Thursday, December 26, 2013

Christmas Memories



This year instead of exchanging gifts, my family exchanged memories (the ones that were present - sadly we were missing a few).  We wrote up a favorite memory with each person, and then spent the evening reading them together.  I made this slideshow to go along with it with my stories.  Unfortunately I'm not sure how to upload a powerpoint presentation to the blog, so I had to convert it to a movie.  I lost some of the effects and some of the pictures got chopped a little or blurred.  But at any rate, the idea is here.  The transition pictures relate to the memory I wrote up, so it won't make sense unless I give a brief explanation:
Daddy - jewelry that he has given to me
Mother - Puff the Magic Dragon magically appear
Karen - our debacle in an orange grove
Jason - the letter he sent me while I was in college when our dog Shadow died
Tammy - camping at Lake Tahoe
Chad - whale watching in Hawaii
Derek - our trip across Hawaii's highway into the "Misty Mountains"
Brandon - baking blueberry muffins
Eric - volleyball summer
Sean - fishing and adopting a turtle
Caleb - his friendship with Chad

Anyway, I don't know if anyone is interested in this other than my family, but it was a wonderful night.   Thank you Karen, for letting us use Wild Thyme!

By the way, here are the written memories, if you care to read my little book!

Daddy
      “Hello there,” the voice on the phone said. “This is your father.”
      “Hi Daddy,” I was sitting at my desk at Southwestern Business College. 
      “I picked up a bracelet that you might like, and I thought I’d bring it by for you to look at.”
      He worked with Mike Sorrell, who bought gold and silver and coordinated auctions and estate sales.  So Daddy frequently picked up interesting pieces of jewelry.  My favorites were the Siamese bracelets. 
      Most of my coworkers were women and they were always excited when Daddy came by.  They oohed and awed over the jewelry that he would bring.  Usually when he left, he’d give me a few dollars for lunch.  (I was thirty years old, but even then he was still feeding me.) Even though I can’t remember the names of the women in the office with me, I can remember what they looked like, and what one of them said that afternoon.
      “I wish he were my dad.  Do you think he’d adopt me?”


Mother
I personally know a magician.  My mother’s one.  Many people may say that, but it usually means that she’s a whiz is the kitchen or can do wonderful things with flowers.  That’s not what I mean.  My mother really is.  And I think I’m the only one who knows.
When I was a little girl and it was just the two of us, she would share her mysteries.  There are several tricks I remember, but I have one particular favorite.  One morning I was sitting at kitchen table.  “Close your eyes,” she told me.  I did.  I heard some mysterious rustling, but I didn’t peek. 
“Okay, you can open your eyes now,” she said. On the table in front of me was a brown paper bag.  Where did that come from?  I looked inside and found a Paint-With-Water Puff the Magic Dragon book! 
Isn’t funny how those early memories can affect a lifetime?  Puff the Magic Dragon has stayed close to my heart for fifty years now.


Karen
“Well Ollie, this is another fine mess you’ve gotten us into.” 
Did either of us actually say it?  It’s appropriate for so many of our adventures.  This time, the sun was setting and the wind was gently rustling the leaves in the orange trees.  We were stranded deep in an orange grove, the tires of the Mustang deeply sunk in sand. 
If we’d been outside of Derry Maine instead of somewhere in Florida, it would have been the perfect setting for a creepy movie.  And since the setting was so perfect, we went ahead and did what you always yell at characters in the movie for doing.  We hiked back to the highway, waved down a car and led two young men into our isolated sand pit.  I’m not sure who was dumber, the girls who could have been attacked by psychopaths, or the guys who followed behind them willingly.  
For whatever reason, God seems to protect fools and drunks, and even though we were stone cold sober, we were a pair of fools who got through another adventure unscathed. 
It certainly wouldn’t be our last.


