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Post by Kimby on Nov 25, 2009 20:00:53 GMT
headstrong then, headstrong now ;-)
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Post by rikita on Nov 25, 2009 21:39:57 GMT
oh i can understand why my parents were scared and that it was stupid and all that... i just found it kind of funny that that woman assumed i must have some problems and all...
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Post by Deleted on Nov 29, 2009 11:49:56 GMT
Wintertime on Long Island,on the Atlantic, there would occur a particular natural phenomena. The temperature had to be at freezing or below,the tide just coming in and the moon at a particular phase. My brother and I would be jostled from sleep and bundled up in the warmest clothes there were. My father would take us down to the beach with us huddled up in blankets in the rear of the jeep. There along the water line would be dozens and dozens of fish lying on the still wet sand. You could see them in the headlights,shimmering and barely moving. We would jump out of the rear of the jeep as my father drove along the shore and pick up the fish and put them in a big bushel basket in the back. We would do this for a few miles. Occasionally,there would be another 4 wheel drive vehicle on the beach doing the same. The fish were called Frost Fish and were a type of Whiting.They were attracted to the small minnows or "shiners" that shone in the moonlight and were their prey. Because of the light from the moon and the tide going out they would get washed ashore still very much alive but on their way to becoming frozen from the cold,cold air. We would get a bushel full of these fish and go home and have hot chocolate around the pot belly stove in the kitchen. We were able to go back to bed and did not have to go to school that morning.
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Post by imec on Nov 29, 2009 15:57:18 GMT
You've painted a beautiful picture of this memory casimira.
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Post by bixaorellana on Nov 29, 2009 17:10:29 GMT
So many profound and beautifully presented memories here, I hesitate to add this slight bit. Rikita's story triggered it.
I used to live quite a ways out in the country on the banks of a river. There was a narrow road into the little group of houses, which were built on a loop. It was a great place to take walks, as there was a forest nearby and the houses were widely spaced. One section was completely undeveloped, simply an empty field.
One night I had a very vivid nightmare about the field, with an ominous sky and an evil creature made out of blue fire pushing a cart through the field. Shortly afterward, I was walking around the loop with my dogs when the clouds became dense and the sky darkened. Nervously, I began talking to the dogs for reassurance. The sky got almost black, casting a weird blue glow over everything. Then lightening crackled down and man's best friends scampered home, leaving me alone.
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Post by Deleted on Nov 29, 2009 18:11:52 GMT
I thought that I would live in my hometown forever. Except for a few trips to the maternal ancestral homeland, obviously very tantalizing, there was no reason to believe that I would ever move away from the only home that I had ever know. Then there came the divorce and various ugliness and the decision to move to California.
The decision was made six months ahead of time, so there was plenty of time to adjust to the idea of it. Our new stepfather had transferred his job to California and left after about three months to find a house and get everything ready for us. My mother lived for his nightly phone calls and requests for advice about the house. I was really excited and enthusiastic while my brother had very mixed feelings. We left Mississippi forever the day after my brother's high school graduation. He was valedictorian and gave a speech full of nostalgia, looking more to the past than the future.
We left quite early in the morning and drove diagonally up to join the new I-20 interstate freeway in Louisiana, as the I-10 had not been built yet in Mississippi. It was a stormy and rainy day, and my mother was totally stressed out in spite of her desire to reach California as soon as possible. She had never driven so far in her life and had never driven on a freeway.
On one of the highways, in front of us a car suddenly flipped off the road in the rain and went barreling down a long embankment, turning over several times. It came to a stop with the front in the water of a bayou, the brake lights lit. To my surprise, my mother did not stop to see if the driver was okay, even though there were not very many cars on the road and we were probably the only witnesses to what had happened. If the person in the other car was injured or perhaps even dying, we were the only people who might know. Maybe there was an entire family in the car. This was many many years before mobile phones. Seat belts were still the primitive lap version in those days and rarely worn.
But my mother thought only of reaching her destination as fast as possible, to meet up with the love of her life, with whom she remained inseparable for the next 28 years. I respect that, but for all of these years, I have always wondered what happened to the person or people in that car.
