Do people sometimes get lost and end with being as brutal as those that they rally against?
Do people find that what they actually want, is to turn the tables in order to become the abusers…to have the opportunity to feel what it is to dole out some brutality of their very own?
And in the process, do they completely lose their way, with any sense of fairness becoming farther and farther out of reach, for everyone?
What if, along the way, we reminded ourselves of The Word?
And might we find it to be the guide that keeps us clear of mind so that we can actually realize the things that are important to us?
“…for it is written, Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord.”
It was a complete surprise to find deep within my heart the memory of a time that I spent with my grandparents. One day this forgotten memory came forward and most effortlessly, revealed itself to me as I wrote all that I could remember of what one month later had become a book.
This extraordinary experience of my childhood took place during the summer of 1957 in Virginia. As I wrote I was engulfed with warmth and comforting support, rather startling as it was so real. I know now that it had to remain deep within me as only the passage of time could reveal the beauty of it. Until the time of writing, I was unaware of how much meaning it had brought to my life. It was written with love and a deep and ever-growing appreciation for my family. It might well have been entitled , “The Gift”.
As far as I was concerned, summer began with the day my father installed the screens in the windows. Early that morning, Mother would have taken the summer sheers from storage to the clothesline in our backyard. By the afternoon, she swooped up the freshened bundle and brought them back indoors to hang on the rods at the tops of the windows. When the transformation was complete, I’d run from room to room to see the curtains flying on the breeze that raced in through the windows of our big old house. Like a magical invitation to adventures possible only with summer, when one day melted into the next and no one asked about the time, I felt that I could fly too and that anything could happen.
There were 5 children in my family. My brother Lionel was the oldest; my sister Cecilia was next, followed by my sister Rose, then my brother Isaac, and me. We spent summertime totally absorbed in keeping pace with our friends as was our Mother in keeping up with us. She mended our scraped knees, our bruised egos, and the holes in my brothers’ dungarees. I remember lemonade and tuna sandwiches, cotton sun dresses and hair ribbons; the pennies I collected for the corner candy store, and my ankle socks that never stayed up. Summers seemed much longer then when hopscotch and jump rope, hide-and-seek and tag, dress-up and make-believe, with my bicycle, my dolls and friends filled the days until supper time. When August finally came around, among the five of us someone would be chosen to vacation with our grandparents in the country. It was in the year 1957 that I was to spend my first summer there.
I’d thought so often about my first trip to the farm. But like the landing of a cascading boulder, my mother’s cheerful delivery of this summer’s plan completely shattered my vision of it. Leaving little room for the way that reality alters things but similar to most events concerning “the children”, I was quite certain of my unvarying reverie. It was always the same. My brothers and sisters are running through a country field with me, very happily and as usual, following close behind. But everything had been arranged and I alone would spend two weeks on the farm that year.
My family had gathered in the living room when Mother made the announcement. But my frustrating lack of enthusiasm was like a call to dinner in emptying the room of everyone and I found myself alone, save for the dog. While I struggled with the concept of being on my own, Spiky jumped onto the couch next to me. Placing his head upon my foot he kept a concerned and watchful eye over my disposition until we both fell asleep.
Later that day, I listened to Dad’s recollections of farm life adventures while Mother prepared supper. As she filled in with the finer points and particulars she’d taken note of my mixed feelings with her knowing smile that always took the sharp edges off of things. “Don’t forget that your cousin Joanna is just about your age and lives close to Grandpa‘s”, she nearly whispered. Then I thought of the pocket inside the little green suitcase as the place where my Jacks would find a perfect fit.
This is an old post, from one of our worst years in recent memory, 2020.
While editing something else here, I was inspired to read this post again. How nice to be able to say that I have experienced the humanity in people more and more everyday. I hope that you are able to say the same.
Love prevails and heals, especially so when all else fails.
Char
What If?
Friends forever!
