Christmas has come too fast again. Not that I'm not ready for it to get here. I'm just not ready for it to be gone. I still remember when it didn't come very fast at all...
In 1985, I was twelve and time was slow. Thirty seemed light years away and forty had never crossed my mind. It was impossible to imagine myself as an adult. Though some might tell you it still is.
In 1985, both of my grandmothers were still alive. But oh, how I took that for granted back then. Dad would go and get his mother and bring her to the house on Christmas Eve day. She would have gifts for us -- and they would be really bad gifts like tube socks with big red stripes around them. But it shouldn't have mattered because she had picked them out for us when Dad took her shopping solely for that purpose. I hope I thanked her for whatever bad gifts she got me that year, and I hope I acted like I liked them, because that was the last Christmas we ever got to spend with her.
In 1985, Mom and Dad were still young, and still together. And if I could have picked one of those to never change, I'm not sure which I'd choose.
In 1985, my sister was five. She hadn't yet become the major annoyance she soon would be. Little did I know we would someday become actual friends. And the thought of her being a mother, well that was as far from my mind as a thing could be.
In 1985, fave cousin was seven. War was a game we played with toy guns or plastic soldiers. And Afghanistan was a place I had never even heard of, much less ever thought he would someday go.
In 1985, I was pretty sure no matter how good or bad I may have been that I was getting toys. But there was that tiny one-percent part of me that was still afraid I might wake up to a bag of switches beneath the tree.
In 1985, however fast or slow the rest of the year passed, the time between Thanksgiving and Christmas seemed like a year unto itself.
In 1985, tonight -- Christmas Eve -- would be the longest night of the year. I would toss and turn and do my best to keep my ears open for any sound of Santa and his reindeer. But of course, it's the first great catch-22 of life -- you want to stay awake until he comes but he won't come until he knows you're sleeping. And he always knew.
In 1985, I must have closed my eyes, and though I could swear it was only for an instant, twenty-five years came and went.
"If heaven was a town it would be my town, on a summer day in nineteen-eighty-five. And everything I wanted was out there waiting. And everyone I loved was still alive..."
Showing posts with label the good old days. Show all posts
Showing posts with label the good old days. Show all posts
Friday, December 24, 2010
Saturday, July 31, 2010
Reminiscing at the speed of life
Over the years, my earthly father has passed along to me morsels of wisdom and knowledge that only come with life experiences. Things such as the best place to be in a tornado warning is driving around in a car, never take a shower if it's thundering outside, and of course, if you're fishing from the bank and a snake swims by, the fishing trip is over five minutes ago. You can't put a price on that.
A few weeks ago, he who reared me passed along something a bit more tangible but just as priceless. He had come across some old home videos of yours truly and decided to have them put onto DVD.
Now when I say home videos, I'm not talking videocassette. Oh no, it was a bit more primitive than that. As in, when we watched them back, we watched them on this film-projector-like thing. It had a bulb. I clearly remember there was a bulb involved somewhere in the process. Also, I don't think there was any volume. It was kinda like starring in my own Zapruder video.
We hadn't watched these back since I was little. I guess the bulb went out twenty-five or thirty years ago and we just never replaced it, or more likely, they stopped manufacturing it. So I was anxious to see what was on there.
The opening scene has a young Bone, circa six months, in a swing eating some unrecognizable food. Later, there is footage of me rolling over and then what I assume to be some of my first steps, both of which I still consider to be among my top ten accomplishments. I mean, really, what else?
Then a few scenes in, there is my mom. So slender and so strikingly young. And at once, my whole demeanor changed. Inundated by waves of thoughts and emotions coming so fast I can't begin to sort through them. Her hair, long and straight, she's holding me up to pick mulberry leaves. I teared up and I'm not even sure why. Just... she was so young. And where did all those years go?
A couple of scenes later, my dad makes his only appearance. With his seventies hair and butterfly collar shirt, he's lying in the floor beside me mouthing "look at the camera." His mannerisms too much like mine.
The videos basically document my first four years -- birthday parties, a couple of Christmases. There are at least four guitars, both real and toy, placed in front of me on different occasions. Dad has apparently been trying to get me to play the guitar from day one on, until and including the present, as evidenced by the guitar permanently on loan from him mostly collecting dust in my bedroom. The most I ever do is pluck a few times at one, then or now.
Naturally, I had to show the DVD to Mom. She watched with near disbelief as she let two-year-old me hold and lick icing off a big butcher knife, my hand grasping the blade of the knife instead of the handle. And again as I was learning to walk along a sidewalk, mere feet from a street with cars passing by. Later, there's footage of me at probably 3 or 4 playing in the snow, a coat on but no gloves. All that, and I turned out OK!
It is an odd thing to be watching oneself, and you know it is you, but it seems like you're watching somebody else. But that is how it felt.
Still, the DVD is priceless, because if I had ever thought of those home videos, I would have been quite certain that I would never have seen them again.