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Post by lola on Nov 29, 2009 20:33:11 GMT
Women feel vulnerable out on the lonely road, too. Though I guess she had two teenage boys with her, I imagine she felt responsible for your safety.
Driving up from Arkansas this spring, just north of the state line on a down at the heels stretch of two lane blacktop , my 17 yo daughter and I were behind a car that slammed into a pickup turning into its path. This happened next to a roadhouse with some rough characters in the parking lot. Liquid leaked onto the highway, objects from the truck were strewn around.
Since this was my old stomping grounds I felt entirely comfortable getting out to check on the drivers, but my daughter pleaded with me to drive around them and keep going. I think her anxiety was a combination of the alien setting and the unexpected violence of the wreck. I got out and made sure they were all right, but would've wanted her to keep driving if she'd been alone.
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Post by Deleted on Nov 29, 2009 20:33:23 GMT
Yes,witnessing something like that would haunt me forever...
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Post by tillystar on Dec 8, 2009 12:10:46 GMT
K's memory brought back one for me.
I was sitting outside a bar in Crete with a friend. We were sitting facing each other sharing a Greek salad and with a bottle of Amstel each before going into work. I heard the screech of brakes and the smash of a collision behind me. Before I had time t eventurn around my friend had fainted clean away and came around almost immediatey as she banged her face on her bottle.
She had seen the accident over my should and had seen the motorcyclist's head flying away from his body. She was deep in shock, but we soon saw the cyclist being helped up with his head attached. His helmet had been too big and undone and had flown off as he was thrown over the car.
We decided she was still in deep shock and we needed to take the night off work to stay and drink more beers.
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Post by tillystar on Dec 8, 2009 12:16:14 GMT
I loved the song Puff the Magic Dragon and thought it was lovely, but only really knew the words to the chorus.
When I was about 7 we were having a music lesson in class and Miss Watts wrote the lyrics to the song on the board so we could all sing along. As I read the verses was absolutely horrified at how sad it was and just sat there with tears rolling down my face feeling quite sick.
I learnt this weekend that 25 years later I still can't hear Puff the Magic Dragon without crying (so I listened to it again to test it out, does that go on the Sad making Sadder thread?)
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Post by rikita on Dec 8, 2009 13:01:08 GMT
yesterday i suddenly had the image of me walking down some parking place towards a store, hand in hand with my boyfriend. took me a while to realize that i was remembering a town where an ex-boyfriend of mine lived...
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Post by Deleted on Dec 14, 2009 12:10:47 GMT
Distinct memory looking out onto the garden this morning. Thick,thick fog,can literally see it "rolling". Many years ago after I had decided to become a professional gardener and abandon the hope of curing the mentally,emotionally unbalanced populace of New Orleans. Many of my jobs initially were across the huge Lake Ponchartrain,crossing the world's longest bridge,in dense,dense fog. I used my husband's then new car,a Toyota Corolla Wagon(great car,5 speed stick!)Bracing myself for the long drive over water in the early a.m. hours. I realize,as the windshield,side and rear windows fog up I have no clue how the defrost etc. system in this car works. The buttons have images on them of stick figures in various physical positions. No words or abbreviations.WTF! Panic,trying to keep eye on road at same time looking down at these buttons. I'm not feeling particularly fond of the Japanese people at this point. I see them high 5ing it in the factory. Pay back time. I drive along for some time and heart is beating very fast. Nowhere to pull over. At long last,forever into the void,the air is suddenly clear. I can SEE ahead. I look up. A pair of white pelicans flying just above,ahead,leading me to safety.
