A Good Memory of My Dad

He used to drive me to White Castle.  We would roll the windows down because my mother wouldn't allow it when she was in the van.  He always played jazz or blues on the stereo because they were his favorites, and my mother wouldn't listen to anything but oldies when she was around ("the best of the '50s, '60s, and early '70s!" the radio ads used to tout).  My dad and I listened to Wes Montgomery and Joe Pass and Muddy Waters.  He liked guitarists because he played the guitar, or maybe he played the guitar because he liked the sound of it.  I didn't like or understand jazz or blues at the time, but he seems to have planted a seed that grew up with me.  Scarcely a day went by in the first 18 years of my life that I didn't hear "Misty" or "Willow Weep for Me."  I have the voice for them now too.  I didn't even know those songs had words back then.

We would order our tiny cheeseburgers at the drive-thru and then sit in the parking lot with the windows rolled down while we ate.  I always took the pickles off mine, and he would add them to his own.  I was a picky eater back then.

A Good Memory of My Childhood Home

When I was in elementary school, when it was cool enough, back before styrofoam insulation and clear plastic covered every window of our house for years at a time, sometimes my mother would open the windows.  I can only remember it happening on a handful of occasions.

I remember riding the bus home from school once and, when it pulled up to my house, seeing that the heavy wooden front door was open wide with the screen door visible behind it.  I felt a jolt of happiness.  The windows would be open.  My mother must be in a good mood. 

My parents' house usually smelled of stale air.  My mother liked to keep the air conditioner cranked up and the house cold inside, but it still managed to feel stuffy.  Just being inside it with its unnaturally dark rooms and cavelike dankness made me feel drained.  From childhood to college, I remember having that feeling, like something in the house was sapping me of my energy.  I think my mother felt it too.  When she wasn't asleep, she often wanted to get out and go somewhere, and when we went out to dinner in my teen years, she was as loath to go home as I was.

On the rare occasions that my mother opened the windows, she also turned on the house's attic fan, which I can only vaguely remember because the last time I remember seeing it in use was when I was in elementary school.  I remember a large metal vent in the ceiling that would open when the attic fan was on, allowing me to see the fan spinning behind it, whipping up what I remember as strong winds through the hallway.  It was loud and powerful.  It felt nice to be surrounded by so much moving air. 

Sometimes when the windows were open, my mother even cleaned.  This is one of my favorite memories of my mother.  She put a Dolly Parton record on the big turntable in the family room and blasted the music through the house.  Because closed doors and narrow doorways were tricky for my dad in his wheelchair, our house had an open floor plan back before it was fashionable.  My mother hated how she had no way to close off portions of messiness to visitors, but the music carried well.  I don't remember if she mopped or dusted or what -- I remember being too young to be of use myself, maybe four or five -- but she sang along to the music, and I loved it.  She seemed happy and full of energy -- so rarely did she have any energy -- and it made me happy to be close to her with the music and the breeze playing around us.  The air smelled fresh, and cleaning products always smelled better than the heavily clove-scented air fresheners my mother used to cover up the other smells of the house for company. 

It's warm here today where I live now.  I have the windows open, and the house smells fresh.  I can hear birdsong and some of my neighbors talking outside, now that the drone of what sounded like a dozen lawn mowers and weed wackers has ceased.  None of the lights are on because the sun makes it brighter in my white-walled home than any amount of electricity could achieve when I was a kid.  I'm glad I don't live there anymore.  The good days were too rare, and they were still worse than the bad days are here.  Here I can clean and open windows whenever I want.

Another Good Memory of My Mother

The table in my parents' dining room was usually too covered in hoard to use.  Subsequently we usually ate at TV trays in the living room.  But one day when I was nine or ten and had a friend over at dinner time, my mother set up a card table and chairs in the living room and told us we were going to play restaurant.  She pretended to be a waiter and told us the special of the night was spaghetti.  She set the table with napkins and silverware, which seemed very restaurant-like since we never set the table at home.  She even brought the meal out to us from the kitchen in courses with bread first, just like at a restaurant.  It was fun and exciting doing something different and seeing my mother be playful. 

A Good Memory of My Mother

When I was in Girl Scouts in elementary school, my mother became a troop leader.  I had previously attended Girl Scout meetings at another girl's house where her mother was the leader, but my mother had volunteered to join as assistant leader or something of that nature, followed by a fight between the two mothers about something still unknown to me, followed by a schism of the troop.  The girls who were my friends came with us and joined our new (and admittedly better) troop, and other girls from school joined too.

There was a Girl Scout special event held in our church's basement one Saturday.  About a dozen troops from the area came.  Each troop had been assigned a table and chairs where they would each represent a different country.  We were supposed to set up a booth for our country where the other girls in attendance could do a craft or activity native to that country, or eat a food native to that country, or learn something about that country.  Most of it ended up looking about as interesting as a job fair.

My mother's troop represented Switzerland.  I didn't know what we were going to be doing that day until we arrived at the church.  My mother scrapped the traditional "booth" style everyone else used.  She set up the folding chairs side-by-side and then covered them with a large gym mat she'd brought from home (previously part of the Swamp of Sadness), creating a medium sized hump.  We would be offering people the chance to scale the famous Swiss Alp called the Matterhorn, she told us.  As each girl scrambled over the gym mat mountain and came down the other side, my mother congratulated her and presented her with a chocolate.  "Switzerland is known for its chocolates," my mother explained.  As the only booth offering both not-sitting-still and candy, ours quickly became the favorite of the day.