Tag: legacy writing

Legacy Writing 365:293

I wonder how many toys pass through our hands during our lifetime? I wonder what makes us forget most of them, but remember some? I have no idea how many dolls I’ve forgotten, but I never forget the one that was stolen from me when I was seven. Any number of stuffed animals must have come and gone, but when my Teddy bear Dr. Neil was also stolen from me, I had the drive and rage of a Fury until I got him back.

Some toys I remember in great detail but don’t have memories, or even very strong feelings, about when or how they vanished from my life.

One time I was describing these “sort-of” paper dolls at Craft Night. I talked about them several times over the years, trying to figure out what to call them; without a name, I couldn’t even look for images. And Rhonda suddenly said, “You’re talking about Colorforms!” I had no idea that’s what they were called, but she was right. Since then, I’ve periodically done searches of vintage Colorforms and YOWSA! Colorforms of “The Munsters” and “The Addams Family” TV shows can auction for three to five hundred dollars. Beatles Colorforms start around seven hundred dollars. If y’all have those things in your attics, you might want to find out their value. I’m sure the ones I’m looking for will be more like ten dollars, but I’ve never found them yet.

I had another set of actual paper dolls that I’ve also looked for. They were babies and had the greatest little clothes, but they were also front and back paper dolls. The clothes folded down over their shoulders. I’ve seen similar ones, but not the set I recall.

I don’t know if I’d actually buy these if I found them, but it’s fun to search for them. Maybe I just want to see if they actually look the way I remember them.

Did you have any favorite toys you’d like to find again?

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These ribbons were awarded to a couple of abstract paintings I entered in my high school art show when I was a junior or senior. I think the paintings are still around somewhere, because my mother saved them. I always felt as if my last name, rather than the art, might have snared those ribbons. (Assistant principal’s daughter…)

I liked art class, though, even the incident that resulted in a cracked tailbone. Sorry; shared that story once on my blog, and not only did a hapless former fellow student get “info stalked” and exposed in my comments, but it ended with lies being told about me. I took that entry private. The Internet can be treacherous.

I did a truly horrific painting of a bird that somehow got moved around with my stuff for years until I finally threw it away. I hope it’s long since decomposed in some landfill.

My favorite part of the three years of art I took was when the school got a kiln and we worked with clay. I didn’t make anything particularly noteworthy or innovative, but it was still fun. I made something for Lynne that she may or may not still have. My personal favorite was a blue ashtray that I made. I never used it as an ashtray–I usually kept it on my dresser to put my watch, rings, and other jewelry in before I went to bed at night. In the early 1990s, Mother lived with us for a time, and she did use it for an ashtray. She was washing it one day and broke it.

One time when I was at my brother’s place in Nevada, I spotted an ashtray that he made in high school on a table outside his house. My mother used it for years. She also used an ashtray Debby made until she stopped smoking just before she died. I think that may have been returned to Debby. And I remember a little yellow clay pot, but I don’t know which of them made it or who may have it now.

Of the clay pieces I made, I believe this little bottle is the only thing I have.

Legacy Writing 365:291

My siblings and I haven’t all lived in the same city, or sometimes even the same state, except sporadically since I was around eleven. I stayed in Alabama for a long time even after they wandered, until Tom and I moved to Texas. I felt–and still feel–fortunate every time we’re together, usually on holidays, sometimes for sad occasions, sometimes for happy ones. It’s funny how easily we slip back into our roles as oldest, middle, and youngest child when we’re together, even though we’ve been adults for a LONG time. At least a decade and a half in my case. 😉

Three of my favorite people–Josh, Sarah, and Gina–have gotten to become adults together with only a couple of separations. They’ve been there for the births of one another’s children, for all the happy and challenging life events. They still have fun together. They’re still all friends, and friends with their other-halfs. They party together, work out together, celebrate holidays together, sometimes travel together. They support the varied interests among them, and help take care of one another’s kids.

For the first time now, all three of them will be living in different states. I know what it’s like to miss your brother and sister(s). The adjustments are big. Even though social media keeps us closer and able to share more about our daily lives, it’s not the same, I know, as being able to drop into each other’s houses, shop together, share a pizza (or sushi?), play a game, go for a run or to a movie.

But I promise you, the bonds you’ve formed are powerful. No time apart, no distance, will ever break them. And every time you get to be together, it’ll be as if you were never apart. I always say the greatest gifts my parents ever gave me were David and Debby. I’m so glad the three of you have each other and share so much love.


You’ll always be a strong three.

Love,
Aunt Becky

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There’s nothing I don’t like about this photo of Mother with David and Debby. The way he’s squinting against the sun with that little sneer on his face–an expression everyone who knows him will still recognize today!–as if to say, “WHY am I dressed like this? I have things to do and places to be.” Meanwhile, his shoes are scuffed and his socks are falling down to add a bit of boy respectability to this get-up my mother’s put him in.

Debby clearly isn’t old enough yet to have transformed into the tomboy she became; she’s still all brushed and tidy, her shoes and socks perfect. She has a little grin as she looks at the photographer–maybe our father?

Mother is wearing the same dress style I’ve created so many times for my Barbies. I love its simplicity. She’s jazzed it up with shiny earrings and necklace. Each of her hands rests gently on a child, so at least she’s not having to wrestle them still for the photo.

I guess these are the photos people look at with nostalgia and think, “Times were so much better then.” But every time and every family has its difficulties and challenges. The best that we can do is enjoy the best of any time, try to live with some grace and dignity, and hold tightly to our senses of humor and gently to those we love.

There are a lot of changes happening in my family right now, almost all of them good. I’m thinking of you all and wishing you the best from Texas.

