Recently, a friend asked me what I miss from my childhood. What a lovely question. I often focus on negative memories, or, because I am surrounded by them, I relive the awkwardness of adolescents. I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about it, sorting memories, trying to differentiate between nostalgia and lack, and the things whose importance or pleasure I may have exaggerated or over-sentimentalized since.
I miss penny candy. It gave me great joy. I would do some chores around the house to earn 25 cents with the sole intention of riding my bike to the Ben Franklin Store to buy candy. I would choose with great care 24 pieces with one cent left over for tax. The process was a long one, and almost as enjoyable as eating. I would make a pocket out of the front of my T-shirt and study the bins of Smarties, rolled licorice with a little sugar dot in the center, root beer barrels. Kits were more than a penny, but worth the investment because they had four individually wrapped pieces in one package. I would empty my T-shirt pocket on the counter, and the lady whose name I never knew who always wore the same matt red lipstick, a blue smock and cat eye glasses would count them, take my quarter and return my purchase in a small paper bag. Back home, I would eat one piece after another, feeling a little sad when I had finished them and was only left with a small paper bag full of wrappers. Years later, after I had moved away, the same lady whose name I never knew who was wearing the same smock glasses and lipstick (I always assumed it came from the Avon lady) told me that she remembered me and penny candy. For some reason, I was embarrassed.
I miss fishing and the silence of my grandfather.
I miss my dog, the one I shared with my dad. Brandy was an English Setter. Her eyes were surrounded by black spots. She wasn’t the best hunter in the world, but she was gentle.
I miss believing just a little bit that life could really be like a television commercial in which people really do spontaneously burst into song because they really like Dr. Pepper.
I miss the apple tree in the back yard. Dad built two platforms in the tree. I spent hours reading in that tree, swinging from branches, daring myself, my siblings and friends to jump from the higher of the platforms. I miss daring to jump, scared of breaking a bone, but doing it anyway.
I miss getting into trouble. Not the trouble itself, but what preceded it. Taking the hose out to the sandbox under the apple tree to make an unholy mess. Jumping waves in Lake Superior despite express orders not to get wet. Eating the peas on the pod before they were ripe and without permission. Too bad I didn’t think to hide the empty pods farther away from the pea patch.
I miss my Spider Bike with the banana seat, plastic basket with ugly plastic flowers on the front and a raccoon tail from the Corn Palace in South Dakota that I bought with my own 50 cents tied to the back. Popping wheelies. Taking the shortcut through the creamery and maneuvering around the fences no-handed. So that bike nearly killed me one summer day, I still miss it.
I miss winter. A kid’s winter, not the one I have to slog through to get to work and back. Walking to the ice skating rink with my skates over my shoulder in a special bag made for me by my godmother, wearing four pairs of socks and jeans made a little uncomfortable by the extra long johns underneath them. Tobogganing down the golf course hill and spilling the sled. The smell just before it snows. Red cheeks.
I miss Christmas. I miss the anticipation of it. Obsessively decorating sugar cookies. Making Christmas present projects at school, wondering if they were stupid or if Mom would like them. The snow village and nativity set that Mom set up on the bookshelves over a layer of cotton, the little skiers and skaters, houses with red cellophane windows that one day we thought would be fun to poke out with our fingers. The red felt stockings that Mom made for each of us (mine has a snowman on it) filled with an orange, a big candy cane and pocket change in the toe. Dad would make egg noodles the week before Christmas. All the chairs were draped with them. Some of these were for the traditional Christmas Eve chicken soup. I miss Christmas carols, not the ridiculous version of Jingle Bells that was playing on a loop in Ikea today, but the kind we used to sing in church. I miss Christmas Mass, especially when we were old enough to stay up for the midnight one, driving to church and picking our way through the cold parking lot early enough to find a good pew. I especially loved the wooden nativity set at the altar and kept track of the Three Wise Men’s progress to it before Epiphany. One of them had a beautiful elephant.
Monday, December 22, 2008
Home
I recently moved to Rumeli Hisarı, a very different section of Istanbul than Beşiktaş. My old neighborhood, its blacktop and concrete, its ugly rectangular buildings, is not the most aesthetically appealing one. Rumeli Hisarı is more like a village. Its narrow, irregular streets are lined with ivy-covered stone walls. Some of the streets are paved with flattish stones and are flanked by fig and pomegranate trees. Some mornings, as I walk to the bus stop, random people stop to offer me a ride up the steep and winding hill. I take their offers.
From the front garden of my building, I can see a small slice of the Bosphorus, the lights reflecting off the water in the evenings. There were two fig trees in the back yard, but the landlord in all his wisdom cut them down. Fig trees are quite hardy and these will probably grow back in the spring. When they mature, I hope they drop their rotted fruit down the back of my landlord’s neck to his shoes. There is a compost pile to the right of the steps leading from the back to a narrow side street. I am quite fond of the compost pile and regularly heap swept leaves and vegetable peels on it, happy in the thought that I am making rich, dark dirt.
