nostalgia

Just A Bench

Think of a bench you know. Just a bench, a regular bench – just made of some planks of wood and a few rusty nails. Picture this bench that you see every day, on your way to work or the supermarket, and never think about twice. And now, indulge me for a moment, and really think about it. There is life in that bench.

A thousand people have sat on that bench. Hundreds have put their arms around the back of it, or perched on the edge of it, or lay down upon it. So many have stopped to tie their shoes there, or put down their grocery bags on it for a moment, or even walked along on top it for fun.

This bench, this commonplace, every day object has witnessed so much: Old men sitting on it and schmoozing for hours, watching the world go by; Old women putting down their purses on it and waiting there for the bus into town; Children have walked on it, holding their parents’ hands and squealing, feeling so high up; Those same children, years later, sitting on it and fervently passing a cigarette around late at night, feeling naughty; The homeless have made homes of it; The drunkards have made beds of it; The mad have had conversations with it; The weather has, of course, never shown it one bit of mercy.

This bench has probably encountered more people than we will speak to in a lifetime. This bench, in a way, has held more life than we will ever know upon its rickety wooden planks, carved and scratched and scarred as they are, holding the memories of hundreds upon hundreds. This bench is more alive and full of memory and experience than we will ever be able to comprehend.

Sniff

Leaning out of the window, bringing in the laundry, hands touching the cold clothing hanging in the cold air, I catch a scent. Just a whif at first, and then the smell fills my nostrils, and I breath it deeply, tears gathering in my eyes. It’s the smell of latkes, this sort of potato-patty thing – it’s a traditional thing to cook during the Jewish holiday, Hannukah, which is ending tonight. Why is it that the enticing smell of fried potatos makes my eyes water? My father used to make them every holiday time, and when I was smaller and ate an even smaller variety of foods than I eat today, I hated the smell. Today though, it makes me hungry to smell it and cry to think that my father won’t ever make it again and I’ll never get to show him that I might like his cooking for once.

It’s incredible how smell triggers the memory, isn’t it? The smallest of scents blown into your nostrils from a tiny breath of wind can remind you vividly of a sumemr’s day when you got your first kiss, of a night of partying with friends, of a person you haven’t seen for a long time or of a place you miss and long to be in. It’s amazing, in my mind, how smells can bring up memories long forgotten or ignored.

Sniff away, then, I say – you may discover some feeling or time you hardly remember.

Move [Part II]

“Annie! Annie, honey, look what you got in the mail!”

“What? Mom? What is it? Come on, give it to me!”

“It’s… The big envelope! You got in! Sweetie, look, you got in! Oh, love, I’m so proud of you.”

“Oh my god! I got in! I can’t believe this! YES! Oh- oh, Mom, don’t cry, please don’t cry. I’ll be back from there every weekend, you know I will.”

“I know, I know. But the house will be so lonely without you. I still don’t love the idea, you know that. I mean, I know it’s a great honor to be able to join this experimental group that the Set have started, and I know it’ll be an amazing thing to put on your college applications in a year, but still…”

“Mom, you know how bored I am at school. You know that I would start college right now if I could. The Set are offering kids like me the opportunity of a lifetime! I can’t pass this up. Mom, tell me you’ll be ok without me…”

“Of course I will, honey. I’m just going to miss you, that’s all. As long as I’ll get to see you once a week, I’ll be alright.”

“I’ll be home every weekend, Mom. Promise.”

Marianne stared blankly at the boulder in front of her. It was still hovering. She moved her eyes, and her concentration, to the right. The boulder moved with her mind. The loudspeaker made a gurgling cackle and the ever-present voice told her that that will do. Marianne let the memory fade away as she shook her head and rubbed her aching, tired eyes. The boulder fell to the floor with a crash as Marianne threw herself on the thin mattress that lay on the floor in the corner. She felt herself crashing into unconsciousness just like the boulder and then knew no more.

Peanuts

Growing up in Israel, I had to endure children who only knew who Snoopy was. Nobody here knows of Linus’s blanket, Lucy’s mean spirit or Violet’s vanity. No one here knows anything more about this wonderful comic-world than Snoopy’s dance steps. They don’t know of the ice that nearly crushed his house [he was lured out with a pizza] and they don’t know that he has a Van Gogh in his doghouse and they surely don’t know that he fell in love with a girl beagle with long ears but that her father didn’t let them marry because he’s an “obedience-school dropout.”

Why do I know these things? In a generation where Peanuts was still in the Sunday comics for a few years but no more than that? Well, I know because I still have all my mom’s, dad’s and aunt’s Peanut books. They all cost ninety-nine cents back then, it says so right on the cover. I’m super careful with all these books because I love them, I adore them, I know half the comics in them by heart. At least half. I know of the dandelions on Charlie Brown’s pitcher’s mound, I know of Linus’s crush for his teacher – which was weird because at first he just found her odd and kept telling about the changes she wanted in her salary. I know about the Great Pumpkin and how Linus ruined his chances at being school president because he told everyone how on Halloween night the Great Pumpkin rises out of the pumpkin patch.

Can you tell that I have a bit of an obsessive love for the Peanutes gang?

Comfort Books

There is a particular type of book – I suppose it must be very individual for each person, but generally this type of book is either a favorite novel, well thumbed and read many times, a book from childhood with a silly story but beautiful writing, or sometimes even just a Peanuts comic-book from the sixties. These books are comfort, at least to me.
When I’m feeling horrible, or just down and sad for no reason, all I need is to pick up a book like this, tuck myself into bed, and read for a couple hours.
The yellow pages seem the most beautiful thing in the world and the crinkle as I turn them is like music to my ears. The smell – ah, the smell! I sometimes literally pause in my reading and bury my nose in the spine, sniffing up the memories of childhood, when I first read the book, or the countless bus-rides and walks to school when I read it, or even just the memory of being exactly where I’m sniffing, curled up in my bed, just a few months or years beforehand.
Some people have comfort foods – ice-cream, chocolate, warm milk. I have comfort books.

