365 Memories

Today, first and foremost, I want to remember my Aunt Bea, who is no longer with us—at least not in any physical sense.  I choose the word "want" deliberately, for wanting to remember and remembering do not necessarily follow each other.  I did not spend a lot of time with her; we almost always lived too far away to make that practical.  But I can sketch out some details.  First her looks: I remember her always as having dark hair, though in later years the color was lighter, warmer, a carefully selected auburn.  I remember the shape of her face as being rounded in youth, with lady-apple cheeks and a chin that formed a soft protruding orb but was also cleft the way her father's was; on her it looked delicate somehow, more like an elegant dimple.  She was not tall, and she was slim.  She wore fashionable but understated clothing.  In the photographs I have of her, time runs afoul of traditional chronology.  I have a portrait picture (above) taken in 1950, when I know she c...

Flats, pointes (Freeds not Capezio, unless they were your first few pairs and that pink color was what you needed to fulfill your little-girl fantasies), jazz and character shoes.  Words like box, shank, vamp.  They are not what you might think.  Oh, box and shank, how shall I break thee?  Let me count the ways: wet and wear them, do two hundred plies, bend them between your hands, crush them under your heel, place them in the space of an open door between the hinges and close the door on them, hit them with a hammer, roll over them with a car (no, that was another girl's lie, I don't believe she did it).  When thou art worn beyond belief, how shall I extend thy life?  With Future floor acrylic, of course.  And the feet in the shoes?  I remember the sting of blisters and the lumpy shape of my calloused, deformed toes.  I remember the smell of lamb's wool—fluffy when stuffed into the box of the pointes, a matted sweaty mess and sometimes bloody once you were done.  The balle...

January 1979.  Thirty years ago—how did that happen?  I was nine and our family lived in Chicago, in an apartment on Commonwealth, a street that ended (or began) at Lincoln Park.  Winter vacation, and all I wanted was snow*.  Snow to make a snowman, snow to have a snowball fight with my father, snow to use my metal saucer and whip down Devil's Hill.  I don't know who named it "Devil's Hill," whether it was someone in my family, or the other kids at school, or maybe it was known that way generally.  It was indeed an evil hill, ripe for sledding and saucering accidents, which thankfully I never had, though I came close once.  I remember waddling (it was hard to do anything else wearing tights, thermal long-johns over that, plus pants and maybe also snow pants) up the steep hill, dragging the saucer.  Up at the top, my dad would help position me, ask for the OK, and give me a good shove off.  Let me tell you there are not many ways to control a saucer racing super f...

A winter day in Paris, early 1991.  Shopping the marché rue de Buci in the 6eme arrondissement with my mom, on the prowl for impromptu breakfast to go.  Warm pain aux raisins, light and soft and sticky; seasonal clementines, tiny orbs of sunshine in our cold hands.  I was living there at the time, a student and also working as a "stagière" (intern) in the European headquarters of a software industry association.  My mom came to visit for a while, keeping at bay any homesickness, giving a respite from the constant efforts of negotiating another language, another culture.  She and I set out for a day trip.  Leaving the Gare Saint Lazare on a train bound for Rouen, we settled in for one of the most memorable meals of my life: the richness of the pastry cut by the juicy sweet tang of citrus; an explosion of taste inside our mouths as we bit the fruit, released it from its skin; exclaiming "Mmm..." and "Ooooh..." and "Look!" as the French landscape ro...

Every year, there it was: the pyramid of dough balls, piled high and drizzled with honey, sprinkled (I think) with colored nonpareils.   Strufoli .  The traditional Italian holiday dessert rose from the middle of the refreshments table at the R's annual New Year's Eve party.  Each year we lived in Los Angeles (in the early 1980s), we looked forward to the invitation; we always made sure to attend.  The R's had a daughter my age, and we went to the same school.  I spent a lot of time at their house, slept over pretty often, and could usually count on at least three things around their dinner table: pasta, hand gestures, and a no-holds-barred argument worthy of any Sicilian family.  The R's were a slice of Brooklyn in L.A.  The party was a costume party, and we'd dress up.  One year, a "family heritage year," my father wandered around in moonshine attire (mind you, these were Reagan years; the Clintons had yet to turn "hillbilly" into DC vogue); m...