Sometimes I sense that to put real confidence in my memory I have to get to the end of all rememberings. That seems to say that I forego remembering. And now that strikes me as an accurate description of what it is to have confidence in one's memory.
          --Stanley Cavell, The Claim of Reason

I remember my father reading me a version of "The Song of Roland." I was surprised, the first time, that Roland died, that he could successfully blow his horn and die, that he could succeed and die, so that success wasn't escape from death. (I wonder what he was reading me -- it was highly literary, at least for my age). I was surprised, as well, that the heroism or audience interest was so divided between Roland and Charlemagne, since I was used to one hero or one team of heroes, as in the Superman comics my father introduced me to one morning in Stormville, when I was seven or younger.

That morning he wanted to show me something, and I still remember the surprise that what I thought was going to be some kind of educational chore -- reading and learning -- turned out to be Superman. He'd gone out to get the Sunday Times, and (as is his habit) had gotten back into his pajamas and into bed, and so he had the papers spread around him, than which nothing could be more boring. But he also had Superman. (He must have bought it at Connie's, with the paper). I still remember the sunny morning, and the drab bedroom in the cottage with its large but plain wood bed and sheets and coverings, and then the spectacularly colored comic books.

"The Song of Roland" must have been later, and wasn't like Superman at all. But it was still stirring -- in some ways more stirring. It was the kind of story or myth that my mother usually read me or told me, and it was (and remains) interesting that my father was the one who presented it, a part of his literary constitution that wasn't a part of hers, like his speaking German when she spoke Italian, but which seemed so much more like that Italian. In a way, it differentiated my parents unexpectedly, like Roland and Charlemagne.

posted by william 7:19 AM
. . . 0 comments

I remember that today is the anniversary of the day I came out of surgery, arm intact. The nurse the night before had said there was a chance it could be amputated. I had dreams (on various medications) of skiing with one arm, left poll tucked beneath the remaining stub. I wondered how it would affect my balance, but in the dream I did all right.

posted by william 9:56 AM
. . . 0 comments

I remember my uptown grandmother predicting how things would be, as she put it, "When I am no more." She spent a lot of time showing me the various objects in her cabinets that I would inherit. They seemed to belong only there, though, and the idea that I would inherit them was so remote that the thought was comforting, since they would obviously stay were they were forever.

posted by william 10:37 PM
. . . 0 comments

I remember the white, foldable wooden ruler that we had. It was, I think, six feet long when fully extended, and a foot or even eight inches long when folded up. Its sections were held rigid by metal hangers or clasps that went around each one allowing the wood of the next to warp over it and then snap into place. When it was shut I liked snapping the top piece out and back. The ruler swayed a little when fully extended, and if you held it horizontally it would buckle -- it was a game to guess what section would go first: the torque was greatest on the section you were holding, but if you shook it right you could get it to collapse half way down instead. I liked the stepped effect it gave to measurements of length.

It snapped shut in the same way as it snapped open, and when it was fully folded up it was about an inch or so thick, considerably thicker than it was side. I liked the way the two dimensions became three when it folded up into a secure brick of wood.

posted by william 12:14 AM
. . . 0 comments

I remember that I used to think of trees as being more or less the height of adults -- a little taller, obviously, but with their crowns or heads (I thought of them as heads but didn't use the word) starting roughly in the same region as where adults' heads were.

The exception to this rule was the giant weeping willow behind our house in Stormville, with its yellow rubber or plastic anchoring loops wired to some of the branches and which my mother told me were lightning rods (and which may have been -- I guess I still don't know -- certainly my image of a lightning rod is this U-shaped attachment to a tree. There would have to be more of course, and I don't remember seeing any more on the willow. I remember feeling safe though because it was right behind our house, a limit to the driveway and the place where we could play easily, and it towered over the house and so would protect us from lightning. (This place, this area, is one of my most intense and archaic memories -- I think it belongs to my first explorations of the world beyond the limits of my caregivers' immediate scope, and so the world first seemed separate and large and indifferent to me. I recorded my memory of it a little here but I can't come close to the sense of strangeness of these primordial elements of the world "that did not live like living men.")

Back to the trees: the willow was the tall tree, and all others I thought of as being simply on the scale, more or less, of adults. Then much later I came to realize -- somewhat to my surprise -- how much taller trees were. (My mother had told me about redwoods, but they were -- to my imagination of them -- the exception to the general run of things. She told me of seeing one which a road passed through, which made me think of the Lincoln tunnel in New York, so I thought they were really big.)

I think I realized the height of the trees -- a height I still am sometimes surprised by -- when we moved from 2-G to 7-F. The tops of the trees in the park across the street were almost as high as the window I looked out from. Seven stories! I think at 2-G I thought of trees as coming up to the second story -- adult scale, that is. But these were much taller. They towered, in ways I hadn't imagined from walking underneath them.

I think also that I've become aware of how trees loom since growing to adult size myself. I'm on the same scale as my parents now, but the trees are still much taller. Now they seem part of the strange indifferent outside world, and not (as they once did) the community of care-givers. Trees have become much stranger to me, even as the rest of the world has become less so.

posted by william 9:34 AM
. . . 0 comments

I remember that my downtown grandfather would, in courtly mode, preface requests with the phrase, "Be so kind." "Be so kind and open the window." "Be so kind and pass the salt." I liked it.

