WordSisters

Category: Memories

  • Sunset Season

    There’s a certain time of year when the sun stops staging its setting and instead slips away between the flatness of late afternoon light and evening commute darkness. Those summer and fall evenings, when lovers and families and friends drink wine out of plastic cups while sitting on porches or park benches, have slipped away as well. Coats, scarves, hats and gloves diminish the intimacy of strappy dresses, t-shirts or cotton pajamas. Sunset watching falls into the past season’s memory book and onto the a distant season’s to-do list.

    Timers bring holiday lights to life, a small gift to ease the lost hours of sun. Walking home from the bus stop or a friend’s house, we step in and out of the circles of sparkling white or bright color bulbs.  Dark and light, dark and light. The city people walk in the perpetual comfort of the street lights as long as they stay on public walkways and out of the darkness of undefined areas. Lights from stores, cars, homes suggest places where the people share time. At the right slice between dusk and dark, the interiors of houses and offices are as clearly lit as big screen televisions. In suburbs and small towns walkers might depend on those window views or harsh garage lights before the moon and stars accept responsibility to illuminate a path.

    So we hurry from the dark, almost as much as from the cold, to the places of light where we belong, have control, feel safe. Another winter begins. Wishing you a season of good holiday experiences and memories.

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  • A Home for the Marys?

    The sound of breaking glass might have been heard beyond our garage walls. An hour of cleaning had yielded a large bag of stuff for Goodwill and a number of items that had no second use. The noise was the crash of an engraved mixed drink carafe with a matching stirring stick and two small engraved glasses. These were wedding presents that were very personalized and never used. The thought that there might be bad jokes in a stranger’s home because our name lends itself to humorous pronunciations didn’t feel okay.

    Like many Boomers, our cabinets are crowded with generations of glassware, quilts, boxes of photos and family Bibles. As our parents passed, their treasures became ours to maintain.  Anyone want a few sets of 50thanniversary champagne glasses with my parents’ names? Again, their last name has a few quirky pronunciations that are better kept out of strangers’ parties.

    A crystal statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary we received one Christmas has a sister that my mother owned. They both stand, hands folded, behind wine bottles on a top shelf in the pantry. Taking more shelf space was a beautiful glass Christmas ornament on its own pedestal that was once the most valuable useless item we owned. Add two clear glass platters decorated with horses and sleds to carry dozens of holiday cookies. Plus one that has a lobster engraving, a total mystery. And the green platter with Thanksgiving in a lovely scroll that I never saw used at my parents but came to rest in my home.

    That ornament will hang on our tree this year and later fend for itself in a box of its peers. The pedestal is gone. Someone will be thrilled with the glass platters. Maybe even use the Thanksgiving one. Three orphan wine glasses wait to be used on Thanksgiving before starting the next purge. They are lovely, but we already have dozens of lovely glasses. Let a bride-to-be furnish her wedding table with these things instead of throw away items and benefit Goodwill in the process.

    But those statues are another story like a box of rosaries upstairs. Is there a Goodwill equivalent for Catholic stuff? The Marys don’t really deserve to be mistreated or become white elephant gifts.IMG_5858

     

     

     

     

     

  • Time Traveling

    toll road  Last week, I traveled back in time while driving to Ohio to visit my sister, brothers, and their families. The 12-hour road trip called for lots of tunes, and I found myself craving oldies that I could sing along to, even though I don’t usually like the oldies stations when I’m in Minneapolis.

    “Reeling in the Years” by Steely Dan sent me back to college, when I hung out with my wild boyfriend, partied with his buddies, and took midnight dips in borrow ponds on hot summer nights.

    The Fifth Dimension brought back high school and sleepovers in a girlfriend’s basement rec room. We danced to the “Wedding Bell Blues” and sang it at the top of our lungs. At 14, we yearned for love and passion, but for most of us, that was still a ways off.

    As I drove through the neighborhood where I grew up, Roy Orbison’s “Pretty Woman” took me back to my best friend’s pool and her mother snapping off the radio when she heard his sexy growl. She thought it was unsuitable for our 10-year-old ears.

    Several times I got lost while bumping along Toledo’s crumbly blacktop roads that are scribbled with tar. I’m no longer as sure of my way around—I’ve been gone 30 years—longer than I lived there.

    But inside my sibling’s homes I found myself. I became the middle sister again, the one who loves Bruce Springsteen like my sister and the Beatles and Creedence Clearwater Revival like my brothers.