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Post by Deleted on Dec 25, 2009 1:42:50 GMT
Damp,cold dreary weather this morning.Was reminded of when I was around 11 or 12. My brother of a year or two older was into a trapping phase as many younger boys were where we grew up.Our house was very close to a deep swamp.I remember hearing him get up real early and leave the house to go check the traps. I pleaded with him to let me go with him.He always shrugged me off. Then,one morning he came and got me and told me to hurry up or we would be too late. I dressed in my warmest ratty clothes(I was a major tom boy,so not a problem). Up the hill I followed behind him carrying a big burlap sack.It was very early,4:30 or so,dark with a predawn light.No one around.We entered the woody part of the swamp and I closely followed behind him He knew every inch of that wood and stream. We came upon the traps he had put out the evening before and found 2 or 3 muskrats in. One had started to chew off his leg in the trap therefore,my brothers haste in wanting to get there early enough.I remember feeling real squeamish but fought so hard to not let it show as this was such a big deal for me to be included as I adored my brother.It only took about forty five minutes to check all the traps and then we went and sat in one of the duck blinds,quietly watching all the ducks land in the water just before the sun came up.After the sun was up we set out back home. I did not take part in the skinning but I have vivid recall of the skins stretched out in the sun drying on metal stretchers before being sent off to the furrier.
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Post by Deleted on Dec 25, 2009 6:40:20 GMT
I was realizing that I have a very clear memory of every family Christmas tree of my life -- exactly where it was located, the size of it, how it was decorated, which ornaments we used.
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Post by rikita on Dec 25, 2009 22:55:15 GMT
well not so much my own memory, more my parents telling me about it later - when i was very small, and had seen the christmas play at church, i would dress our cat up in doll clothing, put it in my doll bed, tell my brother he's joseph, i am mary, and the cat is baby jesus.
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Post by Deleted on Dec 25, 2009 23:08:13 GMT
Sacrilege!
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Post by Deleted on Dec 25, 2009 23:17:56 GMT
This could set the RC church back centuries if gets out rikita!! A whole new twist on the"Immaculate Conception",the whole bit!
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Post by Deleted on Dec 25, 2009 23:20:37 GMT
At 8 years old
With the exception of one little girl, whose nick name was Bobbie, short for Balwinder, all the rest of the children were white. Bobbie was Indian, and like me from one of the villages of the Punjab and her family were of the Sikh religion. We instantly became friends, we had a connection, a common ground and soon enough through us, our families got to know each other as well. At the time our families were one of the first Indian ones to settle in Xxxxx, this would slowly change, but for now we felt lucky to have found each other.
Like any school, this one had it’s share of bullies, one in particular was a tall, heavy girl by the name of Jennifer Wade, she either liked you or she didn’t and this had the classroom divided. It was a case of you were either her friend or you were her victim, and by the way you treated her or how she took to you defined in her mind who was going to be which. Some tried to get on her good side, in hope of not being picked on to be her next victim, a few stood up to her because that was just in their nature and they couldn’t be any other way.
Bobbie always stood up to her, being Indian and so being different and strange, at least in Jennifer’s eyes, instantly made Bobby her victim. For some reason she never bothered me or picked on me, I have no idea why, maybe this was because we lived quite close to each other and often played in the local park together or perhaps she saw something in me that told her it wasn’t going to work, I guess even at that young an age, I had a certain toughness about me and a certain confidence in myself and my own abilities that shown through. I never was the type to cower down to anyone, no matter who they were, how big, how tough, how rich, how important, how mean or how many followers they had. Perhaps it was the fact that I had had to be so independent and street wise at a such a young age, or perhaps it was just the fact the I was the youngest of six very roughly brought up children, and that had toughened me up, whatever it was this attitude saw me through a lot in the years to come.
One day, Jennifer told Bobbie to do something, I can’t remember what it was, but Bobbie refused, Jennifer threatened to hurt her if she didn’t do as she was told, but Bobbie stood her ground. Then Jennifer grabbed Bobbie’s hand and started to bend her middle finger right back, further and further it went, I thought it was going to snap right off. The poor girl just stood there, the rest of the class looking on in disbelief , silent tears running down her cheeks.
I wanted to tell them to stop, I wanted to shout how wrong this was, I wanted to grab Bobbie and run out of the class with her, and just when I felt I couldn’t watch anymore, Jennifer stopped, perhaps knowing that if she went any further the other little girl’s finger would break right off. Bobbie just stood there that day and took the pain and humiliation, determined not to cry out loud, I’m sure she must have hurt a lot physically and also mentally from this cruelty and I’m sure this kind of bullying must have left many marks on her emotionally as she got older.
