A Little Reminder of First Bedrooms

Do you remember your first bedroom? Did you grow up with that first bedroom as your only bedroom always, until you left it to be in the bedroom you live in today…or two bedrooms ago…or three?

The first bedroom I remember growing up in was probably at least my second, maybe third, or maybe even fourth, if you count that my parents were living in an, ahem, trailer when I was born. We lived there for about a month when I was born before my parents moved on up to an apartment. Not sure if I had my own bedroom in that abode or not.

But my bedroom on 2030 Delaware Street is the first one I actually remember. We bought that yellow house when I was two or three and lived there until I was in 5th grade.

I remember that house more vividly than anywhere I’ve ever lived since I think. I wish I could go back to it, but I know from driving by, a lot has changed. At least judging by how much of the outside changed, I assume a lot has changed.

I loved my bedroom there it had a twin bed with a rotation of three sheet sets. One was Strawberry Shortcake, the other was E.T and the third mighta been Care Bears (although I may be confusing them with my Care Bear underpants). I can remember staring at the scenes on my sheets sets. Little Gertie presenting E.T. with her flowers.

This is from Etsy. Going for only $10 bucks!

The bed itself had been my mother’s and Cassie had her mom’s. There were little doors on the headboard I stored books and toys and little baskets with hairbands and tiny play things. My clock radio rested on the top shelf (on which I listened to lame-o soft rock and not-lame-o oldies to fall asleep) and the shelf directly above my head held my nightly water classes, which I drank out of Tupperware sippy cups. They’d accumulate over the week, until I had a rainbow of cups above my head.

Also on Etsy!

The bed was always filled with stuffed animals—literally. They went all the way down the length of the bed, like I was sleeping next to a full-length stuffed animal person. Most of them were Valentine’s Day presents from my dad, which he would get at Gertrude Hawks. They were mostly Disney and Warner Brothers characters, as I was really into cartoons at the time.

The early version of the bedroom had an old, tiny closet, with an old closet door. I used to make my mom leave the light on in the closet (um, yea, monsters and all). I typically had her leave the light on next to my bed, too. A bright yellow lamp that she only recently got rid of (without telling me of course, or it’d be in my house right now). On that closet door, for a very, very long time, hung a photo of Ricky Schroeder. It was the cover from the local paper’s generic TV guide. I was in Kindergarten. When my dad gave me a jab about having a photo of a boy I liked thumbtacked to my closet, I told him my mom made me put it there. Kid logic is an amazing thing. I still get embarrassed at the thought of my dad knowing I like a boy…and I’m married!

I ask, what five-year-old wouldn’t love that face??

About a year before we moved, my dad redid my room (and I spent most of that time in the “spare room”). He added a plush pink carpet that I understand now was so 80s and probably ugly but I LOVED it. I think before that I had an embarrassing, thin brown rug, so to convert to a soft pink carpet was revolutionary to my 9-year-old mind. He also installed a built in closet/desk/bookshelves that I also found revolutionary. I remember not being into the closet (“I’m a tomboy so I’m not really into clothes. My mom made him build that part), just like I pretended I wasn’t into the idea of going to college some day. (“I’m not really into college. My parents are going to make me though.”)

The closet/desk/bookshelf was my FAVORITETHINGEVER. I spent all of my free time, sitting at that desk, writing stories and listening to cartoons on my awesome 19” TV (my SECONDFAVORITETHINGEVER). I sat at that desk when I pretended to do homework but really wrote stories. I sat at that desk to draw, color, glue banks out of Popsicle sticks. I didn’t get my typewriter until after we moved from that house, but if I’d gotten it sooner, it certainly would’ve heard the tap-tap-tap from my gray Smith Corona.

It just occurred to me that with the remodeling of that house, they’ve probably torn down my desk. I think I only have one photo of it, and it’s from the day we moved. I’m standing in front of it, face tear-stained, hair permed, in a jean jacket looking like the most miserable person in the world. I remember thinking we were moving out of my childhood that day (dramatic even then) and decades later, I realize we did.

 

A Little Reminder of THE WORLD SERIES

Okay, first things first, I realize this is not a baseball blog. It’s not really much of a blog actually considering I haven’t posted since June—which was before the All Star break, but I’m not getting into that because I have two known readers and both know the kind of few months I’ve had.

