure it didn't drape down behind me and get on her desk. I didn't think I was beautiful at all, and I didn't want to offend, but I found it hard to be sure my hair stayed under control.

2010-08-20T14:09:00.000-04:00

I remember "All that lather from just this much", the Prell shampoo ad. "It's concentrated!"

2010-08-11T11:21:00.004-04:00

I remember that once I picked up the phone the instant it rang and there was no connection. I told my father, and he said you should never pick up the phone on the first ring. This didn't quite make sense (though for him it was a completely internalized and therefore obvious rule) but after that I never did -- not until the cell phone came in. At the time the ruled seemed to be about making sure the connection was established -- that the phone company had confirmed that the call was going through. This seemed confirmed by the fact that sometimes people would say that they hadn't heard any ringing when I picked up even after one full ring. (Now I think that probably if you picked up too early the other person wouldn't hear any ringing at all and would hang up.)