The teacher was never told, as was the usually the case, we all knew that if anyone told, we would get it later on. Jennifer would carry on much this way throughout the years to come, she eventually went to High school with the rest of us, but never finished, we found out that she was put in a foster home and then a children’s home for troubled teenagers, they said the reason was because she was being abused by a family member in her own home, and because she had become too uncontrollable for the teachers to handle.....
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Post by fumobici on Dec 27, 2009 1:56:42 GMT
I suspect that causality aside- children evincing this sort of cruelty probably learned it on the receiving end somehow- the bully suffers almost as much emotional trauma as their victims retrospectively.
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Post by Deleted on Dec 27, 2009 13:56:32 GMT
That is true, fumobici. And on top of that the guilt they have to carry for years come...
Yes, at one point I became the bully.
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Post by Deleted on Dec 27, 2009 14:11:58 GMT
My friend Bobbie:
Bobbie lived with her family in an older house by Mill Road Park, this was several streets and about a fifteen minute walk away from xxxxx. Bobbie’s childhood was also torturous but in another way to mine. She had a very mean older brother and a younger one, that she always referred to as her ‘baby brother‘. Both her parents worked and this meant that she had to take care of her baby brother and be like a little surrogate mother to him, even though she was only eight years old at the time herself. Hard to believe that any parent would leave a baby in the care of an eight year old, but that is exactly what they used to do.
Her parents were one of the more stranger people that I got to know during that time, there was something never quite right in that household, the whole family were messed up in one way or another. But it was more than just their strangeness, there was a certain presence of evil that was hard to understand or describe that lurked around them. Years later, Bobbie’s mother would be diagnosed with having severe mental problems, what brought these on I have no idea, but one look at her father made me wonder if this evil looking man was not abusing his wife in some way, and maybe even his daughter too.
Bobbie’s older brother was cut from the same mold as the parents. His mother idolized him, simply because he was a boy. It was the same in many Indian households, the boys were always welcome and the girls looked at as no more than a burden that one day would take too much money to marry off, considering what was expected to be given as a dowry. If a baby boy was born, everyone would celebrate, if a girl, the parents would be looked upon with pitying eyes and told, never mind, maybe next time you may be more lucky. So ingrained was his attitude in the minds of most Indians that it never came as a surprise, it was just the way things were and had always been.
In Bobbie’s case this way of thinking was taken to the extreme, not only was she looked down on by the rest of her family, but she was abused in many different ways too. Much of this abuse would not come to light until she turned sixteen and would try to commit suicide, but even then her life was full of secrets, she only ever communicated some of what she had been through in her young life, the rest she simply buried deep in her mind somewhere where no one could pry it out no matter what. Maybe this was a coping mechanism with her, I’m not sure.
Any time I would visit Bobbie, she would be downstairs in the basement, which was also the place the kitchen was located, she would always have the baby wrapped around her waist. I’d watch this little girl, as she made bottles of milk for her baby brother, did the dishes, cleaned the floor and cooked the meals, as best an eight or nine year old child could do. Her life was all about work, while her older brother sat upstairs in the living room, with his feet up, watching television.
She only rarely came out to play in the park that was but a stones throw way from her house, and when she would be allowed to come out it was never for very long. Her clothes always seemed too small for her, she was taller then me and her dresses would just about cover her behind, not only that but they would also be made of a very thin material which on the colder days must have been hard to wear.
She did however, have food to eat regularly, even if she had to cook it herself, that was one advantage she had over me. Her legs would eventually grow ugly looking varicose veins, I imagine this was the result of standing for long periods of time in the kitchen, cooking and cleaning as was expected of her. Her mother always treated her cruelly, for no reason at all, I’d see her go past the little girl and smack her really hard behind the head. Bobbie would cry silent tears, it seemed to be her destiny to cry those silent tears, at home and then at school. Her older brother was encouraged to treat her badly too, I found out years later that not only the mother but the brother and father would regularly beat her. Sometimes her brother would beat her and her parents would stand by and encourage him on, so was the life of yet another unwanted little Indian girl.
