3 posts tagged “memories”
You know the ones, "getting to know you", it came at a good time for me, my answers were different than they would have been a week ago...
My favorite question of the bunch:
What has been your greatest accomplishment so far?
At age 15 I collaged my bedroom. It may not sound like much, but we are talking 15 years old, better things to do...and a whole 10x12 bedroom here, all four walls and the ceiling. I hung butcher paper with thumb tacks and clipped pictures and words for months and glued them to it... every spare minute went into it. Everything that appealed to me became a part of it. In 4 short months it was done, not a single speck of butcher paper showed anywhere... it was a visual excursion into a different place full of color and fragmented thoughts during an time and age when the world was in chaos and so was I. My mom dragged unsuspecting visitors in to see it. When she did, she stood proudly at the door as she showed it to people, as if to honor the fact it declared my room a personal place where she needed permission to enter. It was my altar to my soul and spirit, that part of me mom claimed she never understood yet she defended my right to be who I was with the fierceness of a lioness every day she was alive.
It was still hanging up when I moved out at age 18. Years later, long after she passed away I found it, carefully tucked way in numbered strips, in a huge box labeled "do not throw out, ever". I never knew she had kept it after I moved out. Moms are full of surprises. Why did she save it? Maybe in case I ever got lost and needed a road map back to who I am someday.... it got damaged in my leaking shed, it became a pile of paper pulp like most of the papers I kept in there, it was time to let it go I guess.
Maybe I'll make myself a new soul collage someday... only not quite so big the next time, my attention span is much shorter at 53 than it was when I was 15.
We all have a few of them. I live in Portland currently but I am and will always be a small town girl at heart. I love small towns and the sometimes intrusive intimacy of them, the slow pace, the casual familiarity of them like walking into the neighborhood cafe and having everyone there know your name and what you want without bringing you a menu. In the city no one knows you, not really, they only know what you let them know, there are very few secrets in a small town. I miss being able to park my car for weeks because everything I needed to get to was a 10 minute walk from my front door. I even miss the challenges of small town living, like decorating around what was available, (when I was doing it, it was not so fun). There are things I like about living in a city, don't get me wrong, I love the art shows, and fabric stores, and huge libraries, and music festivals, and ethnic restaurants, and art supply sources, and thrift stores.
Vi and I were talking about childhood memories today, that is what got me to thinking about my life and the changes in it. I was born and raised the first 8 years of my life in Farmington, Ill. I still have fond memories of living there even though there was truly nothing there, hell it was barely inhabited. The population back in the 60s was under 1400, the highlights of downtown were Paul's Supermarket, Tommy's Diner, Roy Roger's Pharmacy and soda fountain, ( no not that Roy Rogers) The Tasty Freeze and the 5 and Dime. Old Dr. Demitt still made house calls, sometimes with a horse and buggy. There was no movie theater, no public pool, our best shot at something to do was during the summer when they had arts and crafts at the high school. The high school graduating class had 24 in it.... and yet that town molded me and imprinted its self on me forever. What I remember about it is simple and not very exciting to most people. Climbing my sister's cherry tree to get cherries, getting up at 6am to gather locust shells under the city trees, catching fireflies, the ballerina wallpaper in my room, whole town picnics in the park and running through the wading pool, the carnival that came to town once a year and setup on the main drag (all 4 blocks of it), the whole town turned out and had a pot luck... (my mom's food always went first), roller skating at the outdoor rink during the summers in unbearable humidity, and then going to the truck stop on the edge of town for breaded tenderloin sandwiches and homemade fries, box car derbies down the hill in front of our house, riding horses at my aunts farm, fireworks and the The Great Cardboard Boat Regatta at Lake Storey, and riding in the paddle boats all day with my big brother Terry while sucking on snow cones. The smell of burning leaves in the fall, the brick sidewalks, Farmington oozed small town charm. Climbing onto the porch roof outside my bedroom window to watch the stars during the summer was one of my favorite things to do. It was a good, simple life.
It had it's funny memories too, like my mom chasing a snake through the garden with a hoe, every inch of her petite 5 ft frame was a fine tuned snake killing machine! My grandmother cheated at dominoes and was a very sore loser, we liked her anyway and we never told mom or dad what a bad sport she was. I'm sure the kids who live there now only dream of escaping, but it was truly a great place to be a kid.
What fond childhood memories do you all have tucked away? I'm out the door to work, but I'll be reading from there tonight via cell phone... so entertain me, it's gonna be a long night I've had no nap today.
Memories came flooding into my head and heart today of my coffee house, so did a TON of sadness. I am talking about the kind of sadness that makes your soul bleed into your chest cavity. That little coffeehouse was the one thing that brought me the greatest joy in my life. I keep trying to let go of it and still, 10 years later it haunts me in an unrelenting way.... if you were never in The Cybercat while it was open it would be hard to explain it to you, but it magically drew people into it and comforted them....people from all walks of life, old, young, gay, straight, artists, musicians, loggers, senators....nobodies and somebodies...all hanging together, listening to music over coffee, talking politics, sharing ideas.... no judgements, no hostility... it was a safe place to be in the sea of anger outside it's doors. I remain proud of the fact it was filled to the roof with unconditional love.
I still cry every time I think of it not being real anymore. It was a place that made me happy like no place before it or since. When it was murdered by the ignorance and city hall corruption that were and still are the life blood of Coos Bay Oregon, a BIG piece of my soul died with it. It's death was like watching one of my children die from some flesh eating cancer... and I cannot get past it no matter how hard I try. It's as if it is a score unsettled, and yet I know in my heart it is a wrongful death there is no resolution for. Life has been a struggle for me ever since it died, like a higher power has been telling me I failed to protect a special place entrusted to me and now I am being punished for failing to protect it. I just realized that I have been helping people die ever since it died....it seems oddly funny to think about it, but I help the people I care to find the one thing that has escaped me in my own loss. It's almost poetic on some weird level.
It was through the coffee house I discovered the music of Jesse Cook, his music was what filled the Cybercat most of the time when we didn't have a live improv of diggeridoo, drumming and guitar musicians going on, if you have never heard of him you can get an idea of the atmosphere that existed within the coffeehouse by listening to the music clips or watching the videos on his web page. http://www.jessecook.com/
(click on main page to enter, then click music and in the upper right hand corner of the music page click audio. The video link holds wonderful videos). My favs are "Fall at your feet" , "Temptest" and "Mario takes a walk"
Playing a clip and closing my eyes, I can picture myself in the Cybercat on a saturday afternoon, surrounded by friends and strangers, I can smell the coffee and the cigarette smoke.. I can hear the laughter, I can even feel the sense of community that grew there against all odds and for a few minutes, I am submerged in remembering much happier times...