Hard to tell what the truth is. We’re in the midst of something that we cannot navigate if we are to listen to what is being said. There is just so much: half-truths, fabrications, even lies; information withheld because there is no complete certainty of what is actually within our midst. Everyone has an opinion; yet no one knows for sure.
And we do like being sure.
We need to know for sure.
Well, too bad because this one has got us by the “you-know-whats”. While no one wants to leave their well-being to a crap shoot, we do our due diligence health wise and hope it suffices.
As there is no definitive, there is no clearly effective shield from this scourge. No one finds themselves more able to insulate themselves than the person in back of the line.
Anger and divisiveness does not make us safer.
Sanitize everything, keep your distance…
So what now?
I must say that I’ve been made aware of a change. As unnerving as it is, I think the uncertainty makes people more considerate of each other, somehow. I notice kindness, more tolerance, even a tepid sense of humor in instances where people might previously have chosen to avoid each other. It is a little startling, pleasantly so. And I’ll take it!
Is this virus the thing that provokes us to be more of a human being toward next person?
It is a tough lesson but this microscopic bit of hope within the extenuating circumstances of the corona virus could have a more profound and unexpected impact toward improving the situation in which we all find ourselves; to change our way with each other like nothing else, if, you believe in the power of such sentiments as consideration, or kindness, compassion, love? I do. Is that a stretch?
But let’s face it. Fear makes friends like nothing else can. Or as Shakespeare said, “Misery acquaints a man with strange bedfellows.”
Now the trick is to get to this place without such terrible provocation.
The effort is so very well worth making. And it requires so little of us.
Sending loving kindness and good health to everyone, everywhere!
Years had gone by without a single thought of the time in 1957 when I spent the summer with my grandparents on their farm in Virginia. Then, in the midst of a prolonged illness, among all of the things my mind was sorting through, this forgotten experience drifted in. Totally unprovoked and effortlessly revealing, I felt the need to write everything that I could remember, just as it presented itself to me.
And as I wrote, I became more and more immersed within the warmth and comfort of that time with my grandparents, so precious and dear to me now, as I realize after all, how much meaning it brought to my life.
This glimpse into their world was written with love and a deep and ever-growing appreciation for my family, for my heritage. It might well have been entitled , “The Gift”.
* A little of how it goes:
Chapter 1
As far as I was concerned, summer began with the day my father installed the screens in the windows. Early that morning, Mother would have taken the summer sheers from storage to the clothesline in our backyard. By the afternoon, she swooped up the freshened bundle and brought them back indoors to hang on the rods at the tops of the windows. When the transformation was complete, I’d run from room to room to see the curtains flying on the breeze that raced in through the windows of our big old house. Like a magical invitation to adventures possible only with summer, when one day melted into the next and no one asked about the time, I felt that I could fly too and that anything could happen.
There were 5 children in my family. My brother Lionel was the oldest; my sister Cecilia was next, followed by my sister Rose, then my brother Isaac, and me. We spent summertime totally absorbed in keeping pace with our friends as was our Mother in keeping up with us. She mended our scraped knees, our bruised egos, and the holes in my brothers’ dungarees. I remember lemonade and tuna sandwiches, cotton sun dresses and hair ribbons; the pennies I collected for the corner candy store, and my ankle socks that never stayed up. Summers seemed much longer then when hopscotch and jump rope, hide-and-seek and tag, dress-up and make-believe, with my bicycle, my dolls and friends filled the days until supper time. When August finally came around, among the five of us someone would be chosen to vacation with our grandparents in the country. It was in the year 1957 that I was to spend my first summer there.
I’d thought so often about my first trip to the farm. But like the landing of a cascading boulder, my mother’s cheerful delivery of this summer’s plan completely shattered my vision of it. Leaving little room for the way that reality alters things but similar to most events concerning “the children”, I was quite certain of my unvarying reverie. It was always the same. My brothers and sisters are running through a country field with me, very happily and as usual, following close behind. But everything had been arranged and I alone would spend two weeks on the farm that year.