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Post by Deleted on Dec 27, 2009 21:15:58 GMT
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Post by Deleted on Dec 28, 2009 15:54:37 GMT
Didn't mean to make you feel sad, Kerouac. Tell you what, when my book is published I'll send you a copy. The only thing I can promise is it will make you cry. (sorry). But it'll also make you laugh, because above all else, I'm a goof.
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Post by Deleted on Jan 11, 2010 1:24:34 GMT
At 5 to 6 years old:
''Being a child who had very little, I spent more time then I should have on envying and wanting to be like other little girls. One such girl lived on the second floor, in quite a comfortable little apartment with her mother and father, she had no brothers or sisters. I would go up stairs to their place sometimes to play with her. She would share some of her treats with me, if she felt like it, one of her favourite treats was jam tarts, and I would try and get as many of them as possible from her, as I was always hungry. Sometimes she was nice and other times she didn’t want to play with me. She was a cute little girl, with soft wavy hair and parents that obviously cared for her a great deal.
Living in an apartment the had access to their own bathroom facilities and had much more privacy then we did down stairs. My sister, who could be very mean spirited, as was her nature, would often compare her to me, and would pick her up and give her special attention. I realize now she did it only to make me jealous, but back then I thought she just plainly preferred her and it hurt. So at school I would take it out on the little girl. I would bully her and treat her mean, and all because I was so sad and angry and envious inside. I still feel bad about how I treated her to this day. At the time almost everyone on Pier Road seemed to be Indian, or so it seemed to me. Large houses full of people and different families, it was hard to keep track of who was who and who lived where. Often I would sit outside of our house waiting for my mother to come home from work. Sometimes I would play jumping games, but unsafe ones. Two large pillars stood to the entrance of the house, I liked jumping off the top of one cement pillar to another and trying not to fall to the six foot concrete floor below. How I managed not to crack my head open I shall never know, but somehow I didn’t injure myself, although I could easily have done so, and seriously too.
At times I’d get bored and wonder off down the street to see what other people were up to. I didn’t find many of the other Indians to be all that friendly. One time I went into a house that I knew my mother had been in before and so felt that I might be welcome there. Not so, she looked at me in a hostile way and told me to go home. After which she turned around and talked to the other women she was with about me and my family, and I heard her mention that no one seemed to care about me and how I was always hanging around where I shouldn’t be. They all seemed quite disgusted by it all. This confused me and I went on home.''
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Post by Kimby on Jan 11, 2010 16:32:41 GMT
aww, deyana. so many sad memories.
I hope your life today is happy enough to make up for it.
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Post by Deleted on Jan 11, 2010 18:16:06 GMT
It is, Kimby. I've been blessed more than I could ever have hoped for. So strange how life can change so much, just goes to show we never know what the future holds...
I don't dwell on the past, I write about it some days and then when I've done that, I forget about it until the next time.
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Post by rikita on Jan 12, 2010 19:09:10 GMT
The other day, my mom and a friend of hers and I spoke about some memories... So this is a story I only know from my parents telling - they had told it more often, but this time my mom told with more detail...
So, when me and my brother were little, my dad wanted to give us a rope ladder to put on the trees in our garden. My uncle worked in a theatre, and they had one of those that they didn't need anymore, so he took it with him after work, and as he was going to meet my father at a party, he took it there. Later on that same day, only after the exchange had taken place, my father and my uncle where both seperately arrested - my mom was just then waiting in the car for my father, and someone from the Stasi (as it was them, not the police), went to tell her to go home. When she got home, someone was already at the front yard, flashing with flashlights at our house and scaring my brother and me who were in bed already (I don't remember if a neighbour was watching us, but at that time it wasn't uncommon for our parents to leave us alone after we were asleep).