I have an unusual neighbor. I can’t tell how old she is: she could be 40, she could be 70. Clearly, life has not been easy for her. She’s short, a little round and walks with a slight limp. Her clothes are old, worn and usually quite dirty. At one time, they were probably very colorful, but now are dull and gray. She wears them in layers, and they don’t always fit her well. Her hair, too, is lifeless and gray, the color of dirty snow with just a hint of yellow. In contrast to her appearance, however, she is incredibly lively. She energetically marches around the neighborhood at all hours of the day and evening. For teeth, she has two coffee-colored stumps. One is on the top left, and the other on the bottom right side of her mouth. Because of her lack of teeth, is difficult for me to understand her. I suppose many people wouldn’t bother to talk her because she is an odd, albeit regular part of the neighborhood landscape, but I have decided that she’s harmless. The first few times I talked to her, she looked at me suspiciously and spoke sharply. Maybe she was worried I would hurt her or steal from her. Later, she began to smile at me and ask questions – sometimes the same one three or four times. “Are you married? Where do you live? Do you work? How long have you lived here?” At least I think that’s what she asks me. Every time I speak to her, she shows surprise that I don’t understand her, and disbelief that I am a foreigner who doesn’t speak Turkish very well. Yesterday, I saw her near the Spice Bazaar, sitting on a low concrete ledge in the rain. She was selling tissues out of a vegetable box set on a plastic garbage bag. She looked at me blankly, then slowly, I think, she realized she knew me but didn’t know from where.
She lives in the house next to mine. In fact, her house looks a lot like her, built of ill-fitting, grubby layers. It’s made of bricks, odd bits of wood, and looks as if it’s held together with glue and chewing gum. My neighbor may be poor, but that doesn’t mean she has no projects, no dreams. At the front and the back of her house, she has piled great stacks of wood and other building materials. I often see her dragging chunks of wood, boxes or even clay roof tiles through the narrow streets to add to her piles. According to my other neighbor, she’s planning to build herself a new house.
I don’t know her story. I don’t know if she has a family, if she had a husband or children. I don’t know if she’s happy, or even if she’s really as crazy as my other neighbors think. I don’t know if I want to know.
From the front garden of my building, I can see a small slice of the Bosphorus, the lights reflecting off the water in the evenings. There were two fig trees in the back yard, but the landlord in all his wisdom cut them down. Fig trees are quite hardy and these will probably grow back in the spring. When they mature, I hope they drop their rotted fruit down the back of my landlord’s neck to his shoes. There is a compost pile to the right of the steps leading from the back to a narrow side street. I am quite fond of the compost pile and regularly heap swept leaves and vegetable peels on it, happy in the thought that I am making rich, dark dirt.
I have an unusual neighbor. I can’t tell how old she is: she could be 40, she could be 70. Clearly, life has not been easy for her. She’s short, a little round and walks with a slight limp. Her clothes are old, worn and usually quite dirty. At one time, they were probably very colorful, but now are dull and gray. She wears them in layers, and they don’t always fit her well. Her hair, too, is lifeless and gray, the color of dirty snow with just a hint of yellow. In contrast to her appearance, however, she is incredibly lively. She energetically marches around the neighborhood at all hours of the day and evening. For teeth, she has two coffee-colored stumps. One is on the top left, and the other on the bottom right side of her mouth. Because of her lack of teeth, is difficult for me to understand her. I suppose many people wouldn’t bother to talk her because she is an odd, albeit regular part of the neighborhood landscape, but I have decided that she’s harmless. The first few times I talked to her, she looked at me suspiciously and spoke sharply. Maybe she was worried I would hurt her or steal from her. Later, she began to smile at me and ask questions – sometimes the same one three or four times. “Are you married? Where do you live? Do you work? How long have you lived here?” At least I think that’s what she asks me. Every time I speak to her, she shows surprise that I don’t understand her, and disbelief that I am a foreigner who doesn’t speak Turkish very well. Yesterday, I saw her near the Spice Bazaar, sitting on a low concrete ledge in the rain. She was selling tissues out of a vegetable box set on a plastic garbage bag. She looked at me blankly, then slowly, I think, she realized she knew me but didn’t know from where.
She lives in the house next to mine. In fact, her house looks a lot like her, built of ill-fitting, grubby layers. It’s made of bricks, odd bits of wood, and looks as if it’s held together with glue and chewing gum. My neighbor may be poor, but that doesn’t mean she has no projects, no dreams. At the front and the back of her house, she has piled great stacks of wood and other building materials. I often see her dragging chunks of wood, boxes or even clay roof tiles through the narrow streets to add to her piles. According to my other neighbor, she’s planning to build herself a new house.
I don’t know her story. I don’t know if she has a family, if she had a husband or children. I don’t know if she’s happy, or even if she’s really as crazy as my other neighbors think. I don’t know if I want to know.
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