But anyway, all of the World Series hooplah for my beloved Phillies has me more than pretty excited. The Phillies have always been my team and I spent birth to about 1990 being obsessed with them. In 2005 or so, we started paying attention to this team and going to games. They were pretty good then, but it was a season or two before they got this good, and it’s been really fun to watch them get this good.

My grandparents were HUGE Phillies fans, even my Gram. I think they would’ve liked this current incarnation of the team. I realized yesterday the team totally feels like they are my friends. We spent all summer hanging out with them and their broadcasters. Last night instead of watching the national broadcast on Fox, we did what we’ve always done and listened on the radio to the hometown announcers calling the game.

Last night just the two of us listened to the game (well and Cooper, who begrudgingly donned his Phils shirt), and it reminded me of World Series of yesteryear when, I assume on weekends, my whole family would get together to watch games at—you guessed it—my grandparents’ house.

I don’t think it was a tradition we always kept or anything but I have some fuzzy memories of us having World Series pools. My dad came around to each of us with a slip of paper that had a number on it, and he had a chart and everyone’s name. I remember one game (or maybe it was the entire pool) Cassie won, which seemed so funny to me because she was so young. I believe it was probably during the 1983 World Series (which also featured my beloved Phillies, so it would make sense there was some family hooplah). I was five. That would’ve made Cassie three-and-a-half. You can understand my finding the humor in it I’m sure.

I just think it’s so cute that we’d all gather around Grandma and Papa’s small TV and watch the game. The Gennys were probably flowing. Papa probably yelled at the TV. Gram probably yelled at Papa. It was probably so much fun.

Just like I hope tonight is. Three more to go. Let’s go, Phillies. Let’s go, friends.

 

A Little Reminder of Vacation Memories

I just saw a wonderful photo on a really great Tumblr blog called Mandr, which is a visual blog that has fantastic, yet random, photos from around the web; I go to it often when I’m feeling stuck with my writing because often something is triggered in me. Tonight’s inspiring photo was this one, an abandoned trailer that with the words “free fish stories” spray-painted on the side, highlighted in red. It brought me back to one of the first times I’d ever fished…which then allowed me to churn out a lot of other memories from that vacation. I’m trying to record them here in record speed.

I was on a trip at age eight or so with my parents, my aunt, uncle and cousin and my new miniature, kid-sized fishing pole. On this summer trip, our families spent a week at The Hideout, some sort of cabin community in the Poconos. It  felt like hundreds of miles away from our every day, but was, in fact, more like 60 tops.

We rented an almost loft-like house that was wooden and looked like a cabin and maybe, more like probably was a cabin. This was before the little kids were born and it was just me and Cassie and our parents. It’s amazing to me that it has been more than twenty years since this vacation and I can remember so much of it so vividly.

We brought tons of books, notebooks, colored pencils, markets, crayons and colorforms, as well as nearly all of our stuffed animals (literally heaps of them in bags), and luckily, there was a crib for them all to sleep in, save for the few that slept in our beds with us. I’d just gotten a neon pink My Little Pony that was made out of a fuzzy felt fabric, and it made Cassie’s eyes water and burn to look at it.

With our parents, we swam in the pool and the lake by the little man-made beach, and I think went out on a boat and fished (catching sunnies and throwing them back). We found a pet inchworm (and named him Inchy, of course), but our ownership of him was short-lived when Cassie tripped while carrying th house we made for him (which was a slice of bread) and he fell off, scurrying into a hole under a rock by the lake’s edge. I think she and I had an actual fight about it, and, well, knowing us at that age, we likely did. Our parents fought on the trip too, a little I think, alcohol surely fueling it. God, it’s funny that they were all younger than we are now.

I mostly remember watching Commandor Mark and his show where he’d instruct us to “Draw, Draw, Draw.” I also remember that the man who voiced Alfie, the elf who lived in a tree on the local TV show “The Land of Hatchy Milatchy,” died that week, and the shock of it made me have a hard time sleeping. It seemed unimaginable that Alfie could die when we were doing something as fun as being on vacation. When he should’ve died in my eight-year-old mine, I’m not sure. I’d venture the answer is “never.”

