first attempts

It’s funny. I sat down to try and recall my earliest memories. I made a table to organize my thoughts, categorizing each memory into “family” or “school.” But not much came. There was the obvious. Friend’s names, little league teams, pets, but nothing that begged to be put down in writing. Creativity seems to occur when you are not trying. But yet I try.

Memories come to you at inopportune times. The good ones come to me when I am lacking and the bad ones come when I need peace. I don’t understand it, but it usually works this way. Feeling useless and alone, memories of old friends and good times find their way back to me. But trying to sleep or read a book, thoughts of dropped fly balls and bad choices haunt me. And so it happened the other day when I was aimlessly walking through downtown. Feeling a bit lost and bored, some memories came flooding back.

My family lived in small house on Rosal Lane in Concord until I was about five. Both sets of my grandparents lived nearby, my father’s parents living just around the corner. I spent a lot of time there, often sleping over. There was always soda waiting for me, often the remnants of a previous can due to my grandmother’s Depression era childhood. She would give up everything if I came over and if she was busy running errands, I was always invited along. If there was a baseball game on, the best times were spent listening to my grandfather’s rants about how much the Giants sucked. And they did. His use of expletives and derogatory terms was so much more refined than my father’s and I learned a lot from him.

My brother Johnny was born when I was three and Daniel when I was five. I didn’t require a lot of maintenance as a child, and so I would go to my grandparents and let my mom deal with babies. Their house was an easy escape from the noise of my own. My brother Johnny was/is a handful, as was my father and I slept over at my grandparents because I was the center of attention. My grandfather always seemed preoccupied, but he always wanted to know how things were going. There was usually a good meal involved and a late bedtime. Which seems amazing now as both my grandparents were usually up by 6am. I would get up in the morning to a bowl of cereal and my grandmother’s commentary prompted by the radio on how Reagan was ruining the country. My grandfather never looked up from his paper. Later my grandma would read aloud from my aunts’ and uncle’s old copies of Tom Sawyer and Edgar Allan Poe. My fondest memories still remain sitting in that big chair, under a blanket, a grandparent on either side, watching Benny Hill.

These are some of the memories that cause me to pause and smile. I don’t make it over to my grandmother’s as often as I would like, but when I do, it’s often like I am five years old again. My grandmother still drops everything, still takes me on errands, but we have so much more to talk about now.