No further footage exists to prove that I ever walked this Earth. After the Zapruder camera, I'm fairly certain no one in my immediate family owned a video camera until my sister bought one when Nephew Bone came along. So no first swimming lesson, when I cried and never went back. And absolutely no proof I was ever terrified of grasshoppers, as my family alleges.
Along with the feeling that I was watching somebody else, there was a constant and overwhelming sense of the incredible speed at which time and life pass. There was today and thirty-six years ago separated by just a few feet. And yet, such an untraversable distance.
Where did all those years go? And not just the years, but the months and the weeks, the mornings and the evenings, the doctor's appointments and little league games, the school days and the workdays, the summers and the autumns. Is there nothing left to keep, to hold on to, to show to someone that "This was me. This was my life. This was what I did?"
I suppose there are but scattered pictures. And memories, like invisible pages pressed tightly together in some book that looks surely too small to hold all of our days, all that we were and all that we've done. And maybe if we are lucky some day some wind blows open the book to a memory we thought we had long since forgotten.
Though I was supposed to be the centerpiece of these home videos, as I watched them back I found myself focusing more on my parents. They both turn sixty this year -- Mom in October and Dad just last week. I tried to imagine how they must have been back then, not having a whole lot. I thought about how they must have struggled sometimes to get by, and how in the world they knew how to start raising a child when they were fourteen years younger than I am now.
I wonder if they ever look at me today and think back to a little boy with blonde hair and a cheesy grin playing in the snow with no gloves on and ask themselves the same question: Where did all those years go?
"Though it's clear as day in my mind, the picture of a simpler time. Wish change would just leave well enough alone. Those days are gone now, when daddy was a strong man, and momma was a blonde..."
A few weeks ago, he who reared me passed along something a bit more tangible but just as priceless. He had come across some old home videos of yours truly and decided to have them put onto DVD.
Now when I say home videos, I'm not talking videocassette. Oh no, it was a bit more primitive than that. As in, when we watched them back, we watched them on this film-projector-like thing. It had a bulb. I clearly remember there was a bulb involved somewhere in the process. Also, I don't think there was any volume. It was kinda like starring in my own Zapruder video.
We hadn't watched these back since I was little. I guess the bulb went out twenty-five or thirty years ago and we just never replaced it, or more likely, they stopped manufacturing it. So I was anxious to see what was on there.
The opening scene has a young Bone, circa six months, in a swing eating some unrecognizable food. Later, there is footage of me rolling over and then what I assume to be some of my first steps, both of which I still consider to be among my top ten accomplishments. I mean, really, what else?
Then a few scenes in, there is my mom. So slender and so strikingly young. And at once, my whole demeanor changed. Inundated by waves of thoughts and emotions coming so fast I can't begin to sort through them. Her hair, long and straight, she's holding me up to pick mulberry leaves. I teared up and I'm not even sure why. Just... she was so young. And where did all those years go?
A couple of scenes later, my dad makes his only appearance. With his seventies hair and butterfly collar shirt, he's lying in the floor beside me mouthing "look at the camera." His mannerisms too much like mine.
The videos basically document my first four years -- birthday parties, a couple of Christmases. There are at least four guitars, both real and toy, placed in front of me on different occasions. Dad has apparently been trying to get me to play the guitar from day one on, until and including the present, as evidenced by the guitar permanently on loan from him mostly collecting dust in my bedroom. The most I ever do is pluck a few times at one, then or now.
Naturally, I had to show the DVD to Mom. She watched with near disbelief as she let two-year-old me hold and lick icing off a big butcher knife, my hand grasping the blade of the knife instead of the handle. And again as I was learning to walk along a sidewalk, mere feet from a street with cars passing by. Later, there's footage of me at probably 3 or 4 playing in the snow, a coat on but no gloves. All that, and I turned out OK!
It is an odd thing to be watching oneself, and you know it is you, but it seems like you're watching somebody else. But that is how it felt.
Still, the DVD is priceless, because if I had ever thought of those home videos, I would have been quite certain that I would never have seen them again.
No further footage exists to prove that I ever walked this Earth. After the Zapruder camera, I'm fairly certain no one in my immediate family owned a video camera until my sister bought one when Nephew Bone came along. So no first swimming lesson, when I cried and never went back. And absolutely no proof I was ever terrified of grasshoppers, as my family alleges.
Along with the feeling that I was watching somebody else, there was a constant and overwhelming sense of the incredible speed at which time and life pass. There was today and thirty-six years ago separated by just a few feet. And yet, such an untraversable distance.
Where did all those years go? And not just the years, but the months and the weeks, the mornings and the evenings, the doctor's appointments and little league games, the school days and the workdays, the summers and the autumns. Is there nothing left to keep, to hold on to, to show to someone that "This was me. This was my life. This was what I did?"
I suppose there are but scattered pictures. And memories, like invisible pages pressed tightly together in some book that looks surely too small to hold all of our days, all that we were and all that we've done. And maybe if we are lucky some day some wind blows open the book to a memory we thought we had long since forgotten.
