creek's high and the memories flood
I could weep for one more early summer morning, bent down into my grandpa's damp, green rows of strawberries, looking for the fat, red ones. To discuss with him the difference between the June bearing and the ever-bearing, to talk berry deals. Or one more afternoon, snapping beans or shelling peas on the front porch, right up next to my grandma so we could put them in the same big bowl, in the red metal chairs that just slightly rocked. It's not another day of my own youth I want back so badly, it's a day in their lives--their wisdom and simplicity and contentment. For grandma's serene smile and blue eyes alone, I would almost sell my soul.
I caught a minute of Lawrence Welk the other night. It seems unfair that I can still hear those insipid songs and see him in his pastel polyester suits, but I can no longer hear in my head the sound of my grandma singing along. I can no longer remember exactly how she looked or what she wore on all those Saturday nights I happily spent watching Lawrence Welk with her, wishing to be nowhere else but there, pouring a small bottle of coke three ways into the tiny glasses. Grandpa and I got a little glass each and she always just wanted a sip. It seemed like enough of everything--that I remember. It's not fair that I can hear the Lennon Sisters anytime I care to, but grandpa's raucous, booming laugh has become a hollow shell of a sound in my head and all but left me. And once I forget, and my cousins forget, or we pass on and our kids are left, then what happens to that laugh? Will it be as if it never existed, this sound that is infinitely more important to me than Lawrence Welk's "Ah one and ah two.."?
My uncle bought my grandparents a tape recorder one year, maybe late 60's. It had a little reel of tape that one had to snap into the device and then carefully feed over to another little empty reel. I can see it. I can see the box it came in and the little box of tapes. We taped my grandpa telling some of his stories, while my cousins and I sat around laughing, grandpa laughing the loudest and longest. I can see, almost touch, that tan and pale blue box and the little reels. They are both dust now, somewhere. A technology that is as if it never existed, and my grandpa's voice turned to dust along with it. Poor families keep poor records in that regard. There are some pictures losing their color, and that is it. The rest is in me and my family. I try to pass these stories along to my son, but he can only really experience his own life. We can remember the stories our parents tell us, but we can all only really carry the memories and emotions of our own lives.
I could weep for one more day with them, as if that would ever be enough.
I caught a minute of Lawrence Welk the other night. It seems unfair that I can still hear those insipid songs and see him in his pastel polyester suits, but I can no longer hear in my head the sound of my grandma singing along. I can no longer remember exactly how she looked or what she wore on all those Saturday nights I happily spent watching Lawrence Welk with her, wishing to be nowhere else but there, pouring a small bottle of coke three ways into the tiny glasses. Grandpa and I got a little glass each and she always just wanted a sip. It seemed like enough of everything--that I remember. It's not fair that I can hear the Lennon Sisters anytime I care to, but grandpa's raucous, booming laugh has become a hollow shell of a sound in my head and all but left me. And once I forget, and my cousins forget, or we pass on and our kids are left, then what happens to that laugh? Will it be as if it never existed, this sound that is infinitely more important to me than Lawrence Welk's "Ah one and ah two.."?
My uncle bought my grandparents a tape recorder one year, maybe late 60's. It had a little reel of tape that one had to snap into the device and then carefully feed over to another little empty reel. I can see it. I can see the box it came in and the little box of tapes. We taped my grandpa telling some of his stories, while my cousins and I sat around laughing, grandpa laughing the loudest and longest. I can see, almost touch, that tan and pale blue box and the little reels. They are both dust now, somewhere. A technology that is as if it never existed, and my grandpa's voice turned to dust along with it. Poor families keep poor records in that regard. There are some pictures losing their color, and that is it. The rest is in me and my family. I try to pass these stories along to my son, but he can only really experience his own life. We can remember the stories our parents tell us, but we can all only really carry the memories and emotions of our own lives.
I could weep for one more day with them, as if that would ever be enough.
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