Jason
“Something terrible happened last night,” the letter from home read.  Since it was scrawled in a nine-year-old’s handwriting, I figured it couldn’t be that horrible. Surely Mother would have called.  This was before the age of instant communication, but still – landline phones had managed to make their way into college dorms.
I continued reading. 
“Shadow died in the middle of the night.”
Shadow was our family dog.  She had travelled the country with us and had given birth to beautiful puppies a couple of times.  Was she the perfect dog?  Maybe not – she was about as diligent in her obedience school training as her boy was in middle school (the difference being that Mother refused to let Jason quit).  But she was gentle and sweet, and had been with the boy since he was a baby.  She was a Norwegian Elkhound, with thick gray and black fur and a fluffy curly tail.
The letter had a few more sentences and concluded with, “Just writing this letter makes me sad.”
Just reading it made me sad. 
One Christmas shortly after that, three sisters begged their parents for permission to buy a special present.  Jason woke up to find a puppy under the tree.  And that’s how Bo came to the Barnick household. 


Tammy
James Dobson says that if you want to make family memories, go camping.  Something always goes wrong, which means fodder for years to come.  I can think of a camping memory with any family member, but this one takes place at Lake Tahoe. 
One of the joys of camping is being in the great outdoors.  But as Jon Holmes says, the wilderness is not Disneyland.  There are things out there that aren’t always benevolent.  Lake Tahoe has its bears.  And we have a family member who finds cubs cute. 
We tramped through leaves and over fallen limbs, enjoying the birds and other sounds.  One of us – maybe Derek – noticed some brown clumps up ahead.  When we realized that it was a bear and cubs, Tammy wanted to get closer to get a better look.  I was about to pull my hair out.  All I could think was, “I don’t necessarily have to run fast – I just have to run faster than you!”


Chad
There once was little boy who used to a fish.  Because he’d been a fish, he had no fear of water.  He jumped into pools, he pushed brothers in lakes, and he swam in oceans.  For many years, however, he had forgotten a very important thing – he wasn’t the only fish in the sea. 
      One day when he was a boy and not a fish, his mother took him on a boat ride.  The boat was actually a zodiac raft so it wasn’t very big.  There were a few other people with them, and even though Chad didn’t know it, they were going whale watching. 
      The day was beautiful.  The sun was shining and the salty air sprayed against his cheek as he leaned over the side of the raft.  Then Chad sat up abruptly.  About fifteen feet from the side of the raft, a blackness was emerging from the water.  It got bigger and bigger until it looked like a small black hill. Chad turned to his mother and astonished, whispered, “What is that?”
      “That, Chad, is a whale.  That’s what we’ve come to see.”
      Right then water spurt from its blowhole, and it burst through the water before sinking back to the depths of the sea. 
      The little boy who used to be a fish stayed out of the water for a while.  The big bathtub that he’d enjoyed for so many years turned out to be much more mysterious than he had realized. 


Derek

Far over the misty mountains cold
To dungeons deep and cavern old
We must away ere break of day
To seek the pale enchanted gold.

Twice a week we drove along the H3 across similar misty mountains.  Derek had his own music to make – he took violin lessons on the other side of the island.  Almost every trek, he’d look longingly at the lush green cliffs towering over us, and talk of how wonderful it would be if we could be part of that ragtag band of characters in search of dwarven treasure. 
The boy who was in no real hurry to read on his own first jumped headlong into fantasy with Harry Potter.   But it was JRR Tolkien who truly grabbed his heart and he had read The Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings Trilogy before his tenth birthday – before the movies came out and the Baggins became household names.  I, too, have an intense fondness for the inhabitants of Middle Earth, but if you were to ask me why, I’d have to say because my son loved them first.


Brandon 

Earth’s crammed with heaven,
And every common bush afire with God,
But only he who sees takes off his shoes;
The rest sit round and pluck blackberries.

That faulty memory again – in my mind they’re blueberries.  Maybe it’s because of my fondness for them.  Maybe it’s because of our berry picking adventures in Alaska.  Or maybe it’s because of Brandon. 
      Even though the memory is one that’s mentioned frequently, it’s still one of my favorites.  For a few months we lived in Mililani with Karen, Dennis, and the boys.  Brandon just knew that everything I did was for him (and how could it not be – he was always so very appreciative!).  One day, I made a batch of blueberry muffins.  Little Brandon, just barely three, came into the kitchen.  His eyes lit up when he saw the muffins. 
      “Kaye, did you make those for me??”
Yes, Brandon, of course I did. Just for you.


