Laying in bed last night, I couldn't get to sleep. No it wasn't any anxieties or worries or weight-of-the-world stuff keeping me awake. I was just thinking. Thinking back. Thinking about home.
Home is a long way from where I am now. Seems like it always is. But at least the place where I grew up and spent most of my life is, indeed, far away.
Many of the memories remain far away, as well. Not that there were so many bad moments. I think the memories just fade over time. Like a film negative you've had stashed away in a shoebox for umpteen years. The pictures eventually lose their color, the images lose their sharpness. Some of the film becomes useless, the moments irretrievable. Memories are like that.
This night I was thinking about my childhood. School days. What started it all was a recent plunge I'd taken, albeit reluctantly, into Facebook. And it didn't take long after joining before ghosts from the past began appearing in the form of 'friend invitations'. Some of the ghosts had photos of the way they looked now, and I remember thinking, "That must be so-and-so's dad". Except that it wasn't so-and-so's dad ..... it was so-and-so. Others had actually converted old prints to digital and posted pictures of their childhood. Our childhood. It was some of those images which took me back. And which were keeping me laying awake in bed ..... thinking.
I found I could remember all the way back to kindergarten, but not a whole lot beyond that, not until about the fourth grade. Grades one through three, I couldn't even give you my teachers' names. That's the odd thing about the memory, it's just so splotchy at times. It seems like so often the things you do remember are little, insignificant bits and pieces, and you wonder why you can remember some things and yet totally forget so many others.
For instance, in my kindergarten class there was a girl who sat across the table from me, (we'll call her Peggy), and I remember she loved to eat paste. It was the solid, white paste that came in a little container and smelled like cheap peppermint. It wasn't made to be poured like Elmer's, you had to use a little stick to spread it on the paper. And in kindergarten, we used a lot. Especially if a holiday was coming up. Mrs. Mayhew would always have us cutting out pieces of colored construction paper to make turkeys, snowmen, or Santas, and we'd put it all together with this paste.
Peggy loved this paste. I mean she used to love that paste so much she could hardly spare any for the construction paper. Mrs. Mayhew would catch her from time to time and scold her, saying "You are gonna' glue your innards right together, and then what will you do?". But Peggy just kept on munchin' that paste like it was creamy peppermint filling.
She was an odd girl. I remember thinking that at the time. Those times when she could be made to put down the paste long enough to start cutting up the paper, she had this funky way of holding her scissors, too. Not with the blades towards the ceiling, like all the rest of us, but with them down, towards the floor. So that instead of cutting away from herself, she would bring the scissors towards her body. And it didn't make any difference she was the only one in the room holding her scissors that way, there she'd be just cuttin' away to beat the band, like it was the only way in the world to hold scissors.
And then, on top of all that, bless her heart ..... as if that wasn't enough ..... she had these teeth. With my child's mind I thought either she'd been given the wrong size, or maybe it was like a pup with huge paws and she would eventually grow into 'em. Whatever it was, they were simply too big for her mouth to hold 'em.
Maybe that was when I began to realize that people were actually different from one another. At that age I really don't think I'd given it much thought before. But boy oh boy ... here was the whole package staring me right in the face, with the scissors and the paste and the teeth. I must have struggled with that for a time. But, that's the earliest memory I have of discovering that we are all unique. And yet, I remember discovering something else, too. Though she held her scissors funny, it didn't seem to slow her down one bit. And though she loved to eat paste, with the exception of her breath she seemed just fine. Her teeth? Well, big as they were, I remember liking her because she was always smiling. So I not only learned, early on, that we were all different, but that it was okay that way.
Of course, that was before we kids began to mature and take on more of the characteristics of the adults we would someday be. Three or four years later, when cruelty would begin to hit full stride, I'm sure we would have been merciless. We were merciless. Only ..... not to Peggy. Within a year or two, she and her family had moved to another town. Another life. And here I was laying awake in bed so many years later ..... thinking about Peggy, and wondering how many more memories were in there. And how many are just lost forever in the murky deep.