In our little cabin bedroom with the wooden (possibly paneled walls), we lay in twin beds and I thought of all of the trees outside, elf-less, barren. Especially at that point in my life, death left me reeling, searching for answers, scared, especially when people you just assume will be around forever aren’t. I’d lay up at night thinking of all of the important people in my life and how I couldn’t bare to face a day without them. Not much has changed, even with that many decades behind me. Not sure it ever will.

 

A Little Reminder on Father’s Day

I wrote this last night and it needs a lot of work but I’m going to post it anyway because it’s Father’s Day and all and it’s about me and my daddy-o.

Thunderstorms on the Porch

You liked to watch the lightening shatter across the sky
while sitting on the porch’s glider,
relaxing with a brown Genny bottle in your hand.
The rain fell in sheets or buckets or droplets or cats & dogs

or however rain falls on and off during thunderstorms.
But it was the crackling explosions of imaginary cannons above us that left me afraid.
With Newhart on the tv in the next room,
I watched from the hallway, my face smooshed up against the screen,
feeling its cold and flexible give when pushed against my nose and fingertips.

“It’s safe out here,” you said, sensing me there afraid and watching.
And since you were my dad, I listened to you.

Smelling the fresh rain, we sat and watched the lightening dance
above Susan and Eddie Coleman’s house across the street,
hearing the wet tires on Blakely Street streaming by in the distance,
between what Papa always said was the angels bowling in Heaven.
It smelled like summer and I could nearly feel
corn-on-the-cob and baseball games and Freeze Tag and
Ghost in the Graveyard and lemonade and ice cream trucks
and 3 months of solitude from school.

We watched the lightening flash above us for what felt like hours and talked,
about what, I, sadly can’t remember,
just as we did many years later, when I was first an adult,
on one of our only group vacations,
watching lightening smash against the ocean from up on the condo’s balcony.

As those fractured lightening lines hit the water’s horizon,
I wondered then if you thought about those thunderstorms
back on Delaware Street,
but for some reason I didn’t ask.
I was still scared up on that balcony

but since you were there and since you felt like it was safe,
I stayed and watched with you.
It was a miraculous display of nature, shattering zigzags through the grey, puffy sky, even without Larry, Darryl and Darryl inside.

 

A Little Reminder of an Old Kitchen Table

We sat at that kitchen table, with the chipped Formica that we never really even noticed was banged up, nearly every Sunday of our lives. The whole world revolved around that kitchen table, around that tiny kitchen, with the burnt orange stove and the humming refrigerator, packed with stuff you’d forgotten you even bought. Coffee cakes and cookies sat on the counter and candy in the cabinet above. The metal mug tree holding the “#1 Papa” and flowered cups acquired from who-knows-where, who-knows-when.

It always felt like there were more of us there than there were really, and though now we’re generally only minus two, the two of you, it feels much emptier. Maybe it’s because we’re usually in Aunt Rose’s bigger kitchen now, with its wooden table and sliding glass door to the large, green backyard. Maybe it’s because there aren’t usually little kids running around anymore, all grown-up with jobs, places to be, and, actually, kids of their own. Maybe it’s just that your presence was that strong, that life was that different then.

I’ve only been in your kitchen a few times since then, and I’m not sure if your last table remains. Most things are different from how I remember them now, especially how I remember them as a kid: the linoleum that would snag socks, the fluorescent light above the table, the carpet-free hallway we used to race McDonald’s Matchbox style cars. Most people would think of these things as home improvements, and if it was any other home, I suppose I’d agree.

I prefer remembering the kitchen table where we’d eat those big family dinners of spaghetti or macaroni (which was anything but spaghetti and actually rarely macaroni), when we’d cram into that kitchen and sit on anything we could find, sewing benches and the piano stool often a source of much contention. Where we’d fight over levels of soda and who got to pour you a glass of water after you came in from working outside with our dads. The kitchen directly inside from the yard we’d move to in summer months, where you grew roses and we set up baby pools and threw balls up onto the roof. Where we did gymnastic flips on the old metal swing set, with its chipped green paint and two simple swings. The kitchen next to the tv room where we played school and library and watched Nirvana for the first time, you yelling at us for banging our heads up and down like the kids in the video, telling us, “You’re going to snap your necks.”