Eric
There are times we savor because we know we will never pass this way again.  Volleyball summer was just such a time.  Ron was stateside, Derek and Sean were both here, Eric was in town, and even Chuck was around.  With a little help from John Kell and Seth Hodges, we usually had a full team.  What a thrill it is to have so many family members passionate about the same thing!
      One of my fondest memories from that summer was sitting in Cosmos with Eric before our game began.  He had his school books with him and was working with linear algebra, I believe – some big matrices problem.  Two of my favorite things with one of my favorite people.  I wanted to make time stand still for just a little while.


Sean
In my mind, the novel The Grapes of Wrath starts with a turtle crossing the road. But Steinbeck doesn’t actually introduce him until chapter 3.  It just goes to show that memory isn’t always an infallible thing.
I remember a summer day when Sean and I saw a similar turtle crossing a country road.  He asked if we could stop.  It had been a good day – we’d gone fishing at a little trout farm tucked away near a quiet stream in the woods.  The owner helped Sean clean his catch so I didn’t even have to worry about the mess back home.  “Mom, can we take him home?  Please?” I’ve always liked turtles too, and there was no real reason to say no. Ron was gone, so I didn’t have to consider anyone else’s opinions.  Sean and I both wanted the turtle, so home he went.
He didn’t stay long.  I’m not even sure what happened to him.  Sean left to go someplace and I had let him out of his box to crawl around the front yard.  The phone rang and I was in the house for about 5 minutes.  When I came back, he was gone.  It was a mystery, because he really was such a slow moving turtle.  I don’t know if hawks have a fondness for boxy reptiles, but I prefer to think that he headed for a quiet stream somewhere.
Driving down the road months later, I saw another turtle.  Jackie was with me this time and we picked him up to surprise Sean.  And a surprise it was!  When we got home I told Sean there was something in the back of the Kia for him.  He ran outside and came back in shortly.   “Mom, you do know that’s a snapping turtle you picked up, right?”


Caleb
      Some memories are peripheral.  We cherish them because they mean so much to someone we love.  Many summers ago, a pair of ragamuffins joined hands and hearts and set out more bravely together than either would have alone.  I watched Caleb walk away with Chad, knowing the days were numbered.  We’d be gone soon and the magic would be gone as well.  But for that short time, they each had each other, and Chad knew what friendship was.


Sharon
It was the fall of 1984.  But it wasn’t a cold and blustery day – at least not for me.  I was living in Florida.  I called home (Ohio) and talked to Sharon. 
      “Guess what!” I said, “I joined the Army!”
      “Are you kidding?” she replied.  “So did I!”
      You might be thinking that we had discussed this idea before.  But no. It caught us both off guard. 
      “Well, I signed up for the delayed entry program, so I won’t go until the summer time.” I told her.  “June 19th actually.” 
      “Me too! I go June 20th!”
      “I’m going to Ft. Jackson, South Carolina.  Where are you going?” I asked her
      “Ft. Jackson,” she replied.  And that’s how we both ended up in the same pit of hell for basic training.  We weren’t in the same platoon, but we were in the same company and got to see each other every day. 

      Having your sister with you as dealt with the craziness of psychotic drill sergeants made life a little more bearable.  Of course, it also caused us a tremendous amount of grief because of one of those psychotic drill sergeants, but that’s a memory for another year. 



Sunday, March 31, 2013

The Boys of Summer 2002

This is an expansion of the Boys of Summer calendar that I did eleven years ago.  The twelve guys' lives intersected for that brief summer - and hasn't been duplicated since.  This is a celebration of that time and the years before and after.

Sunday, August 15, 2010

The Island's Gift


I climbed ancient volcanic mountains,
Ragged peaks standing as sentries o’er the earth.
Step by treacherous step,
Breath by laborious breath;
I tread up rock and tree roots and clay.
Across the expanse of time and space…
I saw the face of God.