City Summers by Veronica Jorge
August 22, 2020 by Veronica Jorge in category Write From the Heart by Veronica Jorge tagged as friendships, Memories, my summer vacation, summer time
As summer winds down to a hazy memory and schools re-open to welcome children, I am transported back to one of my own September days and that dreaded first assignment: the essay, My Summer Vacation.
Why was I asked to splatter my most precious moments on a sheet of plain old loose leaf paper only to have them defaced with red ink across the top? It just didn’t feel right.
Moreover, how could I even begin to describe a Brooklyn city summer, or explain how it felt to walk shoulder to shoulder with your best friend sharing secrets, giggles, and a Good Humor or Mr. Softy ice-cream?
Every perfect vacation includes fun, exercise, adventure, education, music and art. We had it all!
We played handball (there was always a building with a smooth wall), punch-ball and two-hand touch: our city versions of baseball and football, the latter usually played in the middle of the street, and basketball (the third rung on the fire escape ladder was the hoop).
For fifty-cents, Al’s deli made a mean ham and cheese hero that he’d cut in half for you and your best buddy to share. Allowance money went a long way at kid-friendly Cheapie Charlies where you could splurge on a water gun, a slinky, jacks, or a one-flight paper airplane, two if you were lucky. Clustered on a stoop we sang and clapped in time.
The main library on Grand Army Plaza provided an air-conditioned respite from the heat. Seated in a cozy arm chair with an illustrated hard-cover our wings spread and our imaginations soared. Next door was the Brooklyn Museum, home to the largest Egyptian collection in the nation. Tombs and mummies, that was the place for mystery and adventure.
If we wanted to hit the high C’s, we’d hop the subway to Coney Island and scream our heads off on the cyclone rollercoaster as it clattered down the wooden rails.
At night, I sat out on the fire-escape staring up at the starry sky while my big brother pointed out the constellations and told me stories of Orion’s belt and the Wings of Icarus.
My summer vacation was about friendships. It was about growing and going back to school just a little older, not about going someplace. In a different way, we did go someplace, but it was within ourselves, our neighborhood, and our special little worlds. Your family and your friends were your summer. What you did, what you talked about and the experiences you shared made up your summer vacation: some things too private and personal to tell anyone except your closest friend, some moments too happy or too sad to actually put into words, but mostly those giddy, silly days filled with laughter that would be impossible to write about in an essay.
I don’t know what stories or memories children will share when they return to school, but I hope the joys of youth and friendship will outshine and outlast whatever troubles or sorrows may have touched their lives this summer.
See you next time on September 22nd.
Veronica Jorge
0 0 Read moreIt’s My Birthday . . . Again!
June 15, 2018 by Rebecca Forster in category The Write Life by Rebecca Forster, Writing tagged as birthday, gifts, giveaway, links, Memories, writing, writing craft
My birthday is June 16. I only know it’s my birthday because my husband keeps reminding me of the date, asking me what I want, and telling me we should celebrate. He has to do this because, in my family, I am legendary for not remembering birthdays. I forget my sister’s birthday even though we were born on the same day but fourteen years apart. My birthday piggybacks Father’s Day, too. I remember Father’s Day because there are lots of TV commercials for steaks, tools and aftershave. Rebecca’s birthday? Not so much.
There is also the matter of age. After the shock of the first AARP envelope at forty, the assisted living brochures at fifty and the burial at sea pitches when I turned sixty, I started taking birthdays in stride. Seriously, there isn’t much that can surprise me anymore on the aging score.
Lest you think me a birthday Scrooge, let me share the one thing I love about birthdays. I love the memory of them. When I was a little girl my mom threw awesome birthday parties for my brothers and sisters and me. I was number two in a six-pack and birthdays were celebrated with the neighborhood kids, balloons and a big homemade cake. In the backyard, we played tag, hide-and-seek and pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey. There were prizes for the winners but everyone went home with a gift bag. Even at my own birthday party it was that little gift bag I treasured most. I adored that there was always more than one thing: a couple pieces of candy, a silly toy that would break a day later, a paper crown. This bag was a treasure hunt, something unexpected, some thing that, in those lean days, mom would never buy just because. Those parties taught me that unexpected gifts can be the best things in the world.
So, in honor of my mother and the memories of those wonderful parties, I would like to give you a gift. Before Her Eyes is a thriller that will hopefully keep you up at night, but it’s also a very personal story, written when both my dad and my father-in-law were ill. It is a gift of my craft and a little bit of me thrown in to boot and it’s all wrapped up in the memory of a child’s party.
