I’m sure all of us have childhood memories related to food. It is often the smells emanating from our grandmothers’ kitchens that define us as a family, whether it be the sweet aroma of tomato sauce or the pungency of boiling cabbage.

Many of us of AARP age, however, grew up just as convenience foods started to take over more and more of the pantry, and food that came from cans, jars, and packages can be just as evocative as Old World family recipes.

I still recall my first experience with a TV dinner and the searing puff of steam that arose when peeling back the foil cover. I’m not sure the turkey and mashed potatoes had much flavor, but back then – before the microwave – it seemed absolutely miraculous.

Many of my childhood food memories revolve around specific brand names. For instance, the strict use of Hellman’s mayonnaise in our house seemed almost as important as what church we attended. It would have been blasphemy to suggest using Miracle Whip.

And with Thanksgiving coming up, what’s your take on canned cranberry sauce? Martha Stewart probably wouldn’t approve, but for many of us, the quivering tube of burgundy jelly is as necessary as the turkey and stuffing.

Most “write about your childhood food” prompts focus on special family recipes and long holiday mornings in the kitchen, but for once let’s focus on the quick and easy foods our parents and grandparents used as shortcuts.

Here are two prompts. See where they lead:

• What were some of the packaged food peculiarities in your family? Were there certain brand names you always used, or peculiar convenience foods that seemed wonderful back then and just plain odd when you think about them now? How old were you when you realized vegetables didn’t have to be limp and tasteless?
   
• Write about a time you visited your Aunt Dora in New Jersey or stayed for dinner with the family down the street and found yourself baffled by someone else’s food choices. We tend as children to imagine that our family habits are “normal,” until we get out in the world and see just how different every family can be. What surprised you at someone else’s table?

I’m sure all of us have childhood memories related to food. It is often the smells emanating from our grandmothers’ kitchens that define us as a family, whether it be the sweet aroma of tomato sauce or the pungency of boiling cabbage.

Many of us of AARP age, however, grew up just as convenience foods started to take over more and more of the pantry, and food that came from cans, jars, and packages can be just as evocative as Old World family recipes.

I still recall my first experience with a TV dinner and the searing puff of steam that arose when peeling back the foil cover. I’m not sure the turkey and mashed potatoes had much flavor, but back then – before the microwave – it seemed absolutely miraculous.

Many of my childhood food memories revolve around specific brand names. For instance, the strict use of Hellman’s mayonnaise in our house seemed almost as important as what church we attended. It would have been blasphemy to suggest using Miracle Whip.

And with Thanksgiving coming up, what’s your take on canned cranberry sauce? Martha Stewart probably wouldn’t approve, but for many of us, the quivering tube of burgundy jelly is as necessary as the turkey and stuffing.

Most “write about your childhood food” prompts focus on special family recipes and long holiday mornings in the kitchen, but for once let’s focus on the quick and easy foods our parents and grandparents used as shortcuts.

Here are two prompts. See where they lead:

• What were some of the packaged food peculiarities in your family? Were there certain brand names you always used, or peculiar convenience foods that seemed wonderful back then and just plain odd when you think about them now? How old were you when you realized vegetables didn’t have to be limp and tasteless?
   
• Write about a time you visited your Aunt Dora in New Jersey or stayed for dinner with the family down the street and found yourself baffled by someone else’s food choices. We tend as children to imagine that our family habits are “normal,” until we get out in the world and see just how different every family can be. What surprised you at someone else’s table?

I wrote this on my website last month while my mother was visiting us in Greece...

Mothers and Daughters

We have a history. When your mother is 83 and you are 60, we're talking a lot of years over the dam. The funny thing about our relationship is that somewhere along the lifeline it sort of froze in time.

For my mother I will always be 16.

The stories she remembers are when I was a baby and my dad and me and mom were a perfect post war family, even though she didn't speak much English. She'd met my father during the War, and they married in Belgium while he was affiliated with the Embassy. (he was a regular "joe" during the war, but was recovering from his wounds when he met her)

The world was full of hope and, after a couple of miscarriages, a child was born! I was that perfect child.

