A Fond Memory

Now that I've been alive more years than I like to admit, I've noticed that some memories stand out as charming, beloved or pivotal.  Certain moments or little 'things' shine thru the muck of all the years.  Feel free to post a comment with one or more of your beloved memories. It could be an event, a person, a smell, a walk, a compliment, an artwork. Anything.  What stands out in your memory?  Post short or lengthy comments!

I'll start:

Grandma.  My father's mother. She was from Russia, always cooked a bounty expected of a Russian grandma and had the greatest-smelling Christmas tree every year.

Grandpa and Grandma at their Easter table, 1957

Christmas and Easter (and "Russian Easter") were my favorite holidays to visit her, as she always had a dining room full of hearty food.  Piroshki, pelmeni, kasha, and a particular favorite of mine as a boy was her white rice with mushroom soup mixed in. And it seemed as though the savory aromas of all these delicious meals embedded themselves into the very walls and furniture of her old San Francisco house.  It was a musty and sweet smell that seemed to accentuate the taste of the sweet pickles she always had on a platter on her table (along with olives and slices of swiss cheese all for nibbling while everyone conversed for hours). And there were also bottles on the table for the adults including vodka and Creme de Cacao, the bottle cap of the latter I would rub my finger around the inside of and have a taste.

I don't know how she did it, but her Christmas tree every year had the most intense aroma.  No other could compare. Maybe the decades of savory food smells embedded into the walls and furniture accentuated the sweet aroma of pine.  I do recall that smells of pine and cooking buckwheat (kasha) and beef piroshki cooking in grease combined into a sense of comfort unmatched anyplace else.

Grandma was intensely opinionated, and called those she most despised "pygmies."  But she was also generous and always welcomed her lonely older Russian widow friends into her home on these holidays. And she always smelled nice, like the perfume counter at The Emporium (Stonestown Shopping Center, San Francisco, her favorite store it seemed), and was always nicely-dressed with a sparkly starburst brooch.

Her impression on me is so strong that myriad things evoke memories of her. For example, the 1950s jazz recording by flutist Herbie Mann of the song "Baubles, Bangles and Beads" reminds me of Grandma shopping in downtown San Francisco in the early 1960s; wearing a white sweater, large purse and the mild sun shining as she walked among the crowds.

Grandma.  Herself a sweet and savory gal. I remember her fondly.

An Advantage of Being Older

Reaching birthday #__ was really bad for me.  On my Facebook account I wrote that "I honestly do NOT see any advantage to getting older."  However, I recently thought of one advantage:

Older people enjoyed fuller experiences of performers and entertainments that are now considered "legendary."

As a teen, I watched the "Carol Burnett Show" every week and so I've seen every sketch they ever did, and I often laughed literally until I cried. Today, young people have only selected "best of" DVDs of the show available to them, not every skit the cast ever performed. This limits later generations' appreciation because they won't experience the breadth of humor in EVERY sketch they ever did, but more significantly it's impossible for young people today to watch the show in the context of the time it was presented originally. Cultural references and a sense of humor, defined by the time, are gone. So only those who watched the program in the 1970s can understand what really made it great.

I lived The Beatles in their heyday, and had innumerable additional experiences of them that later generations will never enjoy. And Johnny Carson, and... the list goes on. Every generation has its own list of "legendary" entertainers.

Being young certainly has its advantages, but understanding the cultural context of entertainment and social movements gives understanding that later generations will never genuinely feel (they can only understand it academically).

For example, the lifestyle and music of the "hippie" 1960s and the disco '70s.  I was there!  I was under 10 years old but I remember walking through San Francisco's Golden Gate Park with my older brother and cousin in about 1967 and seeing all the hippies. My mother had told us not to go to the Park because "those people are dirty and dangerous." However, I remember "those people" saying "Hi" to me, a little boy, with friendly smiles (including one particularly pretty blond girl). And then, when my cousin was hit by a car on our way back, I remember that everyone came running up to help. These were friendly helpful people, not dirty or dangerous people. And so I understood these young people's complaints about how older people ("the establishment") didn't understand them because my mother proved them correct. And as a pre-teen witnessing the Vietnam war on TV and Watergate, I understand the feelings of the time that made art and poetry in song such strong powers to energize and unify a generation in protest.

And in the 1970s, I HATED disco!  Young people today might look at all that with fun, but lemme tell ya, living in that time was HORRIBLE!  [2011 edit: ok, maybe disco DID have some catchy tunes...]

Only people who lived through the time of what is now "legendary" can fully understand why.

(PS: the photo on this article is my grandfather, after whom I was named. He certainly understood better than I ever could what life was like in Bohemia the few years on each side of 1900, then as a Czech officer in Russia after their Revolution, then living in China in the 1920s, and of coming to America in 1924 for a freer life of greater opportunity. I can only look back objectively, academically.  I cannot feel his fear at lying to officials about his travel plans so he could escape the tyranny of the times. Nor can I feel his hope and relief while aboard a ship bound for America.)