My family had gathered in the living room when Mother made the announcement. But my frustrating lack of enthusiasm was like a call to dinner in emptying the room of everyone and I found myself alone, save for the dog. While I struggled with the concept of being on my own, Spiky jumped onto the couch next to me. Placing his head upon my foot he kept a concerned and watchful eye over my disposition until we both fell asleep.
Later that day, I listened to Dad’s recollections of farm life adventures while Mother prepared supper. As she filled in with the finer points and particulars she’d taken note of my mixed feelings with her knowing smile that always took the sharp edges off of things. “Don’t forget that your cousin Joanna is just about your age and lives close to Grandpa‘s”, she nearly whispered. Then I thought of the pocket inside the little green suitcase as the place where my Jacks would find a perfect fit.
Though it may be a little exaggerated and dramatic, this movie has deigned to bring to light the sexual morality of American society in the 1950’s.
My sisters were teenagers and I remember this movie being the rage among their crowd. I am not sure if I saw it in the theater, as I often tagged along but I remember most of how it was for them, and that it was a very big deal.
Through the experiences of Hollywood’s two biggest teen idols, Troy Donahue and Sandra Dee, we watched depictions of things that was heretofore off limits and shocking.
A Summer Place dramatized a time worth sharing with our younger people. They will be provided a glimpse that suggests the way that we were back then, and actually come away with a fair sense for that time.
The theme song is quite possibly the most beautiful of all time. Percy Faith and his Orchestra was known for brilliant renditions of movie theme songs in the 60″s and especially for this one. I still listen to my old Columbia Music Club album of movie theme songs just to hear the extraordinary Theme from a Summer Place. The images, feelings and memories rushing in like waves on the beach in the movie.
Cinemascope technique would be credited for how the ocean looks more beautiful, the sky clearer and bluer, the sun and the colors brighter. I don’t know but I think that they actually were.
How one memory opens a door to so many others, another time, as it happens for me with this film always amazes.
A Summer Place, in retrospect and in the scheme of things, seems to be a perfect prelude to the decade that would change everything.
Years had gone by without a single thought of the time in 1957 when I spent the summer with my grandparents on their farm in Virginia. Then, in the midst of a prolonged illness, among all of the things my mind was sorting through, this forgotten experience drifted in. Totally unprovoked and effortlessly revealing, I felt the need to write everything that I could remember, just as it presented itself to me.
And as I wrote, I became more and more immersed within the warmth and comfort of that time with my grandparents, so precious and dear to me now, as I realize after all how much meaning it brought to my life.
This glimpse into their world was written with love and a deep and ever-growing appreciation for my family, for my heritage. It might well have been entitled , “The Gift”.
As far as I was concerned, summer began with the day my father installed the screens in the windows. Early that morning, Mother would have taken the summer sheers from storage to the clothesline in our backyard. By the afternoon, she swooped up the freshened bundle and brought them back indoors to hang on the rods at the tops of the windows. When the transformation was complete, I’d run from room to room to see the curtains flying on the breeze that raced in through the windows of our big old house. Like a magical invitation to adventures possible only with summer, when one day melted into the next and no one asked about the time, I felt that I could fly too and that anything could happen.
There were 5 children in my family. My brother Lionel was the oldest; my sister Cecilia was next, followed by my sister Rose, then my brother Isaac, and me. We spent summertime totally absorbed in keeping pace with our friends as was our Mother in keeping up with us. She mended our scraped knees, our bruised egos, and the holes in my brothers’ dungarees. I remember lemonade and tuna sandwiches, cotton sun dresses and hair ribbons; the pennies I collected for the corner candy store, and my ankle socks that never stayed up. Summers seemed much longer then when hopscotch and jump rope, hide-and-seek and tag, dress-up and make-believe, with my bicycle, my dolls and friends filled the days until supper time. When August finally came around, among the five of us someone would be chosen to vacation with our grandparents in the country. It was in the year 1957 that I was to spend my first summer there.