[mom and dad and precious in the middle]

When I was five, she decided to go "home" to Belgium to introduce the family to her perfect child (and said perfect child was towed along!) while my dad stayed back in the States to wait for our return.

Back in 1955, travel was via the big Ships: we traveled on the SS Sumeria. When we arrived in Brussels, it was to discover with great sadness that her father (my grandfather) had been blinded in an explosion from a still armed WW2 bomb in the train yard where he was chief of scheduling. He'd almost died but as she was pregnant with me, at the time of the accident, her family was afraid to tell her so she wouldn't lose the baby.

[me, my mom and my grandfather walking in downtown Brussels ==> note the extreme pigeon-toed stride- I have yet to abandon completely!]

Then in what can only be described as oddly typical in my family, they forgot to tell her after I was born! This meant that when we arrived, she was confronted with the new and had no time to process it or grieve! (Meanwhile of course everyone else had had plenty of time as were a little disconcerted over her reaction!)

My memories at five were similar to being tossed about in an emotional blanket. But I remember that I learned to speak French!

In 1959 my father died. Great sadness- and for my young mother, a yearning for family.

Again with the ship: this time the SS Atlantic. My memories of making it through the grieving is mixed through the veils of two cultures. It was a strange experience (with many good memories- of course, some not so good.)

[<== still toe-ing in with the feet!]

Shortly after we arrived in Belgium, the SS Atlantic was purchased by Princess Cruise lines and we had no ship to travel home on! My first airplane flight!

A great memory... but of course it still didn't make up for losing my dad.

When we returned to the U.S.A. my mother had to work. She became a successful Interior Designer, but the cost was time.

I was fortunate that she took care to give me a great education, in an all girls convent school with great nuns to teach me and a school of great companions to live with during the school year (I was lucky to be able to go home every weekend!), and in the summer, I would go to my grandparents in Belgium during my school - 3 month- long vacation. In Belgium, I had my grandparents, my great aunts and great uncles - and my mother's sister, my aunt and her husband, my uncle as well as my only slightly older guy cousin, to spend the summer with.

I became independent in many ways, (I traveled to Europe alone!) but dependent too (European mores didn't give young ladies too much freedom even in the 60's!). Fortunately my cousin was male and we could get away with more things together than either one of us could do on our own!

Meanwhile, my mother often treated me like a sister through my teen years, but then- of course- she'd pull rank (as parents do...)

ah we both have many memories of the sixties!

[can you tell my mother is terrified of heights?? ah the things she'd do if I "dared" her...]

Often on my weekends off she'd have to work and we'd combine a mini-holiday when her "job" had finished.

These years to my mother were profoundly memorable, though for me it was so much more about what was going on outside our lives together. For her, each moment we spent together became a book of memories, shelved with all the others... our history in stone.

We are currently - as we do each time we're together- now reliving all those memories of time and place.

Not too much to do with Villa Methavrio or Greece... but Oh well!

My parents never had a happy marriage, or at least not during the years that I was old enough to understand and form impressions of the world around me.  Certainly they must have been happy when they first fell in love, or when they moved to a beachfront trailer park in Hollywood, Florida, to await the birth of their first child, my older sister Susan.  But I was the third baby, and by the time I came along, the family trouble was deep.

When my mother finally left my father, I was age ten, and she pulled me out of school and told me of the separation after the fact.  In the five short hours since I had slouched at the kitchen table that morning to wolf down cornflakes and milk, a moving van had arrived, cleared the house of nearly everything, and my mother, my sisters, and I were in  a new home, new lives, utterly altered circumstances.  Mom knew what was coming, of course, had planned it for months, but I had absolutely no forewarning.  

Neither, it turned out, did my father.

I can’t write the memory of how my father reacted when he came home that evening to an essentially empty house, because I was not there.  But I can still write memoir around this incident, including my father’s possible reactions, by using simple phrases such as “I don’t know for sure, but I imagine …” or “My guess is that my father …”  What I envision says as much about me, perhaps, as it does about my Dad.

