Tag: memories

Score

I’ve always been mesmerized by people who find money or other interesting things when they go through old purses, bags, coat pockets, and the like. I’ve never been one of those people–okay, except once, I did find a dollar in a blazer pocket many years after I last wore the blazer. Since I could remember tucking it there for specific reasons, I don’t count that.

Recently I was checking the various pockets of the case that contains my old laptop. I found a business card from my CR-V’s car dealership–obviously I’d taken my laptop with me when I got the car serviced. And folded up into a tight little square I found this piece of paper.


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I have a couple of notepads at the house with scores for our ongoing games of progressive rummy. One is used when we play Lynne and her family, and one is used when we play my sister during her visits. I probably folded this up and stuck it in my laptop bag with a promise to add it to the notebook. We consult these old scores when someone says stuff like, “I never win,” “I always lose the last hand,” or “Laura cheats.”

The moment I unfolded the paper, I knew exactly when it was from–September 2005. It was the first time Tim ever went to Lynne’s house–when we tried to evacuate as Hurricane Rita moved through the Gulf toward us. Our plan to leave the state was thwarted by the gridlocked traffic–it took us five hours to go fifteen miles–and we finally got off the highway and rambled along surface roads until we made it to Green Acres in the northwest suburbs. Whenever I look at our photos from those few days at Lynne’s, I’m amazed how much has changed. Our main reason for trying to evacuate was concern about how power loss and flooding could affect my mother’s health. She died in 2008. Craig died in 2006, and Tim’s dog River and cat Lazlo, both of whom were with us, have died, as have Lynne’s dogs Greta and Sparky.

But for that little period of time, we were all safe together. Though we were sometimes without power, we cooked and ate scrumptious meals, sat outside on Lynne’s patio and talked and (some of us) smoked, kept in touch with friends by phone and computer to make sure everyone was accounted for–and played lots of cards.

By the way, in progressive rummy, the winner has the lowest score–and oddly, this paper shows that each of us won one game. Maybe that’s why I kept it: proof that nobody loses all the time.

I still say Laura cheats.

Magnetic Poetry 365:345

In October 2001, Tom and I joined Tim, Timmy, Jim, and many friends in New York for the release of the first Timothy James Beck novel, It Had to Be You. It was a strange time in Manhattan, but traversing the island together in support of the book, having dinner with our editor, and doing a few tourist things helped keep our moods mostly positive.

One place we went was Keith Haring’s Pop Shop, a boutique providing public accessibility to Haring’s art, as well as clothing and gift items bearing images of some of his most iconic drawings. (The shop was closed to the public in 2005; the link above is its online site, where merchandise continues to be available.) While we were there, I sneakily bought Tom a couple of Keith Haring ties that I later gave him for his birthday and Christmas. He liked them so much that a couple of years later, I ordered him another one. Among them, he had a favorite.

On Saturday, he came inside from doing some work around The Compound grounds to five happy dogs (Tim’s and ours). None of those dogs had silk hanging from their mouths or necktie-icide in their eyes. But Tom’s favorite Keith Haring tie must have slipped off the rack and been visible under his closet door, because Pixie and/or Penny someone had left it in the middle of the living room. And it looked like this:

I texted Tim, who agreed that the tie carnage sucked, but then he said, “Though maybe now a Barbie might get a Keith Haring skirt.”

Hmmm. But my Barbies are all packed away until after the holidays.

Except apparently Santa has a secret stash in the house, because here’s a new Model Muse, who I’ve named Shannon after a character in one of my early (never published) novels. And she’s got a fancy new silk dress and jacket.

Button Sunday

I can’t believe I’ve been doing Button Sundays for more than five years. About two–maybe three–years ago, Lynne brought over a box of buttons. At first I thought she was giving them to me, then I realized she was loaning them to me for use in future Button Sunday posts. I promptly put the box of buttons away and forgot about them. She probably has added “button thief” to “Tupperware thief” and “sock thief” on her list of my vices. So I finally photographed them all, will share them over time, and now I can return them to her.

Maybe.

Here’s the debut from what I have of her collection:


This one reminds me of trips we made to Six Flags with Lynne’s church youth group when we were youngsters. On one of those trips, a boy a couple of years older began flirting with me. A year or so later, he became the first person my mother (my father was overseas) let me go on an official double date with because he seemed like a nice, young gentleman.

For my younger readers, let me tell you what I learned from him.

BOYS CAN BE MUCH WORSE GOSSIPS THAN GIRLS.

I have no idea what it meant to “ring the bell” at Six Flags, but all these many years later, I could still cheerfully wring that blabbermouth’s neck.

A morning lost in someone else’s past

I woke up thinking of envelopes of newspaper clippings, short stories typed on yellowed paper, and some handwritten reminiscences–all written by my father. Tom helped me find the collection in the garage before he went to work. I’ve been jumping from one story or clipping to another, wondering if I can finally edit it all into some kind of order, a project my mother handed off to me in the late 1980s.

One legal pad made me smile as it contains such an accurate glimpse into what occupied my parents’ thoughts on a particular day. My father had listed his predictions–including scores–of the football games Alabama and Auburn were scheduled to play in 1982. On the next page were price quotes my mother wrote from Mayflower, Allied, and U-Haul–planning yet another move.

In the same notepad: an account Daddy began of a train trip he took when he was five and a half. His age was important, because as Mr. Hasten Byrd–the ticket master–told my grandfather, my father could ride for free until he was six.

His tale begins…

She was my old maid aunt, my mother’s oldest sister. The man she was to marry had been killed when he was thrown from his horse. And lo these many years later, tears still came to her eyes when she talked of Mr. Stablefield.

Most of what Daddy told me about Aunt Jo has left my memory. An exception: She scandalized the family by walking to town barefooted. In the draft of an introduction I wrote when I first began compiling his papers, I comment, “I believe [my father] thought I might grow up to be a character, someone like his Aunt Jo, and he couldn’t decide if he wanted that or dreaded it.”

I’ve always known Aunt Jo would be okay with my late-night forays to the grocery store in my snuggly warm house shoes.


I wish you a happy morning.