More Glimpses Into The Past

September 10, 2018

Among my most treasured books are five hard-cover volumes of The Wizard of Oz, by Frank Baum, that belonged to my father when he was a little boy. He gave them to my brother Jeffrey, and after he died, I inherited them. They are in excellent condition for books that are now at least eighty-six years old. My father loved and valued books, and he clearly did so already at an early age, for these volumes have only the wear and tear of an old book and were not mishandled or torn apart by my father, as so many children do to their books.

Jeffrey cherished even more so the Wizard of Oz books, knowing that they had been held in the small hands of our father, and remembering this brought Jeffrey closer to him. We most certainly could visualize him sitting and reading them in 1932 or 1933 and this made the books more fascinating to us. Imagining our parents as little children—something other than the monolithic, one-dimensional, and all-powerful beings that they often become to us in our childhood—was an enlightening mental exercise. I am reminded of what my mother said to me one day, after Jeffrey and I complained to her about mistakes she had made in our upbringing: “I’m just a woman who decided to have a couple of kids!” And indeed, that is what she was, along with millions of other mothers and fathers who never intended to do wrong by their children, or harm them in any way, but who inadvertently might have done so.

What truly intrigued both Jeff and me was a picture on the inside cover of the first volume, The Wizard of Oz. We know that my father had drawn it, because next to it he signed his name in the penmanship of what was clearly a five or six-year old child. The drawing is of a cross-eyed man, perhaps a robot, with small appendages sticking out of his arm. Above and below him are what I am guessing may be airplanes or rockets. He may have a cigarette in his mouth (my grandfather Marcus did smoke).

Jeff and I used to look at this drawing with wonder and we also thought it was funny. We felt that we could see a younger version of my father in it, that it was a precursor to what he had become, that it already showed the humorous side of my dad that we so loved. It humanized our father, gave him dimensions that we were unaware of. It was a small conduit into his child’s mind and universe. It made us consider him differently, in a state of innocent creativity, still unmarred by the hostile outer world.

Of course, we all know that our parents were all once children, all once infants, all once eggs in our grandmothers’ wombs! But how easy it is to forget this! And because we forget it, we expect more from them than we should, and we think that they should be superhuman, flawless caretakers. Our parents taught us compassion and generosity and forgiveness, and they showed us how human they were and how vulnerable they were. Otherwise, we ourselves would not have learned these traits, their compassion, their forgiveness. And yet, because they were there before us, because they picked us up as tiny babes, fed us, clothed us, directed us and protected us, it is hard to separate them from one-dimensional caretakers and to acknowledge them as just ordinary people with the same problems and concerns that we developed as adults. (This is in no way an apology for abusive parenting; that is a separate topic altogether).

This becomes easier as we get older, and yes, I fully acknowledge that my mom was “just a woman who decided to have a couple of kids.” It is easier to forgive and to understand your parents when you acknowledge their humanity and stop making them into gods.

My father was 29 when I was born, and my mother was 33. I wonder what messes I would have made in my children’s lives had I had babies in my thirties, a time when I was a busy graduate student trying to figure out who I was and where I was headed. Yes, I wanted to be a Professor of French, but I also longed for other things and dreamed of other goals and opportunities: moving to France, becoming a civil and human rights lawyer, like my Grandfather Marcus, or becoming a psychologist instead, or better yet, a chef, since I loved, and still love, to cook for my friends and family.

Recently, in the process of packing our house in preparation to move to Portland, Oregon, I found two tiny drawings by my maternal Grandmother Ingrid. How I wish I had known her longer! And as an adult, at which time I would have asked her countless questions about life as a child in Finland, before she came to the United States with her family. But she died when I was 12, and at that time, I asked few questions of her and my grandfather. I wasn’t yet interested in family history, though I was fascinated by my grandmother’s eternal Finnish accent, and how she pronounced my name as “Kaarin,” the double vowels drawing out the sound in Finnish, a distinct feature of the language.

