Bed Bark-a-Thon

This is what evenings often entail when we watch TV from bed.

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Found: A Memory

In an uncharacteristic act of house cleaning, I was cleaning shelves in my closet today. I found some odd earrings and a special memory. This is a music box my father bought for me before I started fifth grade. That makes the music box over 55 years old!

I had broken my ankle by catching a toe in the loop rug in my bedroom and falling.  (The room was carpeted soon after that.) I'm not sure how this fits together, but I remember being in Zale's Jewelry downtown with my parents and seeing the music box.  If my memory is correct, my father brought it home as a gift for me one day. 

It plays "Dark Eyes." In my family, the Russian (or Yiddish? I'm not sure) sounded like O chi  chordnia, o chi chordnia... My grandfather sometimes sang it while I "danced."

A few lovely memories- childhood, my parents, my grandfather.  Even the broken ankle makes me smile now.

Not a resolution. Not a promise.

This is an urging to myself.  Not a New Year's resolution. Not a promise.  Not a goal.  Just a reminder to be more conscious do two things daily.  Write.  Create.  Not specific, just a reminder.

Revisiting a Relationship: My Mother

For what seems like most of my life, I didn't have a good relationship with my mother. I haven't carried memories of a wonderful relationship.

 

Something changed about my feelings today.  A song started playing over and over in my mind. (I think they call that an earworm.)  I remember it from a children's record: "I don't want to play in your yard, I don't like you anymore."  The lyrics aren't what made me think of my mother, just the idea that I had songs to hear at an early age.

 

Of course, our parents are responsible for the people we become. I know that I have some of the traits/behaviors of my mother, some that aren't positive.  But today I'm thinking of the subtle (or not so subtle)ways she influenced my life.  Those children's records are one of them.  She enrolled us in a Golden Book record club, where we got children's records in the mail.  From what I remember, these records told stories through song.  At the time I didn't realize it, but many were set to classical music.  From these I learned the music of Scheherazade from the story of Aladdin, Tchaikovsky's Sleeping Beauty from the record of the same name, Prokofiev's Cinderella.  I remember going to seethe opera Carmen with her. There were piano lessons, as well.  My love for classical music (if not my lack of talent in piano) has its roots here.

 

I (and my sister, maybe my brother) had Humpty Dumpty Magazine, Children's Digest, Highlights for Children, all the Nancy Drew books and more.  My mother always had a few women's magazines on hand.  No wonder I'm a reader.

 

There were shopping trips, toys, dolls, parties.  Girl scouts.  Perhaps these haven't made quite as much of a mark on me.  But they remind me that my mother cared.  She was the best mother she knew how to be.  And I need to appreciate that.