Likewise, I can’t write about the time when my parents fell in love, or moved to Florida, because I was not yet born to have such memories.  But I can again imagine, speculate, conjecture, and as long as I am honest with the reader, what I am writing is truly nonfiction.

Here are two exercises that use memories that you do not have clear in your mind to shape a piece of memoir: 

• Start a short memory essay with the words, “Even now I question whether I am remembering this correctly …”
  

• Write about a time your parents went into another room to talk, and you couldn’t hear what they were saying, but let us know what you as a child imagined was occurring behind those closed doors.  Or write about a time that your mother left for a weekend, and you had no idea where she went, and no one seemed to speak about it.  Or visit some similar mystery from your past, maybe an innocent enough mystery, but one that seemed significant at the time.  (And yes, this can be a happy memory, if perhaps the mystery revolved around a special birthday present or a new baby sister.)

September 2009

My Dad passed away nearly thirty years ago, and as time moves on, I find it increasingly difficult to summon up a clear picture of the man I once knew so well.  Interestingly, however, I find that remembering my father becomes easier if I focus on his hands.

My dad was a car mechanic in a Chevy dealership for much of his life, and back then problems were not diagnosed by fancy machines on carts hooked into a car’s self-diagnostic on-board computer.  Finding out the source of car trouble in the 1960s meant getting underneath a car and prying apart hunks of rusted, grease-coated metal.  Dad’s hands were almost always oil-caked, often cut, and usually one or more of his fingernails was blackened or bruised by a swinging wrench or a stubborn reverse shift rod.  He had a grip like a vise.

Thinking about my father’s hands is one of the surest ways of bringing him back to life in my mind, and the more I consider his hands, the more I see how much story goes with them.  For instance, what he really wanted to be was a surgeon, but his experiences on a medical troop ship during World War II left him troubled and self-doubting.

The idea of one specific physical trait holding a wealth of memories would be true as well of my Aunt Philomena (we called her Aunt Philly) and her waist-length, nickel-colored hair, always, always up in a tight bun.

The small things are what make us who we are.

Assignment:

• Write two pages about someone you love who is no longer here, but focus on a single physical trait: the mouth, the hair, the swollen ankles, the laugh lines at the corners of the eyes.
• Try the same thing with an article of clothing: your grandmother’s apron, the boots your father wore to go fishing, your sister’s handbag.

I dedicate this poem to my Lord Jesus, for at the break

of light when I seek Him in prayer, He brings joy to my

heart just by knowing that He's there listening and that

He cares.

My Beloved

My Beloved brings a sweet serenade to the balcony of

my heart and he sings to me the melodies that embrace

my dreams, as they saturate my spirit with the essence

of his love. Awaiting at the break of light is my Beloved.

In great delight I awaken by the Morning Star. For at that

moment of complete surrender, my soul is comforted by

his love.

By: Myriam A.S.

SHAPING REMEMBRANCES

It is good to reminisce.

Some say that's what living is.

But I wouldn't want to spend

the remainder of my life

re-living glories long-gone.

I'd rather search new horizons

or perhaps climb a high peak

where clean, fresh air I can breathe

and look forward to a future

where new memoirs I can shape .

Once I stood before a closed door to which I had no key- I knew behind it there where treasures for me. I banged my fist against the door, shouted, and tried every key- to no avail ,it was not destined to be. Discouraged, I looked around. So obsessed with the closed door , I did not see other doors standing ajar.

