Posts Tagged ‘memory’
Been there, I think
Reach a time and place when
you’ve been there and
you’ve done that
Hell, maybe you didn’t
maybe you watched someone else do it
maybe saw it on TV
Once it gets so far back
it doesn’t much matter much
cos your memory –
gets a bit long
a bit distant
Even though it tastes
as sweet as it ever did
you just can’t recall
the fine detail
Huddled together
Huddled together to keep warm.
It was a time of hope, when no matter how bad it was, the future was all ahead. And that was so so very long ago. There’s not much future left. Everyone survived. Some did well, some not so much. Huddling together just isn’t done anymore.
Any old tractor will do
Been having some interesting discussions lately on things, events, people that spark old memories and how things affect them. Which got me thinking… and then, when I was trying to find my photo for today I came upon this and whoosh! Didn’t expect what came out – not at all. Didn’t think of it when I was there snapping away.
Afternoon at Grandma’s
I admit it – I did not take this photo. That is me, sitting in my Grandma’s living room when I was 13. I remember feeling quite grownup that day as my younger brother and sisters were outside playing, but I was in the house with the grownups discussing grownup things.
I found it in a folder full of old photos and odds and ends my sister gave me after my mother died. The photo was badly faded and scratched and I thought I would see what I could do to bring it back to life. Technically I’m satisfied with the results. But… I think part of the charm and mystery of old photos is how they look old, the details fading into time along with our memories.
Something a bit odd happened when I restored the colour – that top came flooding back, it was a fairly loose, light woolen weave with that wallpaper-floral print. It had a light satiny slip underneath. Someone gave it to me used and it retained the vague odour of mothballs. I loved it – wore it until it was deeply out of style and then saved it for another ten years or so.
Sadly, it looked just awful – but when you’re 13, at least for me, it was about so much more than how it looked. Right around that time I bought the first issue of Rolling Stone Magazine. And purloined my mother’s copy of The Sensuous Woman and spent a deliciously wicked afternoon in bed reading the entire thing cover to cover (and I have not been able to eat soft-serve ice cream since without thinking of the instructions contained there.) I didn’t tell Grandma about this new twist in my reading material. She still gave me those Reader’s Digest Condensed Books to read, which I dutifully did for another couple of years – until I twigged they were editing out the good bits and if it was worth reading I should stick with what the writer intended.