Original Barbie

Did you know that once upon a time, Barbie was a red-head? She was, indeed. She had red hair, shortish, only down to her neck. She had dark eyes, not blue. She was super-duper thin of course, but that’s just how it is, I suppose.

Skipper, Barbie’s sister or friend or something, was the blond one. She was shorter, and she had the long blond hair and blue eyes. Sometime over the years, Barbie became her sister apparently, and only her chest seemed to keep growing – ah yes, Skipper was completely flat-chested.

Also, all the original Barbie clothes were properly adorable. They weren’t flashy, they weren’t made of plastic material and they didn’t have velcro. No, the original clothing was all real cloth, with miniature zippers and buttons and real pleats in the skirts, and a real shine to the cocktail dresses. All the shoes fit properly and were actually sturdy. Those clothes were so beautiful.

The reason I know all this is because I’m sentimental, overly so, and I actually have the same Barbie-box that my mom had when she was a girl. It’s tucked away deep under my desk, but once in a while I delve into it out of curiosity and actually envy Miss Redhead for her clothing.

“Innocense”

Left in a meadow where flowers always bloom
A little girl dances forever,
Playing with her dolls and teddy bears and blankies.
She never cries, never sighs, never needs a hug,
She’s perfectly content knowing that everything,
Everything is fine. All is well.
Sometimes she pauses,
Raises her eyes to the heavens,
And tries to grasp at a forgotten memory,
-Or perhaps a vision-
Of a darker girl,
A dangerous, wild and wonderful girl.
But the feeling of something forgotten fades,
And the girl lives on obliviously
In her meadow of innocence.

I wrote this poem… sometime. I don’t actually remember when, but I stumbled across it while going through some of my old poems and I rather liked the imagery, so I thought I’d post it.

Panoramic View

Standing at the edge of the yard, beyond the pool, beyond the odd bust of the Indian chief, right in the flower garden, trying hard not to step on the precious buds, is a girl. She’s wearing a short t-shirt and hugging herself against the cool morning breeze that ruffled her sleeves and her long hair. She closes her eyes and smiles into the morning sunlight, feeling glad despite having slept only a handful of hours.

When she opens her eyes again, she really looks, really stares hard at the view in front of her. So strange to have a yard end and have the wilderness begin right after the fence. The valley stretches out below her, and she gazes at it intently, trying to see wildlife – a few deer perhaps, a coyote. As usual, she sees nothing but the shrubs and trees and the vast greenness of the hills.

At last, she raises her eyes beyond the valley, beyond the hills, to stare at the tiny patch of blue, slightly darker than the sky, that is right there in that little break between the hills. The ocean. Sometimes she can even smell the salt-air from here, despite being miles away.

Eventually, she’ll walk in her bare feet back into the house and have breakfast with her family, who will all be waking up early due to jet-lag, just like her. That first morning of every visit to Los Angeles’s beautiful hills is always like this – magical.

Sometimes I Want My Ribbons Back

I didn’t write yesterday.

That was very, very, bad. Granted, the fault was not my own, since work finished late and I had to dash home and then out again within minutes because of a meeting I had planned with Sir B. F. and yet it still should not have happened.

Days that escape our control are hard. I think this is true for many people – we have our days planned a certain way, whether it is the same routine every day or whether we have a schedule we adhere to on certain days. When something gets in the way and changes things, it’s frustrating, it’s hard. We feel the control of our day wrenched cruelly out of our control, and we struggle to adapt ourselves to it.

The real strength is in adapting, and this is something I admire in more spontaneous people – the lack of worry when things don’t go as planned, the ability to drop everything and do something on a whim. Since becoming “an adult” who works and has “important things to do” I feel that I’ve become way too responsible for my own good.

Whenever I feel like this, I can’t help thinking of the Tori Amos song “Ribbons Undone” – and most specifically this line: “From school she comes home and cries ‘I don’t want to grow up, Mom. At least not tonight.'”

Two Years

My father died exactly two years ago. I can’t express how much I miss him. Really, I can’t. He was just the most amazing human being, and the most amazing father. He treated my brother and me as human beings, not as children, never as children. He respected us, and found so much to love and be proud of in us, which in turn made us happy, because we respected and loved him so very much.

His presence was so strong, even if he was silent. He always had the radio on, sometimes to good music and sometimes to bad, annoying music or loud and obnoxious talk shows. He never listened when it was on – he was always reading the paper or writing when the radio was on. But he didn’t like the house being silent. I think the most touching moments I’d ever seen my parents in was when a song they both loved came on, and they would start dancing together, bopping around and kissing and embarrassing my brother and I. I realize now, of course, that that was wonderful, so beautiful, so miraculous for two people to have been married for so long and to still have been so much in love.

My largest and most horrifying fear is that I’ll forget my father one day. Forget how it felt to walk hand in hand with him when I was little, forget how it was to be mad at him, forget how it was when he sang me his lullaby, forget how it was to watch him doing exercises and then sitting down to watch the news, forget how he read my papers for school and helped me improve them, forget the smell of his cigarettes and coffee in the morning and the cake or cookie he ate as his breakfast. I haven’t forgotten yet, no, but what if I will one day?