Though I was supposed to be the centerpiece of these home videos, as I watched them back I found myself focusing more on my parents. They both turn sixty this year -- Mom in October and Dad just last week. I tried to imagine how they must have been back then, not having a whole lot. I thought about how they must have struggled sometimes to get by, and how in the world they knew how to start raising a child when they were fourteen years younger than I am now.
I wonder if they ever look at me today and think back to a little boy with blonde hair and a cheesy grin playing in the snow with no gloves on and ask themselves the same question: Where did all those years go?
"Though it's clear as day in my mind, the picture of a simpler time. Wish change would just leave well enough alone. Those days are gone now, when daddy was a strong man, and momma was a blonde..."
Friday, August 28, 2009
Fill 'er up?
A few weeks ago when I had my flat tire, I took it to get it fixed at a service station. Not a gas station, a service station. It sits at what I would guess to be the center of this old town, or at least at the intersection of the two main highways that run through it.
A real service station.
There was a self-service island of pumps and a full-service island, where they still pump it for you. And a garage with six bays where they still do actual car repairs--front-end alignments, brakes, shocks, and yes, tires.
A real service station.
I had driven by it hundreds if not thousands of times and even had some work done there before, but this particular afternoon was the first time I'd ever been inside. As I stepped in out of the Alabama summer and looked around, it was as if I had covered thirty years in a couple of steps.
I was struck by the relative emptiness of the large store area. There was one rack of various snack items--peanuts, chips, and such--two coolers of cold drinks, and a shelf of car care items. No bread, no Slurpee machine, no aisles and aisles of groceries. This was no convenience store.
As I sat and waited, no fewer than four mechanics passed through, each with his name on his shirt. They would be talking to some customer about their car or asking the lady at the counter what they needed to work on next, maybe stopping to grab a cup of coffee from the machine in the corner.
A real service station.
It was busy that afternoon and as the minutes dragged on I engaged in bits of conversation with the lady at the counter. She told a couple of stories about the history of the store as I walked around and looked at the numerous pictures on the wall.
There were photographs of the station through the years, including one each from the '60s, '70s, and '80s. In those particular three, you could see the sign outside with the price of gas on it: fifty-four cents in the '60s, eighty-one cents in the '70s, and a dollar and four cents in the '80s. The brand of gas was different and it had gone from two pumps to four and then six, but I couldn't help thinking not a whole lot else had changed.
As I sat back down, I looked out the big front windows at the world passing by. The contrast was not lost on me. Out there, cars whizzed by on the four-lane. It was a scene of noise and hurry. Everybody with somewhere to be. But in here, things were quiet. Cool. And just a little bit slower.
On three of the four corners at the intersection of the two main roads that cut through this old town sit a Walgreens and two gas-stations-slash-convenience-stores. On the fourth corner, right in the middle of a town that has sprung up around it, sits a service station.
A real service station.
"He pumped your gas and he cleaned your glass. One cold, rainy night he fixed your flat. A new store came where you do it yourself, you buy a lotto ticket and food off the shelf. Forget the little man..."
A real service station.
There was a self-service island of pumps and a full-service island, where they still pump it for you. And a garage with six bays where they still do actual car repairs--front-end alignments, brakes, shocks, and yes, tires.
A real service station.
I had driven by it hundreds if not thousands of times and even had some work done there before, but this particular afternoon was the first time I'd ever been inside. As I stepped in out of the Alabama summer and looked around, it was as if I had covered thirty years in a couple of steps.
I was struck by the relative emptiness of the large store area. There was one rack of various snack items--peanuts, chips, and such--two coolers of cold drinks, and a shelf of car care items. No bread, no Slurpee machine, no aisles and aisles of groceries. This was no convenience store.
As I sat and waited, no fewer than four mechanics passed through, each with his name on his shirt. They would be talking to some customer about their car or asking the lady at the counter what they needed to work on next, maybe stopping to grab a cup of coffee from the machine in the corner.
A real service station.
It was busy that afternoon and as the minutes dragged on I engaged in bits of conversation with the lady at the counter. She told a couple of stories about the history of the store as I walked around and looked at the numerous pictures on the wall.
There were photographs of the station through the years, including one each from the '60s, '70s, and '80s. In those particular three, you could see the sign outside with the price of gas on it: fifty-four cents in the '60s, eighty-one cents in the '70s, and a dollar and four cents in the '80s. The brand of gas was different and it had gone from two pumps to four and then six, but I couldn't help thinking not a whole lot else had changed.
As I sat back down, I looked out the big front windows at the world passing by. The contrast was not lost on me. Out there, cars whizzed by on the four-lane. It was a scene of noise and hurry. Everybody with somewhere to be. But in here, things were quiet. Cool. And just a little bit slower.
On three of the four corners at the intersection of the two main roads that cut through this old town sit a Walgreens and two gas-stations-slash-convenience-stores. On the fourth corner, right in the middle of a town that has sprung up around it, sits a service station.
A real service station.
"He pumped your gas and he cleaned your glass. One cold, rainy night he fixed your flat. A new store came where you do it yourself, you buy a lotto ticket and food off the shelf. Forget the little man..."
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