My father and my uncle were both interviewed for hours, but seperately, and being asked whether they wanted to use the ladder to escape over the wall (just the image itself is already ridiculous). My uncles interviewer kept hitting his fist on the table and saying "now come on, admit it - your brother has already confessed everything". but of course there was nothing to confess.
They then had to spent the night in jail cells, with no bed, just a chair, and the lights kept on all night, as well as a very noise fan. When my dad asked to turn the fan off, they did so, but soon he had to ask them to turn it back on, as it turned out to be really hot in the cell. In my uncle's cell, there was a woman, dressed very scantily and with lots of make up. She offered him cigarettes and tried to get him into a conversation - of course, since my uncle had his cigarettes taken away, it was obvious to him she was not, in fact, a prisoner, but supposed to get information out of him.
In the morning, they were let out and could go home, and even keep the ladder, with which my brother and I played for many years to come...
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Post by suzanneschuelke on Jan 17, 2010 18:55:50 GMT
Funny stories too - but so many sad memories from childhood. Mine was darn near perfect. Not a great deal of money but so much love. My siblings feel the same - we all always felt we were the happiest family around. We did the singing in the car and even family hugs (which our little poodle would try to join in). I got bullied some in junior high years - but my mom would hug me and promise that it would end (it did).
I have so many good memories so I thought I'd go with the earliest. I don't know how old I was - but extremely young. I had a little metal table designed for kids (the kind that would be plastic today) and I was drawing a picture and ended up crayoning all over the table. My mom saw and yelled at me and I remember being frustrated by not having the words to tell her that I needed to draw on the table because my picture was too big for the paper.
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Post by gertie on Mar 15, 2010 14:30:32 GMT
My earliest memories:
I remember waking up in the early morning and the shadows indistinct on the wall, the light eventually brightening to the point I could see some children and a little lamb on the headboard above my head. I told this memory once to my Grammy and she said it was my crib, so I was not more than three.
I remember my Aunt Bet, who was really a great Aunt of mine, though I really didn't understand that at the time, giving me my birthday gift, my first trike, and as my birthday is in January in the cold of that Ohio winter I was allowed to try to learn to ride it in the basement, a place I normally was not allowed to ramble. Grammy says I was just turned two. My memories are not as clear as I have expressed them, I really only remember hugging my Aunt in thanks and then trying to get my feet to work the peddles properly in the basement and it being on the trike I later recall riding in the sunshine outdoors.
I remember spending a morning at my Grammy's parent's house. My Great Grandma was heading upstairs to make the bed. I rushed up the stairs ahead of her and climbed up on the tall bed (funny how it looks a rather normal bed now, old-fashioned and a little taller than the beds my Grammy and parents had, but nothing unusually tall) and lay on the bed. I remember her fussing at me, not really mad, but probably ready to be done with the project as I hopped in while she was shaking the blankets out over the bed, getting in the way.
I had to have been under three and a half years old as my next memory in that house was going there with my Grammy and being told to stay downstairs on a big chair with scratchy fabric. They bring my Great Grandpa, Grammy's father, down the stairs on a stretcher. He called one of the bearers by name and then said something hoarsely I didn't quite hear. The bearer replied they knew he didn't want to go but were just taking him in because they had to have him looked at. He had had a stroke. I was three and a half exactly that day.
My next memory is of going to see him, I had thought in a hospital until a few years ago. Grammy and Great Grandma went with a woman in a white nursing outfit and I was left to pull a chair up to the bed. How I found out it was really a nursing home, my family was discussing family events, and my mother was surprised I remember all this. She swore I just heard stories about them carrying him downstairs until my Grammy told everyone no, that is exactly what happened, I was watching her that day and had to take her with me. Grammy said she made it to the house before the squad (Ambulance - Grammy worked at the hospital and this was what they called it there).
Anyways, the reason Grammy and Great Grandma went with the nurse was to talk to the director and sign papers as they were moving him in. When they came back a short while later, I was standing on the chair and Great Grandpa was patting my hand. He was unable to speak.