My picture window offered a view into the woods. Better now, since the hardwood leaves had fallen. The branches bear, the wind was brisk, making the trees whisper and grumble.The world outside tried to do it's best to come inside. It left water condensation on the window and sunlight breaking  through the pale yellow curtain , turned the drops into  golden , glistering diamonds. The diamonds danced, shimmering the showed me the way---------

Suddenly , I realized , I don't have to search for the key. As long as I can see the diamonds- the key is inside me

One day, I will close my eyes, but for a moment, stretch and look once more. Not to my surprise, I will not mind, when the door hinges creak and the door opens. Smiling death will hold out his hand to me. It will be time for me to go - you see-because I can't see the diamonds anymore-----------

My Aunt Rosie was very special to me.  She was one of Dad's older sisters and I loved her dearly.  She made everything fun.  And she took my sister and I lots of places and we got to do lots of things that we probably would not otherwise experienced.   I have always given her credit for my knowledge of West Virginia geography.  She and my uncle, before he passed away in 1967,  would take us on weekend excursions through our home state.  When we got older, after Uncle Morris was gone, we even went to the Ohio State Fair!  It was such a treat for us. 

We visited the southern part of the state where the coalfields are.  We went to the Becky Exhibition Mine that showed us exactly how that coal was mined, riding the cars into the mine.  They took us to the outdoor dramas, Honey in the Rock and the Hatfield's and McCoy's at Grandview State Park.  We visited Harpers Ferry in the very eastern part of WV.  Look closely at a map of WV, the eastern panhandle is shaped like a dinosaur's head!  Harpers Ferry is at  the very tip of its head.  Those places and practically everything in between.  I have such fond memories of those trips.  Along with making wonderful memories, we were learning something all the time.  I became very good at reading the map and figuring how far to the next destination.   We would pack picnics and stop at the road side rests that were so common back then.  They almost always had an awesome view of the West Virginia mountains or would be right beside a beautiful meandering river with lots of  big flat rocks to walk on. 

When we were older, I was maybe 12, she took my sister Georgianna who was 14, and our cousins Jim and Gordie who were both about 17 to the Ohio State Fair.  Wow.  We had never seen anything like it in our lives!    It just seemed to go on forever.  And on the fairgrounds, somewhere near the middle, I think, was a huge red cardinal.  It was maybe 20-25 feet high and that was the spot to meet with friends and family.  ...ok, you go there, we are going here, we'll meet you back here at X oclock!..      Such great memories of loved ones, who sadly have already gone, except my sister and I .   Aunt Rosie died in 1990 at the age of 70...complications from diabetes.  Both cousins are gone, too.  Gordie was killed in an auto accident on his way to my house on Christmas Day, 1995.  He was 47.  And Jim died suddenly at the age of 56 from an anurism.   Both were Vietnam veterans, both in active duty at the same time when I was in junior high and high school...both like big brothers I never had and both gone way too soon.    But sister and I have those memories to hold on to.

Those were the simpler times.  When a weekend car ride was the adventure of a lifetime.  When a summer fair was the highlight of your year.  When the most important thing in life was spending time with Aunt Rosie.  When the ride was the adventure.  When you actually looked forward to going back to school to tell everyone what you had done...because, of course, there were no cell phones, computers, and all the instant contact that goes with that.  You just had to keep re-living those memories in your head until you actually SAW someone to tell them to.....and they became so much sweeter.  Yes, those were simpler times....

Failure to Communicate

 How many times have you heard the phrase “What we’ve got here is a failure to communicate” ?  You remember especially if you grew up in the sixties, the famous line from the movie Cool Hand Luke with Paul Newman.

 Telephones are in my opinion one of the greatest inventions.  How communication has evolved since the wires were first connected, we are now wireless!   However, the same

technology that improves communication throughout the world is stifling it just the same closer to home, giving way to huge gaps in one on one relationships.

 Observing my son and daughter, I realized their fingers were their main means of communicating with friends and significant others.  To watch as they try to handle dating, concerns and schedules to name a few, via text messaging is truly disheartening. 

How much time and money is spent teaching the correct application of language only to see for the expediency of texting be sacrificed.  Think about it, shorthand even gets edited to inject interpretation back into the text.

 In today’s society texting has its place to facilitate our fast paced environment.  It is unfortunate however that texting has taken the meaning out of words, eliminating the voice inflection of devotion, disappointment, joy and excitement.  Texting leaves the mind to wonder at times what the intent of the message really is.

 Timely