One of her drawings is of a woman in a tight mini-skirt and a mass of hair, tall on her head. The caption reads: “Todays (sic) style. Ingrid” The other picture is of a woman in an old-fashioned wash tub. It is clearly my grandmother, as she did a very accurate copy of herself. She is pointing her leg straight up to the ceiling and flexing her foot. The caption reads:  ”They tell me to take sit (sic) baths.” Grandma’s writing was lacy and flowing, quite pretty, and reminds me of her equally delicate crochet work sewn onto the edges of at least a dozen pillowcases that my mother owned, and are now mine. In her fifties, Ingrid developed a destructive case of rheumatoid arthritis that eventually killed her, as the inflammatory process spread to her internal organs. Long ago, sitz baths were among the few treatments that could be offered to relieve her pain, unlike today when there are more effective treatments.

Yet through it all—her gnarled and bumpy hands, her body misshapen by disease, her loss of height—my grandmother retained her sense of humor, and was able to draw herself—still pretty and flexible—in a washtub. I often wonder how much those baths relieved her pain.

Since I didn’t know my grandmother well, I cherish these little drawings, her lacy handwriting, and her subtle sense of humor coming out amidst her bewilderment at her predicament, having a disease, which in those days, more than 50 years ago, imposed a chronic pain sentence on its sufferers.

Like my father’s little drawing in The Wizard of Oz, Grandma Ingrid’s little drawings, done as an adult, offer me a glimpse into her private world that I knew almost nothing about.

These seemingly insignificant pictures will enter the “museum room” that I have created in our new home, as part of the history of who my father and grandmother were long before I knew them as towering loving figures.

 

Wilshire Park

Recently, I discovered by chance the classics of M. Sasek (Miroslav), Czechoslovakian author and illustrator (1916-1980) who wrote and illustrated travel books for children in the 1950’s. These delightful books—This Is Paris, This Is Edinburgh, This Is London, This Is San Francisco, This Is New York, This Is The Way To The Moon, and many more—have recently been republished and are available in tall, hardback volumes. City facts have been updated and noted at the end of each volume (“THIS IS PARIS…  TODAY!”). For example, we can now read that 12 million people live in the Paris region, compared to 10 million in 1959 when This Is Paris was first published.

 

The books combine marvelous color drawings—sometimes comical, highly expressive—with a simple text that explains what happens in these cities, gives a little bit of history, and especially tells about everyday life. In This Is Paris, we learn that the construction of the Notre Dame cathedral began in 1163, that Parisians come home daily with a long baguette perfect for nibbling as they walk, and that a concierge is the “guardian angel” of many apartment buildings.

Sasek’s books are simple, delightful and brilliant.

As I continue to explore our new neighborhood in Portland, Oregon, where my husband and I moved six weeks ago, M. Sasek’s narratives often come to mind. Hence my decision to write a short narrative of my own, both a pastiche of M. Sasek, and a tribute to him. I will start with our new favorite park, Wilshire Park, located about one half mile from our house on 37th Avenue.

Without the benefit of illustrations, please use your imagination!

 

“So here we are.” This is Wilshire Park, one of close to 300 parks and natural areas in Portland. Wilshire Park is full of very tall and elegant Douglas Fir trees. Their trunks are broad and thick, and their branches create cool green shade, especially needed in the heatwaves that often occur in July and August. The Douglas Fir is Oregon’s state tree. They stand as much as 100 feet tall, and their trunks often grow more than three feet wide. We feel as if we are walking in a forest, but we are in the middle of the city!

There are also elms, maples, lindens and beech trees among the 23 species of trees growing in the park.

There are dozens of dogs in this park! They run around the “off-leash area,” they sniff each other, say hello, and ignore friendly humans as they instead focus on chasing speedy tennis balls.

Little children play in the playground with their parents and small friends. It is always full.

Joggers run the perimeter of the park on the gravel and dirt paths. On the big open field, people throw Frisbees, balls for their dogs, do yoga and stretch.

 

Since this park is flat, it is ideal for everyone: women and men with baby strollers, elderly people with walkers and canes, or who are simply slow, and the disabled. The shady trees protect everyone from the sun.

 

There are many benches, and every day we see the same man sitting on one, smoking a pipe, and reading. He is friendly. One day, I asked him what he was reading, and he told me that he finishes almost one book per day, usually a mystery novel.