I’d thought so often about my first trip to the farm. But like the landing of a cascading boulder, my mother’s cheerful delivery of this summer’s plan completely shattered my vision of it. Leaving little room for the way that reality alters things but similar to most events concerning “the children”, I was quite certain of my unvarying reverie. It was always the same. My brothers and sisters are running through a country field with me, very happily and as usual, following close behind. But everything had been arranged and I alone would spend two weeks on the farm that year.
My family had gathered in the living room when Mother made the announcement. But my frustrating lack of enthusiasm was like a call to dinner in emptying the room of everyone and I found myself alone, save for the dog. While I struggled with the concept of being on my own, Spiky jumped onto the couch next to me. Placing his head upon my foot he kept a concerned and watchful eye over my disposition until we both fell asleep.
Later that day, I listened to Dad’s recollections of farm life adventures while Mother prepared supper. As she filled in with the finer points and particulars she’d taken note of my mixed feelings with her knowing smile that always took the sharp edges off of things. “Don’t forget that your cousin Joanna is just about your age and lives close to Grandpa‘s”, she nearly whispered. Then I thought of the pocket inside the little green suitcase as the place where my Jacks would find a perfect fit.
As years go by, along with the changing capacity of a physical body I realized a really good thing. A realization perhaps possible only with the passage of time and the experience thereof. After it all, it could be correctly described as an exchange for the potential of understanding choices that were made, a perspective of things that came before, a realization of the amazing harmony of life.
Suppose it falls within the limits of a child’s mind, which allows an experience to settle so completely into recesses of memory…just as though it never happened?
In 2010, an occurrence opened the door to a trove of memories from a childhood experience I hadn’t recalled for very long time. It was startling in that way, and persistent. The recollections would become the book that I found myself writing.
The following is an excerpt:
Two Little Girls
Chapter 1
As far as I was concerned, summer began with the day my father installed the screens in the windows. Early that morning, Mother would have taken the summer sheers from storage to the clothesline in our backyard. By the afternoon, she swooped up the freshened bundle and brought them back indoors to han on the rods at the tops of the windows. When the transformation was complete, I’d run from room to room to see the curtains flying on the breeze that raced in through the windows of our big old house. Like a magical invitation to adventures possible only with summer, when one day melted into the next and no one asked about the time, I felt that I could fly too and that anything could happen.
There were 5 children in my family. My brother Lionel was the oldest; my sister Cecilia was next, followed by my sister Rose, then my brother Isaac, and me. We spent summertime totally absorbed in keeping pace with our friends as was our Mother in keeping up with us. She mended our scraped knees, our bruised egos, and the holes in my brothers’ dungarees. I remember lemonade and tuna sandwiches, cotton sun dresses and hair ribbons; the pennies I collected for the corner candy store, and my ankle socks that never stayed up. Summers seemed much longer then when hopscotch and jump rope, hide-and-seek and tag, dress-up and make-believe, with my bicycle, my dolls and friends filled the days until supper time. When August finally came around, among the five of us someone would be chosen to vacation with our grandparents in the country. It was in the year 1957 that I was to spend my first summer there.
I’d thought so often about my first trip to the farm. But like the landing of a cascading boulder, my mother’s cheerful delivery of this summer’s plan completely shattered my vision of it. Leaving little room for the way that reality alters things but similar to most events concerning “the children”, I was quite certain of my unvarying reverie. It was always the same. My brothers and sisters are running through a country field with me, very happily and as usual, following close behind. But everything had been arranged and I alone would spend two weeks on the farm that year.
My family had gathered in the living room when Mother made the announcement. But my frustrating lack of enthusiasm was like a call to dinner in emptying the room of everyone and I found myself alone, save for the dog. While I struggled with the concept of being on my own, Spiky jumped onto the couch next to me. Placing his head upon my foot he kept a concerned and watchful eye over my disposition until we both fell asleep.
