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 how happy I was when I got Tommy. It was expensive, a double album. I had heard, on the radio I think, "Tommy" itself, but many of the songs were revelations. "Got a feeling twenty-one is gonna be a good year." And I'd had no idea -- hard to believe now -- about "Pinball Wizard." I think Hugh had a copy first, but of course none of us had seen Tommy and we put it together from the songs. Hugh as usual seemed to have expert knowledge. But there were all these songs that I discovered entirely on my own, just from listening. I remember that I put the records on my father's stereo, in the living room where the piano that I didn't practice that night was. What a treat to listen to Tommy instead of practicing.

posted by william 11:53 PM
. . . 0 comments

I remember asking for a horse for my sixth birthday and really meaning it. I didn't bother asking my parents; I asked Cherie and Everett, who had lived downstairs from us in our two-family in Cambridge when I was very little.

Perhaps because of my middle name, Cherie taught me to sing, "Alice, where are you going? Upstairs to take a bath. Alice with legs like toothpicks, and a neck like a giraffe. Alice stepped in the bathtub; Alice pulled out the plug. Oh my goodness, oh my soul, there goes Alice down the hole!" Though I remember singing it with her, and though I remember associating it with her and knowing she taught it to me, I can't remember the first time. She must have taught me that song in the pre-history of my mind, at a time before I can remember my memories. Everett told me (repeatedly, I'm sure) my favorite fairy tale, which was The Frog Prince, and resulted in my thinking of him as the Frog. They gave me an immeasurably beautiful ring set with a delicate pink oval gem that sometimes looked purple in the light. I promptly lost it, but would find it again among my things from time to time, always with immeasurable joy; it was a thing I coveted although it belonged to me.

They also catalyzed my family's introduction into Jewish practice, and I remember making Challah with my mother and Cherie in Cherie's kitchen (my only memory of that downstairs flat). I remember their involvement in my parents' wedding (the Jewish wedding, when I was about 4, after my father converted)--did my mother alter Cherie's wedding dress? I remember something to do with Pesach, but again I don't know what. Still, my feelings about Pesach come partly from associating them with Pesach, an air of Cherie and Everett, so there must have been a Seder together at some point. Eventually they moved out of the downstairs apartment, but I stayed connected with them: Sometimes I slept over at their new house in Brookline, or was taken for a trip--bowling, or the zoo, or something similar. I knew their phone number by heart, would call and chat with them from time to time.

I knew that they loved me, so I asked them, really, seriously, sincerely, for a horse. That was what I wanted. And on my birthday my parents brought a pinata to school (the first birthday in first grade), and sometime that day someone gave me the lovely (I say now, with adult eyes), sock-headed stick horse from Everett and Cherie. Oh the insult: How could they have misunderstood me so badly? And why would they give me something so ugly, a caricature, with yarn hair for a mane?

posted by Rosasharn 3:21 PM
. . . 0 comments

I remember splatting Norman Mailer with a jelly donut, the result of a high-spirited accident, when I was visiting colleges and he was giving a talk. This was closing one loop in my life, since I remember my father's big fat copy of The Naked and the Dead sitting on the shelf at eye-level across from me when I sat on his recliner in his study to read.

posted by william 11:16 PM
. . . 0 comments

I remember getting my first zip-up coat. My earlier winter coats used buttons. My mother knew -- again with that adult savoir faire that was so impressive to me -- and remarked to my father that the zipper on this coat was very different from the zippers I was used to (on my space-suits), since you had to bring both sides together and then zip up. The zipper wasn't already attached at the bottom. I couldn't even conceive of such a thing. But she knew all about it, and even knew how to zip up my coat, which she'd do for me until I learned how myself.

(I remember also being amazed, probably before this, that zippers worked. I think Hugh tried to take the apart to see how they worked. My attitude was -- and still is -- that if you dismantled it enough to see how it worked you'd never be able to get it to work again.)

posted by william 11:36 PM
. . . 0 comments