ClaimBefore Her Eyes here until July 1:
https://dl.bookfunnel.com/7tlkgv8nou
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3 0 Read moreShare if you remember when…..
July 20, 2017 by Meriam Wilhelm in category Writing tagged as #writing, Family, Memories, reading, sewingI recently posted a picture on my Facebook site of a Simplicity sewing pattern from around the 1970’s. The banner on the top read, “ SHARE IF YOU REMEMBER WHEN MOM WOULD MAKE YOUR CLOTHES.”
Boy, did it stir some special memories of a different time and place. In one short afternoon, hundreds liked it and over the days that followed many more liked, shared and commented. The comments keep coming. It’s probably one of the most active posts I’ve ever had and I’m guessing that many of the comments came from men and women in their 50’s and 60’s.
Some remembered their mothers (or grandmothers) sewing them everything from pajamas to school uniforms to prom dresses. A few bragged that their moms made clothing for their Barbie, Ken and even GI Joe dolls. Some struggled through Home EC classes themselves and shared tales filled with evil task masters and measuring tape miracle workers. It was not uncommon to hear about failed sewing projects that made their way home only to be resuscitated by mom. A few said that they themselves now successfully sewed for their kids or that they had friends who had become master seamstresses.
There were some lovely, often humorous, memories shared and it really got me to thinking.
I have four real passions in my life: Family, Writing, Reading and of course, Sewing. And as I was thinking about it, I realized that each of these passions grew from time spent with my mother. To mom, family was everything and she raised us to always remember that. She was an avid reader, a poet and a phenomenal seamstress. And through her example, she ingrained a love for each of these things in me. Those are such wonderful memories to have.
My own kids have grown up watching me living a life centered around my family, always working on a sewing project, with a book close in hand. Recently they watched me as I’ve thrown my hat into the writers’ ring.
So now I have to I wonder what tales they’ll tell when asked…”Do you remember when your mom would…”
Do you remember when your mom…or dad…would…? What would you say?
Conversations with Barb and Jann
October 2, 2012 by Jann Ryan in category Jann says . . . tagged as Barb Delong, Conversations with Barb and Jann, Jann Audiss, Journaling, Memories
The Power and Joy of Journaling
The other day I was going through an old childhood trunk I call my Trunk o’ Memories when I came across some of my trip diaries from the ‘60’s. My husband and I sat down, read through them and had a great laugh. Back in the day, my frugal mom would put $25 in an envelope for each day of travel, all road trips, of course. That $25 covered all expenses for me and my mom and dad, including gas and the motel. I duly recorded said expenses in the diary and some days we even had a buck or so left over to add to the next day’s envelope. The diaries brought back so many memories of the places we visited (mostly the northeastern U.S. – we were from Toronto, Canada), the ‘60’s era, my thoughts at the time, and the weather. Yes, I also recorded the daily temperature and precipitation.
I had forgotten about those diaries this summer when we embarked on an epic family road trip where I once again kept a daily diary. This time I tapped away on my iPad in my Pages app. I call it epic. Think eight people in a GMC Yukon SUV, three of them six years old and under, on a road trip up the California coast to Portland, Oregon, and back. We stopped along the way (many times), had some fun and some not-so-fun adventures, went through a lot of diapers, laughed and cried (sometimes it was me), and I duly recorded it all. Yes, including the weather.
What I’d done back in the day and now, was journaling. As I wrote in my journal before bed last night, I realized that I have always journaled. But why? Why did I feel the need to record the daily routines, the life-altering events, my thoughts and feelings, the weather? I’m sure it was not just to place these things in the historic record, to be read twenty or thirty years from now.
Remember that secret diary with the tiny key you kept as a teen, the one your bratty little brother read excerpts from to all his friends? You snatched it from his grubby hands and wrote that night,
Dear Diary,
I’m going to strangle my brother and stuff his body into his stinky gym bag!
That was journaling. Admit it. You felt a darn sight better after venting. And so, that’s why I journal. I feel better afterward. I throw down on the page my innermost thoughts, my deepest feelings, loves and hates, hopes and dreams. For my eyes only.
I think everyone knows this about journaling. But when I was researching the subject, I came across a website that listed no fewer than 100 benefits! Check it out at www.appleseeds.org/100_journaling.htm.
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