Weltschmerz
Dec. 28th, 2011 07:18 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cosmolinguist"It is a good thing to be from one's country, to be attached to the earth..."
—Claude Debussy
This has been the Christmas of photo albums. On Christmas Eve Grandpa was telling Andrew* and me about the dollhouse he made me.** He said he made a couple of others and sold them (for a lot less than they're worth; he made wooden things for love, not money). And then he asked my grandma if they had the pictures he'd taken of those other dollhouses.
"They're in the album!" she said, and those are kept upstairs so my aunt offered to go get it for her, because her hips and back were bothering her something fierce that day. My grandma tried to tell her what she was looking for and where it was, calling after her as she went up to her old bedroom. Pretty soon my grandma went up the stairs anyway, and eventually my mom did too, as if they were circus clowns all getting in the same tiny car.
Eventually my grandpa handed me a photo album, open to the right page, and pointed out the pictures of two or three different dollhouses. One was a very fetching Tudor-style with more interestingly peaked roofs than mine. Mine was the first he made and dear to me for that reason even if some of the later ones were more confident or more complicated as he got more familiar with what he was doing, but of course I felt special because I got the first one. I was never a great one for dolls but I loved the intricate detail on the house: the roof tiles, the lathed poles on the porch railing, the charmingly tiny sink with shiny faucets in the bathroom (for which my grandma had also crocheted a rug for the floor)...
The pictures of dollhouses were next to pictures of two little chairs he made, rocking chairs for children. One I recognized immediately as being identical to my brother's, with the face of a puppy on the back. Seeing that got me wondering what else was in the book. Flipping through it, it seemed to be delightfully random, going from black-and-white pictures of farmhouses I never could've guessed the relevance of, to pictures of other Christmas Eves in the very room I was now spending this one, with my cousins and the terrible, eldritch dresses my mom used to be able to make me wear. Lots of grist for the mill of stories to tell Andrew.
I'm not sure if it's related but the next night, Mom brought up three huge photo albums from the basement. She'd always kept a book going for me and one for Chris; his of football games and conventionally beautiful prom dates; mine of marching band and even more dreadful coerced hair and outfits; both of us holding up fish we'd caught, standing next to snowmen that my dad had spray-painted faces and clothes on, playing with the dogs, looking uncomfortable in fancy clothes for Father's Day or Easter or whatever, eating, sleeping, and other things parents seem fit to take pictures of.***
Andrew liked the pictures of baby and little-kid me the most. He pointed out that I have a big grin in every single one of them -- except for the ones with Santa, which from the pictures seems to have been a traumatic experience for me -- which he likes, saying it shows I had a happy childhood. And I did. Looking at these pictures, I keep being struck by what's in the background: my dad's old truck, the wallpaper that used to be in our kitchen, a very ugly couch. It's strange how you can forget all about things and still find them so familiar when you catch glimpses of them again, somehow fresh but carrying a weight in memories.
These silly little things are dear to me -- I remember very clearly that one of the things I cried about, when I was about to leave for college, was that I would miss not just, say, my dad but also the pattern on my mom's dishes. Now I know that what I was anticipating missing was the routine of a meal with family, a stable life (however boring and stagnant I found it sometimes), a house that feels like home.
This nostalgia is the thanks I give for a happy childhood.
* It's nice having Andrew around as an excuse to tell stories. My family are not big on storytelling otherwise, so it helps a lot to have fresh ears to tell. Like I told him the other day about my dad telling me to come outside one cold night when I was very small. We stood behind the machinery shed and I saw the northern lights for the first and so far only time in person. You don't often get them so far south and they aren't as vivid as you see in the best pictures, but to have them connected to my home, my dad, my life is unspeakably wonderful to me.
** This is a favorite story of mine, told over and over since a high-school essay I wrote about it, of a tiny me seeing a present beneath the tree almost as big as I was, and with my name on it. Of course I was at the perfect age for this, when the size of a present directly correlated with how highly I valued it. But then I don't know if I've ever gotten a bigger Christmas present but I'm pretty sure I've not received a better one.
*** Sometimes my mom's labeling of the pictures, usually so mundane as to be useless -- "you and Christopher swimming," next to pictures of me and Chris swimming -- sometimes breaks down into "I don't know what this picture is about. I think you are going to play a tape" next to a picture of me looking over my shoulder, with a cassette in my hand. Of course being me, I relish the parts where the usual order of things breaks down.
—Claude Debussy
This has been the Christmas of photo albums. On Christmas Eve Grandpa was telling Andrew* and me about the dollhouse he made me.** He said he made a couple of others and sold them (for a lot less than they're worth; he made wooden things for love, not money). And then he asked my grandma if they had the pictures he'd taken of those other dollhouses.