I remember leaving and being instructed to help my Great Grandma down the curb. She would hold the hood of the car and my hand "for balance" (having raised two children, I rather suspect she held the hood for balance and my arm to keep me from going wandering in the parking lot) and we got in Grammy's car. Great Grandma did not drive, so she moved in with Grammy the day Great Grandpa had his stroke. When we got to the house, the phone was ringing and the back door was locked.
I remember being rather shocked to hear my Grammy swearing (mildly, but I never recall otherwise hearing her swear) as she had to hunt to find the key. They never locked any but the front door of the house, and only that when they went completely out of town. Apparently my mother had locked the door fearful someone, knowing from the hospital report in the paper and small town gossip we had someone fearfully ill, would try to steal stuff.
Anyway, finally the key was retrieved and the door opened and Grammy answered the phone. She turned white and told whomever was on the phone "You'd better tell her" and handed the phone to my Great Grandma. Then she turned and told my Uncle, then about 19 or so "Your Grandfather has died" apparently Great Grandpa just closed his eyes and was gone when they went to check on him after we left.
Some funny-sad memory from around this time. When Great Grandpa died he went to the same funeral home in a big old house as my Aunt Bet. I don't know for sure who's funeral I really remember, they didn't take young kids to the funeral, only briefly to the visitation the night before where the family would sit with the deceased laid out and receive visitors. I do recall the wallpaper in the building and being carried in the building, that's about it.
Anyway, my Great Grandma on dad's side had died and we went to the funeral. Apparently at Aunt Bet's someone had told me she was "resting" (more on that one later) and at Great Grandmpa's I had by that time been somewhat filled in as to what dead meant - you die and you get laid out and you go up to heaven with the angels. Well, Great Grandma from dad's side lived in the next town and went to the funeral home there, so of course we went there for the visitation. I was inconsolable and no one could understand why I, who had been so well behaved at two others, was like this. Well, they cut their visit short and took me home.
Grammy talked to me and eventually it came out I thought she would not go to heaven as she was not laid out at the proper place, the funeral home I had been to in our town previously! I don't really remember all this, I just remember my younger Uncle who was only five years older than me sneering at me for being a stupid baby and thinking everyone would have to come to our small town. Don't think too sadly for me being teased, I am sure I ran and tattled on him and he got told to stop picking on me. ;D
I said I would tell about them telling me Aunt Bet was resting. Aunt Bet had been resting a lot because she had cancer and took pain pills, but usually eventually we would go back by her house and take her with us, if nothing else, to Grammy's house, where she would be plied with treats (and a little would quite probably end up in my possession). We would normally go visit her, leave her to get herself together while we did some quick shopping, often to pick up something Grammy thought would tempt her as she was painfully thin, and then we would go back and pick her up for a visit at Grammy's, with my Uncle or Grandpy driving her home and helping her into the house, and I have vague memories of these things.
Well, when I was about 15 I noticed whenever we came into town from a certain direction, one which we oft came from as the nearest town with any sort of shopping to our tiny crossroads was off that way, we seemed to make a very convoluted trip from the entry of the main road into town to my Grammy's house. I asked why we did that, and she seemed a little reluctant but finally said after Aunt Bet's funeral the first time we drove into town the normal most direct way from that shopping town, I saw the funeral home and said something like "Oh look, there's that house! Lets see if Aunt Bet is done resting and ready to come with us now!" and made everyone in the car - Grammy, trying to drive, my aunt, and two uncles, cry. So they started always going round the school so I did not see the house and the habit just stuck. Even after that, Grammy often went round the long way.
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Post by Kimby on Mar 16, 2010 0:15:34 GMT
What great memory you have, and from such a young age.
I think the earliest thing I can remember is when my youngest sister was born when I was just over 4 years old. Dad and Grandpa took us two older girls to the hospital so they could visit Mom and the new baby (kids weren't permitted as visitors, but they had no one to leave us with so brought us along). It was Christmas time, and very snowy, and I remember Grandpa trying to hoist me over a snowbank as we got out of the car, losing his grip and dropping me in the snow. I got snow in my underpants, as I was wearing a dress.
Interesting that births and deaths make such big impressions on little one.
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