Home is a long way from where I am now. Seems like it always is. But at least the place where I grew up and spent most of my life is, indeed, far away.
Many of the memories remain far away, as well. Not that there were so many bad moments. I think the memories just fade over time. Like a film negative you've had stashed away in a shoebox for umpteen years. The pictures eventually lose their color, the images lose their sharpness. Some of the film becomes useless, the moments irretrievable. Memories are like that.
This night I was thinking about my childhood. School days. What started it all was a recent plunge I'd taken, albeit reluctantly, into Facebook. And it didn't take long after joining before ghosts from the past began appearing in the form of 'friend invitations'. Some of the ghosts had photos of the way they looked now, and I remember thinking, "That must be so-and-so's dad". Except that it wasn't so-and-so's dad ..... it was so-and-so. Others had actually converted old prints to digital and posted pictures of their childhood. Our childhood. It was some of those images which took me back. And which were keeping me laying awake in bed ..... thinking.
I found I could remember all the way back to kindergarten, but not a whole lot beyond that, not until about the fourth grade. Grades one through three, I couldn't even give you my teachers' names. That's the odd thing about the memory, it's just so splotchy at times. It seems like so often the things you do remember are little, insignificant bits and pieces, and you wonder why you can remember some things and yet totally forget so many others.
For instance, in my kindergarten class there was a girl who sat across the table from me, (we'll call her Peggy), and I remember she loved to eat paste. It was the solid, white paste that came in a little container and smelled like cheap peppermint. It wasn't made to be poured like Elmer's, you had to use a little stick to spread it on the paper. And in kindergarten, we used a lot. Especially if a holiday was coming up. Mrs. Mayhew would always have us cutting out pieces of colored construction paper to make turkeys, snowmen, or Santas, and we'd put it all together with this paste.
Peggy loved this paste. I mean she used to love that paste so much she could hardly spare any for the construction paper. Mrs. Mayhew would catch her from time to time and scold her, saying "You are gonna' glue your innards right together, and then what will you do?". But Peggy just kept on munchin' that paste like it was creamy peppermint filling.
She was an odd girl. I remember thinking that at the time. Those times when she could be made to put down the paste long enough to start cutting up the paper, she had this funky way of holding her scissors, too. Not with the blades towards the ceiling, like all the rest of us, but with them down, towards the floor. So that instead of cutting away from herself, she would bring the scissors towards her body. And it didn't make any difference she was the only one in the room holding her scissors that way, there she'd be just cuttin' away to beat the band, like it was the only way in the world to hold scissors.
And then, on top of all that, bless her heart ..... as if that wasn't enough ..... she had these teeth. With my child's mind I thought either she'd been given the wrong size, or maybe it was like a pup with huge paws and she would eventually grow into 'em. Whatever it was, they were simply too big for her mouth to hold 'em.
Maybe that was when I began to realize that people were actually different from one another. At that age I really don't think I'd given it much thought before. But boy oh boy ... here was the whole package staring me right in the face, with the scissors and the paste and the teeth. I must have struggled with that for a time. But, that's the earliest memory I have of discovering that we are all unique. And yet, I remember discovering something else, too. Though she held her scissors funny, it didn't seem to slow her down one bit. And though she loved to eat paste, with the exception of her breath she seemed just fine. Her teeth? Well, big as they were, I remember liking her because she was always smiling. So I not only learned, early on, that we were all different, but that it was okay that way.
Of course, that was before we kids began to mature and take on more of the characteristics of the adults we would someday be. Three or four years later, when cruelty would begin to hit full stride, I'm sure we would have been merciless. We were merciless. Only ..... not to Peggy. Within a year or two, she and her family had moved to another town. Another life. And here I was laying awake in bed so many years later ..... thinking about Peggy, and wondering how many more memories were in there. And how many are just lost forever in the murky deep.
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