"They're in the album!" she said, and those are kept upstairs so my aunt offered to go get it for her, because her hips and back were bothering her something fierce that day. My grandma tried to tell her what she was looking for and where it was, calling after her as she went up to her old bedroom. Pretty soon my grandma went up the stairs anyway, and eventually my mom did too, as if they were circus clowns all getting in the same tiny car.
Eventually my grandpa handed me a photo album, open to the right page, and pointed out the pictures of two or three different dollhouses. One was a very fetching Tudor-style with more interestingly peaked roofs than mine. Mine was the first he made and dear to me for that reason even if some of the later ones were more confident or more complicated as he got more familiar with what he was doing, but of course I felt special because I got the first one. I was never a great one for dolls but I loved the intricate detail on the house: the roof tiles, the lathed poles on the porch railing, the charmingly tiny sink with shiny faucets in the bathroom (for which my grandma had also crocheted a rug for the floor)...
The pictures of dollhouses were next to pictures of two little chairs he made, rocking chairs for children. One I recognized immediately as being identical to my brother's, with the face of a puppy on the back. Seeing that got me wondering what else was in the book. Flipping through it, it seemed to be delightfully random, going from black-and-white pictures of farmhouses I never could've guessed the relevance of, to pictures of other Christmas Eves in the very room I was now spending this one, with my cousins and the terrible, eldritch dresses my mom used to be able to make me wear. Lots of grist for the mill of stories to tell Andrew.
I'm not sure if it's related but the next night, Mom brought up three huge photo albums from the basement. She'd always kept a book going for me and one for Chris; his of football games and conventionally beautiful prom dates; mine of marching band and even more dreadful coerced hair and outfits; both of us holding up fish we'd caught, standing next to snowmen that my dad had spray-painted faces and clothes on, playing with the dogs, looking uncomfortable in fancy clothes for Father's Day or Easter or whatever, eating, sleeping, and other things parents seem fit to take pictures of.***
Andrew liked the pictures of baby and little-kid me the most. He pointed out that I have a big grin in every single one of them -- except for the ones with Santa, which from the pictures seems to have been a traumatic experience for me -- which he likes, saying it shows I had a happy childhood. And I did. Looking at these pictures, I keep being struck by what's in the background: my dad's old truck, the wallpaper that used to be in our kitchen, a very ugly couch. It's strange how you can forget all about things and still find them so familiar when you catch glimpses of them again, somehow fresh but carrying a weight in memories.
These silly little things are dear to me -- I remember very clearly that one of the things I cried about, when I was about to leave for college, was that I would miss not just, say, my dad but also the pattern on my mom's dishes. Now I know that what I was anticipating missing was the routine of a meal with family, a stable life (however boring and stagnant I found it sometimes), a house that feels like home.
This nostalgia is the thanks I give for a happy childhood.
* It's nice having Andrew around as an excuse to tell stories. My family are not big on storytelling otherwise, so it helps a lot to have fresh ears to tell. Like I told him the other day about my dad telling me to come outside one cold night when I was very small. We stood behind the machinery shed and I saw the northern lights for the first and so far only time in person. You don't often get them so far south and they aren't as vivid as you see in the best pictures, but to have them connected to my home, my dad, my life is unspeakably wonderful to me.
** This is a favorite story of mine, told over and over since a high-school essay I wrote about it, of a tiny me seeing a present beneath the tree almost as big as I was, and with my name on it. Of course I was at the perfect age for this, when the size of a present directly correlated with how highly I valued it. But then I don't know if I've ever gotten a bigger Christmas present but I'm pretty sure I've not received a better one.
*** Sometimes my mom's labeling of the pictures, usually so mundane as to be useless -- "you and Christopher swimming," next to pictures of me and Chris swimming -- sometimes breaks down into "I don't know what this picture is about. I think you are going to play a tape" next to a picture of me looking over my shoulder, with a cassette in my hand. Of course being me, I relish the parts where the usual order of things breaks down.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-12-28 02:25 pm (UTC)David and I do a lot of storytelling - our own separate stories and retelling our joint stories to each other - and realising how much I appreciate this reminds me of how much my sisters and I do it and have done it.
I love hearing and reading your stories, and I love that some of them have already become familiar from retelling.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-12-29 02:50 pm (UTC)There's a definite plan to get the photo albums over to Manchester with me at some point, hopefully soon (this trip or the next? and my parents are coming in May so my dad said they might "bring me some goodies" -- but I'll see what I can fit into my suitcase when I'm packing today!) and I can't seem to stop talking about them (and going "oh Mom, how could you do that to me?" about a lot of the clothes and hair) so you'd get a ton of stories then :)
I remember you telling me before about you and David's storytelling and it makes me happy to think that you have him and your sisters to do this with because I grew up starved for stories and I think it's great to be able to share such things with close people. I'm glad that some of mine are becoming familiar too (though I do worry a lot about repeating myself and boring people!).