 

Sadly, there are a lot of homeless people in Portland, as there seem to be in all American cities now, no matter how wealthy or elegant. We saw someone sleeping on a picnic table, wrapped in a gauzy green cloth, looking uncannily like a shrouded corpse on a mossy tombstone. His bike and full pack were parked next to him. Maybe he is a traveling bicyclist and not a homeless person. He slept quietly under a big tree.

 

I’m so accustomed to seeing the Kaibab squirrels of Flagstaff, Arizona, with their bushy tails and dramatically tufted ears, that the dozens of “ordinary” squirrels of Wilshire Park look shaved, or like they’re missing a body part.

 

The park is bordered by 33rd and 37th Avenues. 37th is a greenway, meaning, in the context of the city, a scenic road connecting many sites. Cyclists share the greenway with car traffic. Hence, much of it is zoned to 20mph, and this slower traffic makes it safer and more pleasant to travel on by foot, too.

 

Portland is called “the city of roses,” and it lives up to this name, for people have planted roses everywhere. The owners of one house across from the park grow fragrant coral, red, pink and white roses along their 20-foot parkway.

 

Come and see Wilshire Park and take a walk in it, or in any of the dozens of other beautiful Portland city parks.

 

And read an M. Sasek classic. You won’t be disappointed.

 

 

 

 

Belongings

July 16, 2018

Portland, Oregon

My husband and I just moved, three weeks ago, to Portland, Oregon. We left dry, dusty, high altitude Flagstaff, Arizona, where we had lived—I, for 28 too many years, and he, for 32 years—and taught at Northern Arizona University. Leaving a place where you’ve lived for three decades is a huge undertaking, and we began planning our move already more than a year ago.

As we cleaned, sorted, shredded, filed and emptied out, we were faced with many decisions about what to keep, what to throw away, what to donate, and what to store.

For years now, I’ve heard of the virtues of getting rid of things. This a new credo, a new form of American virtue, almost a new religion that has developed, perhaps, as a reaction to rampant materialism and credit card debt amassed because we buy too many things. Books have been written about how to clean out your home and thus benefit psychologically and spiritually.

I admit there is some truth to the idea that we have too much stuff. For example, as I looked through all of my clothes, I asked myself: “If you haven’t worn this piece of clothing for over a year, and you’ve practically forgotten that it’s in your closet, do you really need to keep it? Is it really that valuable to you, or precious, or meaningful?” In the end, these were some of the questions I asked myself in order to decide what to keep and what to give away. I am very lucky to be materially and financially well off. So, since I have an excess of clothing and other items, why not give them away so that poorer people can buy them at Salvation Army, Goodwill, or Habitat For Humanity? And indeed, this is what we did. We gave carloads of things away, and we felt happy that we could reduce, even just a little, the misery of so many people who go without, who can’t buy what they want and need, because they’re poor. We also gave furniture and household items to friends who could use them.

We criticize our excessively materialistic society. Friends who helped me pack made comments intended to be playful, but I felt the sting from them, nevertheless. Too often, things said “jokingly” are meant to mean more, veiled though they are.  “Do you think you have enough jackets?!” “Wow, you have SO much stuff, how big is your new house?” One day, a hyperbolic comparison to Imelda Marcos’s collection of more than one thousand pairs of shoes -did- make me laugh! Do you know that some of them are housed in The Shoe Museum of the city of Marikina?!

But the idea that cleaning out and getting rid of stuff is in itself a virtue…? I don’t agree at all. Yes, I have a lot of “stuff,” but just what is this stuff? The rhetoric about the virtues of cleaning out fails to take some important things into account.

Some people might ask why I keep old letters. I have at least five large boxes of them. Have you ever sat down in the middle of the floor, in complete silence and with the door closed, and quietly read through old letters? Well, I have done so many times since I began cleaning out in preparation for our move. And I can tell you that it is a fascinating experience, a true experience of time travel, nostalgia, reminiscence and exploration. I read letters, postcards, and little notes jotted onto post-its by my father. As his mind deteriorated from Alzheimer’s disease, and he could no longer remember the simplest instructions, my poor old dad wrote instructions for himself and posted them everywhere in the house. They were like little yellow traffic signs directing the traffic jams in his confused mind.  I found old love letters whose authors I had forgotten about, I read love letters to my mother written by men she dated when I was a teenager. I was able to remember large swathes of time that otherwise might be lost to me. I saw myself, and heard myself as a teenager, as a little child, and I saw my paternal grandmother, my father, my maternal grandmother, cousins, friends from college, an uncle, some cousins… so many people whom I no longer see, or who are now dead, such as my mother, father, and brother. I sat with them and they talked to me. I looked into their eyes, and for a few seconds we were magically brought together. I lost track of time as I immersed myself in their words, and I forgot the world outside of my room. As I read their letters and notes, I realized how much I miss all of those people, how important they were to me, and that they put together so many pieces of my life puzzle. I want to remember them, I’m happy to “hear” their voices again. Had I just tossed out all of those letters, some of which I’ve kept for more than 40 years, I would not have seen them or heard them again in my mind’s eyes and ears. Perhaps, yes, I would think of them again, but not in the immediate way that I did when I read their letters.