Since then, I’ve sat at many kitchen tables, but none have ever felt the same as the one in your tiny kitchen on Drinker Street. A kitchen table filled with love, secrets and togetherness, frustration, joy and defeat, companionship, laughter and total, total comfort. I don’t know if I’ll ever find a kitchen table like that again. If I don’t, I’m glad I had one in my life once.

 

A little reminder of SPRING!

I am convinced that I have Seasonal Affective Disorder. Seriously.

Nothing much about my life has changed. I still have no job. I still feel panicky. I still feel listless. Yet. A slight change in the mercury, some sun, some lilacs in a tiny vase in my kitchen (nearly dead at this point but still, lilacs), some plants in containers outside, and I feel inspired…hopeful…and, dare I say it, optimistic.

We spent Sunday, Mother’s Day, with my ma and dad doing tons and tons and tons of yardwork and grilling. It was fun. A lot of fun. My mom and I took a trip to get some plants and flowers for the garden and containers. It’s amazing how something so simple could make me so happy. But it, well, it does.

 

A little reminder of Time Flying

I can’t even believe it’s been nearly a month since I’ve updated; time goes by way too quickly even when you don’t have a job, because I feel like I have nothing to update. But in short, so far in the past month, I rescued another dog (and bribed him home with a sandwich), met a parrot, walked in the rain a bunch, jogged in the rain too, had some good meetings, wrote a bit, listened to a lot of baseball, learned how to sew a button and stitched up a dog toy.

There’s probably a bunch more I could list but after two mugs of sleepytime tea, that’s about it.

 

A Little Reminder of Excitement

This evening I took Cooper to the dog park in Nazareth. Much as he’s done with the others we’ve frequented in the past, especially Pretzel Park in Manayunk, once he recognizes where he is going, he cannot contain himself. He starts squeaking and whining in the back seat and runs back and forth trying to dodge himself through to the front of the car.

At this new park, there is only a makeshift parking lot, and it is really muddy, with huge tire tracks leaving mazes in the ground. When I pulled through the mud and turned to park, the front of my car edging onto the grass, I hit some bumps from the muddy tracks and stopped short. Cooper was already starting his descent over the console into the front seat and the unexpected force of the stop (which surprised us both) flung him into the dashboard. I practically saw the cartoon birds circling his head, as he sat and blinked his eyes for a moment. In a breath, though, he lunged onto my lap since it was one step closer to the door, and we were barkingly on our way to the park, where he torpedoed around with half a dozen other yipping, slobbering, muddy dogs.

We should all shake off our problems so easily and bound off, smiling and hopping as fast as we can, into the things that excite us.

 

A Little Reminder on a Gray Day

I don’t know why but rainy, chilly, gloomy days fill me with sadness and dread. Yesterday I was out raking leaves that were as overdue as library books and felt overwhelmed by all of the yard work that needs to be done to change the house’s current look of Munster’s abode. Despite feeling overwhelmed, being out in the sun and kneeling in the grass and touching handfuls of leaves and dirt turned my mood around. I’d say I almost felt good. Baseball was starting in the evening, spring is heading this way, the back part of the house actually looks decent.

And then there is today.

I was up until past 3am stewing over my lack of job, sending out resumes, panicking, trying to read, trying to make a list of things I need to do. Subsequently I slept later than I wanted and even now that I’ve been up hours and hours, all I want to do is get back in bed. Pull the covers up over my head. I guess the key is that I am not. I am continuing to send out resumes, I am reading, I am trying to set some time aside to write, I am figuring out bills and taxes and daydreaming.

I’m pushing on, despite the rain, despite this constant dread and confusion. In the words of my father, I think I just need to “regroup.”

 

A Little Reminder of Happiness

Tonight I went running, and it was the time of night when it felt not quite like spring nor quite winter. The wind lightly dusted through my fingers and brushed against my face. The cold air stung my thighs and felt so good in my lungs. I even attempted and accomplished the huge stairs that head into College Hill. On the run, I noticed the buds peaking out of a few tree branches, which is traditionally my happiest day of the year. At the end of the run, a light rain started to fall, tickling my face and polka-dotting the sidewalks. Pretty perfect.