When our sons were 5 and 2 they were engaged in an earnest imaginary safari on the living room floor of our grad student housing, Fisher-Price characters all spread out complete with animals, tents and jeeps. Suddenly the older child noticed that a giraffe was perched way high up on the green vinyl couch. "How did that giraffe get up there," he asked in complete dismay and bafflement. Two-year old son said, brown eyes serene, "I put him there."
As a listening adult I giggled to myself. Five year old knew giraffes can't magically fly up to the couch. Two year old saw no problem whatever, as the laws of logic, physics, gravity, the universe hadn't set in yet.
Endless possibilities.
Sometimes I want that giraffe on the couch again.
The book I'm listening to in the car right now is "The Crazyladies of Pearl Street" by Trevanian, is absolutely laden with nostalgic details of life in the 1940's in a poor Irish section of Albany, told from the perspective of a young boy. I'm loving every detail, but often find my mind winging away to my childhood and missing whole sections of the chapter! Yesterday he was talking about department store money exchanges being sent on cables overhead and instantly I was back in Rubenson's in New Holland!
I remember the oiled floor smell and the sharp smell of cut fabrics. We watched in fascination as the clerk flopped side over side the long bolts of "material" as we called it for some odd reason. Then with the fixed yardstick in place she would cut carefully along the prescribed line, folding the cut section carefully for packaging. But then! Unscrewing the metal cage above her head she would tuck the written fabric ticket and Mother's dollars into it, screw it back and pull the magic cord. Zing! We would watch the little cage go flying to a high wooden structure in the center of the store where presumably people sat and did financial things! But all we cared about was waiting for the return zing of the cage, rocking slightly as it hit the docking station! At home, we tried to valiantly recreate some interpolation of the process, but alas gravity has little zing in this case!
Now I ponder that contrivance. Was it because the peon clerks couldn't be trusted to handle the money? Was it to save the cost of many cash registers?
I think it was purely for the entertainment of wide-eyed children from Hinkletown!
The crossword clue was "aromatic flower" and I had a beginning "l". The letters i-l-a-c just slid down the column and I actually inhaled, hoping there would magically be an accompanying perfume! The mere word invokes deepening shades of purple, mauve, plum, violet and of course, virgin white.
We had a lilac bush on the edge of our property and the neighbors'. It was the meeting place of little girls, sharing confidences, building dreams. It was also the source of a matchless May scent, a spring elixir . On Mother's Day Sunday morning, I would always pick a bouquet to put at my mother's place at breakfast, sometimes with a gawky poem of appreciation.
Now when I smell that elusive subtile lilac aroma I wish I could capture it in a perfume, soap, lotion. But would that be like capturing and pinning a butterfly?
Enough, to inhale briefly each year, marvel with a smile and tear.
There's always next springtime.
Radio was the train that bore me away from my small Pennsylvania village.
Our lives were braided with radio stars and characters: Big John and Sparky, Don McNeil, The Great Guildersleeve, Fibber McGee and Molly, Beulah, Jack Benny, Ozzie and Harriet, Lowell Thomas, Arthur Godfrey and Art Linkletter, to name just a few. They were our friends.
And radio brought us quiz shows, sports, the hit parade, mysteries, soap operas and symphonies.
It was always on in the background, feeding us the larger world, teaspoon by teaspoon, whether we were fully cognizant of it or not.
And all the while our imaginations painted vivid pictures of the places, people and events. They were our intimate properties.
Today's technology strips us of that magical universe where only you hold the key.
We called it meadow tea.
We walked down to the creek and in the wild meadows on its banks, along with bluebells and buttercups, spearmint grew in abundance. We'd gather skirtfuls and take home to Mother to steep. Soon the lovely scent of mint would creep through the warm afternoons and in a bit we were sipping iced glasses of the lovely liquid on the front porch.
Now, I have to buy bunches of mint at the ultra-sleek grocery store - a tight little bunch for 99 cents - or more! I do have a mint plant out by my front stoop but it wouldn't survive the harvest needed to slake my thirst. It gets clipped to flavor salads and pasta and fish and nearly every food in the world that runs through my cooking hands.
But still, when I take that first sip of mint tea, I am back in the meadows, feeling the hot sun and welcome shades of creekside trees. And watching the butterflies and bees. And stepping carefully around cowpies. And dangling hot feet in the rushing waters. And smelling summer.
My mother and I have a love affair with eggs. Though she is no longer here with me to share the passion, every morning when I dip into a perfect cooked yolk and have it spill onto a bite of toast, browned potatoes or ham, I touch her spirit I remember in the latter years of her life, I would sit down to breakfast in her sunny apartment and we would savor our eggs together, sighing in contentment.
Although, I must admit the release of golden yolk is matchless, the eggs can be fried, poached, scrambled, or soft-boiled - I love them all! Each time I go out for breakfast, I see all the fancy items on the menu and feel a tug toward, crepes, blintzes, french toast, etc., but almost always settle for 2 eggs and whatever sides. I know there are eggs in all the other items, but they are hidden, and I like my white/brown ovals of pleasure straight up!
And then there are all the auxillary perks that go with eggs.
- My son gave me an German soft-cooked egg cracker with a cool name like eineeisengebrucker (kidding), called egg clacker here (how prosaic) which is a totally fun way to start the morning!
- Also for soft-cooked eggs I have a prized Homer Laughlin small dish with a Mississippi steamboat picture. Or a petite green-sprigged antique dish from my mother-in-law.
-Or a bone china egg cup from a neighbor's great aunt's collection.
Taste, presentation, personality - a toast to the incredible, edible egg!