And material things… Yes, I have kept shells that I collected on the beach, childhood dolls, the dollhouse built by my mother, all of the doll furniture, most of my children’s books, bookmarks, wooden bookends that my father gave me before I was ten years old, now chipped and faded. Most people would have thrown all of these things out by this time in their lives. But they are not just material “things.” They are the vessels in which an infinite number of my memories live. They are representative of all of the phases of my life. They are part of who I am now, they reveal an infinite number of things about my personality, why I am who I am, where I came from. They ARE my story!

When I was about 14 years old, I made twenty tiny books for a bookcase in my dollhouse. They were the titles of books I had read. When I look at them now, I remember what I was reading between the ages of 12 and 14: classics, Gothic novels (I had forgotten how much I loved the very popular Victoria Holt!), history. My tiny library is a record of what I was reading at the time, what my young self was interested in. I cherish knowing this about myself.

Many friends have told me that when they left for college their parents “threw out” all of their stuff. I’ve always been appalled that parents would do this to their children. It shows insensitivity and a considerable lack of respect. Neither my father or mother did this to me. They stored everything, and when they wanted to use the space taken up by my belongings, they asked me to come home and sort through everything. Afterwards, they helped me box it all up and send it to where I was living, or if I didn’t have the space, they kept it for me.

I stored some things on my own on Sola Street in Santa Barbara, in a garage being used by a then boyfriend. For some reason, I never went back and got them. I remember longingly two items I still wish I had retrieved: a small blue car, belonging to my brother Jeffrey, that was a reproduction of an early 20th century model (I still have the red one of the pair of cars given us by my Grandmother Esther) and a very thick, hard-cover tome about animals of the world. I repeatedly studied that book. I remember one picture, vividly, of a piece of coral that looked like a human hand lost far under the sea.  I often stared at the picture, imagining that some poor shipwrecked sailor or passenger on a ship had drowned and then lost a hand that floated to the bottom of the sea and then was grown over by coral. In spite of my fascination, I could never bring myself to touch the page with that photo. The “hand” frightened me that much.

Several years ago, while visiting Santa Barbara, I searched for the house on Sola. I remembered that it had two stone lions at the end of the driveway, close to the sidewalk, though it was not a fancy or grand house, as such lion statues might suggest. I remembered, too, that the garage door was padlocked.

I found the lions and the house! But the old garage, already rotting and tumbling down in my twenties, was no longer there. And even had it still been standing, I knew that nearly 40 years later I would no longer remember the combination lock numbers, nor would I simply be able to waltz up to it and claim my belongings. And anyway, they would have molded, rotted or rusted by now, had they even been there… far-fetched idea! I’ve often wondered who kept that little blue car, beautifully crafted and now probably a collector’s item. Where is it? Is it in the attic of the very house whose garage I left it in?  Or on a windowsill? I don’t even remember why I never went back to claim my belongings. The strange things we don’t do…

So, let us not throw the baby out with the bathwater as we clean out our overcrowded closets and storage units. For, as they say, someone’s junk is someone else’s treasure. Though my “stuff” may not be worthy of a museum exhibit, in my little cosmos of memories and reminiscences, my things are as valuable to me as art in a museum is to the broader public. This undoubtedly explains why I have named a small room in our new house—where I am displaying my collection of dolls, statues, children’s books, toys, feathers, beach shells, sea glass, books and some strange little items—my “museum room.”

If you visit me, you may go in and look. I don’t charge an entry fee.