Later that day, I listened to Dad’s recollections of farm life adventures while Mother prepared supper. As she filled in with the finer points and particulars she’d taken note of my mixed feelings with her knowing smile that always took the sharp edges off of things. “Don’t forget that your cousin Joanna is just about your age and lives close to Grandpa‘s”, she nearly whispered. Then I thought of the pocket inside the little green suitcase as the place where my Jacks would find a perfect fit.
Years had gone by without a single thought of the time in 1957 when I spent the summer with my grandparents on their farm in Virginia. Then, in the midst of a prolonged illness, among all of the things my mind was sorting through, this forgotten experience drifted in. Totally unprovoked and effortlessly revealing, I felt the need to write everything that I could remember, just as it presented itself to me.
And as I wrote, I became more and more immersed within the warmth and comfort of that time with my grandparents, so precious and dear to me now, as I realize after all, how much meaning it brought to my life.
This glimpse into their world was written with love and a deep and ever-growing appreciation for my family, for my heritage. It might well have been entitled , “The Gift”.
As far as I was concerned, summer began with the day my father installed the screens in the windows. Early that morning, Mother would have taken the summer sheers from storage to the clothesline in our backyard. By the afternoon, she swooped up the freshened bundle and brought them back indoors to hang on the rods at the tops of the windows. When the transformation was complete, I’d run from room to room to see the curtains flying on the breeze that raced in through the windows of our big old house. Like a magical invitation to adventures possible only with summer, when one day melted into the next and no one asked about the time, I felt that I could fly too and that anything could happen.
There were 5 children in my family. My brother Lionel was the oldest; my sister Cecilia was next, followed by my sister Rose, then my brother Isaac, and me. We spent summertime totally absorbed in keeping pace with our friends as was our Mother in keeping up with us. She mended our scraped knees, our bruised egos, and the holes in my brothers’ dungarees. I remember lemonade and tuna sandwiches, cotton sun dresses and hair ribbons; the pennies I collected for the corner candy store, and my ankle socks that never stayed up. Summers seemed much longer then when hopscotch and jump rope, hide-and-seek and tag, dress-up and make-believe, with my bicycle, my dolls and friends filled the days until supper time. When August finally came around, among the five of us someone would be chosen to vacation with our grandparents in the country. It was in the year 1957 that I was to spend my first summer there.
I’d thought so often about my first trip to the farm. But like the landing of a cascading boulder, my mother’s cheerful delivery of this summer’s plan completely shattered my vision of it. Leaving little room for the way that reality alters things but similar to most events concerning “the children”, I was quite certain of my unvarying reverie. It was always the same. My brothers and sisters are running through a country field with me, very happily and as usual, following close behind. But everything had been arranged and I alone would spend two weeks on the farm that year.
My family had gathered in the living room when Mother made the announcement. But my frustrating lack of enthusiasm was like a call to dinner in emptying the room of everyone and I found myself alone, save for the dog. While I struggled with the concept of being on my own, Spiky jumped onto the couch next to me. Placing his head upon my foot he kept a concerned and watchful eye over my disposition until we both fell asleep.
Later that day, I listened to Dad’s recollections of farm life adventures while Mother prepared supper. As she filled in with the finer points and particulars she’d taken note of my mixed feelings with her knowing smile that always took the sharp edges off of things. “Don’t forget that your cousin Joanna is just about your age and lives close to Grandpa‘s”, she nearly whispered. Then I thought of the pocket inside the little green suitcase as the place where my Jacks would find a perfect fit.
Might it be associated with the fact that people are feeling inadequate due to the relentless exposure to otherpeople everywhere? It’s not natural. We are not physically capable of having that level of exposure. It can only happen electronically.
For heaven’s sake, wasn’t it enough being concerned with how you compare to the next person in the room, at a party, on the beach? Now we have people anywhere in the world to consider!
Recently, I took a day reacting only to people I could actually see in my physical proximity. I checked in to voice mail a couple of times throughout the day, but the joy was in deciding when that would happen. What a break!
charondiane 