I also remember a story he told about being in New York, I think, or maybe it was Sarajevo and hearing a woman say "Cerise" when she saw the new cherry-blossoms. She was Hungarian, maybe, and he was Bulgarian, but the word was the same, and he told me that when she said the word he struck up a conversation with her. She was a stranger, and grateful; but somehow also this was the only word they had in common. It might be that they'd already failed to communicate, until she said "Cerise," and then he could show that he knew what she meant and it was all ok. I remember that there was something of an achieved and lovely innocence about the surprising transparency, one that made him happy and made his face glow with pleasure when he told the story.

posted by william 12:34 AM
. . . 0 comments

I remember my mother telling me about ambrosia and nectar -- food and drink for the gods! I was surprised, a few years later (when I was eight or nine) to find that you could buy peach and apricot nectar in cans, and then that bees sipped nectar. Ambrosia has come to mean for me the noun from which a mild adjective of overpraise derives; and nectar next to nothing; but sometimes the word can remind me of the thrill it first had for me when my mother told me about it.

posted by william 10:05 AM
. . . 0 comments

I remember that window shades used to have strings at the bottom from which hung a circular tug, so that you could pull them down or let them reel up without soiling or wrinkling the shade itself. (I don't know whether they still do: I can't picture them as being still around, but maybe they've just become invisible to me. I'll have to keep my eyes peeled.) What I remember though is the shades before I knew what the pulls were for. I wasn't allowed to touch the window shades, and I thought of the dangling circles as a combination of decoration and mysterious function, and therefore a siglum of esoteric adult knowledge: the circle with a line extending straight up.

posted by william 9:52 PM
. . . 0 comments

I remember going to see Superman with my dad at the Dedham movie house when I was young, probably 5 or 6. And the line was really long—it wrapped around at least half the building, and it went slowly. We started hearing rumors that it was sold out as we got closer and closer to the ticket booth, and, finally, when we were face to face with the person selling tickets we found out that it indeed was sold out and that we could get tickets for the next show, 3 hrs later, if we wanted to. My dad turned to me and asked what I wanted to do—I could tell he was putting me in charge of making whatever decision I wanted to, and I was very nervous about doing the wrong thing. But I also thought that 3 hrs was a long time; I couldn't imagine waiting that long, so I said I didn't want to wait, and we walked out of the theater and back to the car. I thought he'd be mad, even yell at me (even though that wasn't, and isn't, his character at all) for wasting the time we spent in line. But amazingly, he didn't yell-- we just calmly went home. I wasn't relieved so much as puzzled, and disappointed in myself, like I'd let us both down, ruined the outing in a way I couldn't have imagined. (I asked my dad about this episode and he doesn't even remember it at all.)

posted by jennylewin 12:29 AM
. . . 0 comments

I remember Shep Messing, the brilliant, eccentric goalie for the Cosmos. He was supposed to visit our soccer camp but didn't, since it was a World Cup year and he was playing for the U.S. The second-string Cosmos goalie was our coach though, and he was really likable, and really good.

I remember becoming a goalie because on a train or plane in Europe I saw a great photo of the Soviet goalie, all in black, making a completely elegant beautiful, gloved, horizontal save, his face completely impassive. And being a goalie was one of the most fun times of my life.

posted by william 6:12 PM
. . . 0 comments

I remember "We are stardust, we are golden, / We are ?, you know we are, / And we got to get ourselves back to the Ga-a-a-arden."

I sometimes thought the second line had the word "devil's" in it -- "devil's star?" maybe.

And only recently found out it's "billion year old carbon."

posted by william 8:29 AM
. . . 0 comments

I remember where I got the firecrackers I remember. From the Hoges, who got them when they went to visit their grandparents in Pittsburgh (they also said they got them in Chinatown, which the Chinese characters on the stickers on the thrilling purple or green tissue-paper wrappers made plausible); and then later from Fred Cohen, who had access to M-80s, cherry bombs, and even a Roman Candle. I was very cautious with them, since there was always a Fourth of July story on the radio about a kid who'd blown off his hand with a cherry bomb. Fred would twine two or three together. I remember setting an M-80 off with Fred in Central Park. We climbed some granite and put it in a cleft in the rock, lit it and ran off. It was really loud.

Fred brought a Roman candle to our house for the weekend (I would have been twelve). I was very anxious about setting it off, since it was so much bigger than anything else I'd tried. I was afraid it would be loud and obvious and dangerous -- that we'd be caught or hurt. He said it was no big deal, just a series of eight or ten bright fire- balls that flew into the air, not so high as to attract much attention. I kept temporizing and we ended up not setting it off that weekend (relief!). Then a few weeks later, I tried setting it off myself, but it was a dud.

I remember that fireworks were the kinds of things you read about in school books about Americanana, but that I'd never seen them in reality, in New York. They were like farming or Little League -- things done in most of the rest of the country, but not where I lived. I think my parents may have gone once or twice in Stormville. But they weren't a city thing -- not until I was an adult. I think I may have first seen them in college.

posted by william 9:01 AM
. . . 0 comments

I remember "Take a tasty break with Tastiecake!"

posted by william 5:36 PM
. . . 0 comments