Legacy Writing 365:289

A few posts back I showed you the little stuffed Dumbo my sister gave me in honor of her nickname for me in younger days because of my big ears. Don’t think I didn’t give as good as I got, because my nickname for her was “Buck.” This was because I was always trying to convince her that she had buck teeth. While she was here, she pulled out a couple of photos of herself and said, “Here. They’re sticking out in this photo.” The thing is, they aren’t, because though she has healthy-sized front teeth and the tiniest little overbite, her two front teeth don’t actually protrude. So I guess…she didn’t really…deserve the nickname.

I’m still saying she should be a little cautious about using that “What’s up, Doc?” line, though.

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This is an old Polaroid photo in such terrible condition that I couldn’t even see who was in it. After I scanned it and did a lot of lighting and contrast adjustment, I can see that it’s me on my trusty bike. Also, because of some of the landscape that I cropped since it was so discolored and scratched, I could figure out where it was taken and so know that I was probably eleven.

Strangely, in spite of how murky the photo is, I know exactly what I’m holding. It’s a red plastic devil head on a stick. Either these were sold full of Halloween candy or they were somehow tied in to the school where my brother and Terri graduated, whose mascot was the Red Devils. I’ve looked in vain for an image of something similar online, so maybe someone else remembers.

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Don’t we look like we were good friends?

Yet I no longer remember her name.

I do remember she’s the only person in my entire lifetime that I ever got into a physical fight with. I don’t remember why.

I also don’t know who won, but I remember coming away from it with a hand full of blonde hair.

Sorry, Nameless Girl. I wonder if our fight had something to do with someone stealing my bear (which I recovered) and my doll (which I never found)? Theft and destruction of my property were reasons I told my mother from the time I was about three, “I don’t like to play with children.”

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A rare picture of Aunt Lola, Uncle Gerald’s wife. I don’t remember their kitchen at all, probably because when we visited, there were plenty of women and older girls around to help her get meals together and clean up afterward.

I’m sure there are still places and occasions when all the women gather in the kitchen and the men are elsewhere, though it’s not that way at The Compound. I can’t complain about the “old days” in the kitchen, because that’s where you could hear a lot of the good stuff. And by good stuff I mean family scandals, checkered histories, and medical tales about “female troubles” and bizarre home remedies.

I remember there were times when Aunt Lola stayed in the kitchen while the rest of us were eating in the dining room. I don’t know why she did it, but I know on some occasions when my mother’s house was full of people that she wished she had a door on the kitchen just to get some peace and quiet. Maybe that’s what Lola was doing, and I wouldn’t blame her.

The electric percolator she’s holding here: Lynne still uses one like it. She says it makes better coffee, and she may be right. I remember when my parents used metal percolators on the stove. Lynne still has a couple of those, too, and Debbie and I had one when we were in college. I didn’t like using it, because my coffee always ended up full of grounds.

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Something that’s been interesting to me during this year of compiling legacy writing posts is that it forced me to go through all my mother’s photos. After her death in 2008, I found that whenever I opened the trunk where I’d stored them, I could look at a few pictures, then I would start feeling out of breath, and I’d have to put it all away. These are the kinds of things we do when we’re ready, and if we can’t predict when that will be, we have to remember that no one else can, either. After years of listening to and trying to comfort people through losses, I’ve repeated so many times, “Grief has no timetable and no expiration date. Every loss is different, and every individual has a unique coping and healing process.”

Somehow it’s harder to say that to oneself, but fortunately, there are others who will remind me from time to time. I’ve found since April, I can’t look at any of Aaron’s baby pictures without feeling that same out-of-breath sensation, so I don’t push myself.

Many years ago, Lynne made a little outfit for a bunny for me from some fabric we both liked. I asked if she could make bears from that fabric, too. There was only enough fabric for one bear, so we dubbed him “Share Bear,” and said that sometimes he’d stay at my house, and sometimes at her house. Funny thing is, I think I’ve had him ever since! She’s probably forgotten about him.

Here, you see the Bunny and Share Bear posed in front of some flowers that Debby brought to The Compound and arranged (I’m sorry that they appear to be growing out of Share Bear’s head; they’re actually in a beautiful vase our friend Sarena gave me a long time ago).

I was reminded of Share Bear and the Bunny when I was putting some old photos away. I saw the envelope with Aaron’s name, and I randomly reached in and pulled out a photo without looking through them. Here’s the one I picked.

I don’t know who might have made Aaron’s bear, but it looks similar in pattern and fabric to Share Bear. I didn’t know Aaron when he was a baby. We lived so far apart that he was already eight when I met him in November of 2001. I’ll probably share that story and some photos from the occasion next month.

Little steps…

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October 10 is Tom’s mother’s birthday. I’ve said it before: I really lucked out in the in-law department. I try to maintain online privacy for Tom and his family, but I can’t let such a special day go by without recognition. Not only did she give me Tom, but she’s given me a constant flow of love and support through the years since I first met her.

Mary has boundless compassion, generosity, and love and respect for nature. She’s deeply spiritual. She’s creative as a painter, a poet, a memoirist, and a needlewoman. Her children (five) and grandchildren (five) are fortunate to have her as an example, a teacher, a parent, a grandparent, and a friend.

Through the years, she’s encouraged and read my writing and been kind about my art. My brothers-in-law (married to Tom’s sisters) and I are loved as unconditionally as her children–and she loves all her granddogs, too (not to mention the occasional rabbit, hamster, toad, fish, and turtle).

I’m sure this photo was taken by Tom’s father on one of their many adventures. They still travel the world together and come back to the wonderful home they’ve created–and to their dog Sparkle.

Happy birthday, Mary!