I remember / je me souviens

I remember / je me souviens

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For those limbic bursts of nostalgia, invented by Proust, miniaturized by Nicholson Baker, and freeze-dried by Joe Brainard in his I remember and by Georges Perec in his Je me souviens.

But there are no fractions, the world is an integer
Like us, and like us it can neither stand wholly apart nor disappear.
When one is young it seems like a very strange and safe place,
But now that I have changed it feels merely odd, cold
And full of interest.
--John Ashbery, "A Wave"

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

Sunday, December 17, 2006

I remember Christmas break at my Jewish grandparents' big house in Jacksonville. I remember the citrus orchard in front of the house and the river behind it. The enclosed porch that looked out over the river was too cold to really spend any time on in December, but I remember trying to sit on the wicker furniture and getting very cold. I remember feeling surprised that my grandfather made our breakfast, and that he always started with grapefruit, which we never ate for breakfast at home. We would get in late at night from our drive down, and my grandparents would give us something warm to eat and then we would go to bed and wake up early in the morning for grapefruit. There were strange things in that house, like a sewing room. And my grandfather's electric shaver. My father always had a beard, so I didn't know about razors until my grandfather let me try his, and I felt the buzzing tickling on my face.

My grandparents had beautiful clothes and a big bedroom with an ensuite bath, and my favorite thing was to stay with them when they got dressed in the morning (if I was up early enough) or in the evening while they dressed to go out somewhere. Their closets were mirrored on the outside, and I could open two doors around myself to make an infinite mirror, and I would dance in the middle of all those girls, all of us matching, dressed alike, moving in time together. The incredible satisfaction of that symmetry and coordination, that perfect choreography.

My cousin Roger and I used to play downstairs, under the pool table. This must have been a concerted compromise on both our parts--my four- or five-year-old need to play house at every opportunity joined to what possible game for Roger, at eight or nine? Something about bad guys, life on the run. We also played a lot of hide and seek. I remember the beautiful tree in the living room and sitting in a circle with all the family--my mother's siblings' families and my grandfather's brother and his children and their families, and opening presents together. I remember waking up in the morning and watching Christmasy cartoons with Roger and looking through our stockings, comparing our loot and eating a lot of cracker jacks, and for a moment feeling confused. Was this or wasn't this mine? We were Jewish--we, my family, my parents and me--but Roger believed in all this Santa stuff. I think my parents read my grandparents the riot act that year--I think it was the last time they had a tree.

I remember going out for meals in Jacksonville with my parents and grandparents and great grandmother, Babette (my grandfather's mother), and my mother's siblings and possibly our great great aunt Margaret Benjamin, who called my mother Joanita, in from Chicago. These were unspeakably fancy events; the whole family sitting down a very long table, and my great grandmother and Aunt Margaret holding court, wearing long white gloves that went up to their elbows. I felt like a princess, partly because I was dressed up, wearing a fancy frock and white tights and black patent-leather mary janes (my ideal of beauty), but more because I knew myself a part of this grand thing, this royal family, this group of important and imposing people. And the restaurant had a soft ice cream machine.

We went and returned in convoys of cars--I didn't necessarily travel with my parents--and one time I remember sitting with Roger in the back seat while he spun me a horror story about some secret association between telephone poles and scorpions. On the way home, I sat between my grandmother and my great grandmother, and, frightened, I told them Roger's terrible tale. They comforted me and taught me a coy response: mock anger that Roger would tell such a fib. Then my grandmama asked me about my likes and dislikes. All I remember from this conversation was some consideration of polka dots, about which, I confess, I had no opinion. And then we dropped my great grandmother off at her home (in retrospect I recognize her complex as assisted-living apartments), and I fell asleep on the way back to the big house.

posted by Rosasharn 4:13 PM
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