Old Friends

40 years may seem like an eternity to students of the age I spend most of my day with, but it's the blink of an eye, no kidding, to me. This phenomenon was reinforced this past weekend as Jim and I met up with a family friend I'd not seen nor spoken to from at least that many years ago. How can you completely catch up on that many near catastrophes, family losses, friends in faraway cities and states, hilarious situations, and those not so hilarious in two hours over dinner? Well, you can't, at least not completely. Especially since there are six children from both families unmet, one spouse back at home 3000 miles away, and all those stories that just didn't surface. But Tom, if you're reading this, it was great fun trying! You have changed, as I'm sure have I, but not in the ways one would expect. You haven't gained weight, you look much the same as you did way back in the 60s, but you have gained in experience and, for lack of a better word, wisdom? Not that it wasn't there those many years ago. I have always felt that my own mindset has not altered much, or my basic outlook on life. It's comforting to know that my friend still has that same optimism from the days when, for example, my high school class chose "The Impossible Dream" from "Man from LaMancha" as our theme song. We were maybe more optmistic then, who knows? I know we never used to lock our doors back in Virginia then, do you now, Virginians? We Californians do, that's certain.

It's interesting to see that all three of us are planning to work beyond the years our parents did (all of whom are gone now, sadly). Each of us echoed the other's sentiment that "we'll live longer if we do," and never once did we mention the failed economic buyout nor the presidential candidates Obama and McCain, though both are hot topics at school and with casual friends. No, after 40 years, there are other important subjects to explore, family both past and present, and plans for two weeks into the future as well as beyond. I think for me, after choosing Los Gatos as the city in which to rendezvous, not only because it was halfway for both of us, but because it's a cameo of small-town-America, complete with a village green and fountain, where families were enjoying the perfect last remnants of summer warmth on a Saturday night, it felt important to try to capture those days so long ago when we were all so much younger and hopeful about bright futures. I still feel that way despite the gloom in the news and love to get the chance to share it with others who do, too.

I am not yet a grandmother, but feel in my heart that it's all about how you handle what you're dealt in life and look forward to sharing that with young ones all over again. Here's a tip of the glass to you, friend Tom; so happy we reconnected again!

Cravin' Oysters on the Halfshell

Talk about unlikely roots: our father was Quebecois (our grandparents spoke French til the day they died though they raised their six children in Massachusetts) but our mother was born and raised in the deep South. No Cajun seasonings mixed in here, or at least not until Cathie moved to Louisiana. No, our food was often an interesting mix of "tourtiere pie", okra and black-eyed peas, fried chicken, chicken-fried steak, greens, or, sometimes even onion sandwiches!

Sounds pretty run of the mill, but since our "pere" traveled a great deal, we were the first folks in our east coast cities as small children to make tacos routinely, even eating them for breakfast on occasion. No fresh masa or tortillas were available, so we bought tortillas in a can, put out by the Old El Paso company. We loved artichokes, having been introduced to them in California as small children. Basically, we learned to appreciate good food no matter what the provenance and loved to eat out and try regional restaurants whenever my mother could round us up in the station wagon.

One such place, and I love that it is still functioning as it has for over 60 years, is Charlie's Seafood Restaurant in Virginia Beach, Virginia on Shore Drive. Have you ever eaten She Crab Soup? This is the place to do that for sure. I remember Charlie's well, since I learned to slurp raw oysters here with my dad, who somehow in those days, went on days when it was "all you could eat" at the oyster bar, or at least that's how I remember it. Little me could put about one away, as I wasn't all that keen on them to begin with, but Dad could make up for what I let pass and I remember he ate them enthusiastically. Seems like they couldn't shuck them fast enough for those seated at the bar--what was it that they served them with, cocktail sauce? I felt part of a special group, sitting at that bar, of people who seemed to know that what might look alien to one (a gray/white glistening shell with something in it that was alive just seconds ago) was a delicacy to another and well worth becoming initiated into. I am still always tempted by those oysters-on-the-halfshell on any menu and the sight and fresh ocean smell of them conjures up my dad's image. I have since eaten them in Nova Scotia and Seattle, and I always glance around, wondering why there aren't stools for all of us who want MORE FAST!

I haven't visited Charlie's in probably over 40 years and don't remember if they had the typical juke boxes or tableside record choices of those old diner restaurants. But I do remember one song, that if the tableside record were sitting on that table, my mother would choose to hear: "Only You" by the Platters. That song was ubiquitous during the years we spent at Virginia Beach. You'd hear it everywhere and it is one of those transporting melodies for me back into the past. Charlie's comes to mind, as does Hurd's, with their signature popovers, and my mom's cackly laughter as she presided over her brood of us four children attacking the seafood. You can visit Charlie's on the web at the address below and even see a picture, which makes my 40 year old memory seem very foggy. But the directions re-orient me: "Take Pacific Ave towards Fort Story. Round the curve and head towards First Landing State Park. Once you pass First Landing State Park you will be on Shore Drive. We are approximately 1 mile West from the corner of Great Neck Road, on Shore Drive."

For obvious reasons, I'm feelin' a cravin' for oysters on the halfshell and some she-crab soup...

http://www.charliesseafood.com/

Gasp, Sing Me These Songs

Sometime last night, in that twilight space between sleep and wakefulness, I realized that nobody, but nobody, knows the songs that stir those deep memories in me when I hear them. These tunes seriously take me to very specific places and, just like "Name That Tune", the transport happens in seconds, to the strains of the first bar or two of music. So, here they are, for whatever they're worth to anyone reading this. They might be very worth my recording them here for posterity (see yesterday's blog) for dredging up at some distant point. (Some of you might well be able to conjure up the place that one or more of these sends me to?) The order is not significant and there are more that I'm leaving out, but those will have to wait. Can you hum bars from these titles? These are worth to listening to, you'll see...

Come Saturday Morning, 1969, Sandpipers (from The Sterile Cuckoo movie)
Jump, 1984, VanHalen
Valley of the Dolls, 1968, Dionne Warwick
Smooth Operator, 1985, Sade
Gone to Carolina, 1968, James Taylor
The Twelfth of Never, 1957, Johnny Mathis
Bohemian Rhapsody, 1975, Queen
Hotel California, 1976, Eagles,
Unchained Melody, 1955, Roy Hamilton, favorite, but also 1965, The Righteous Brothers
Watermelon Man, 1963, Mongo Santamaria
Coconut, 1971, Nilsson
The Girl from Ipanema, 1963, Astrud and Joao Gilberto and Stan Getz
Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme, 1966, Simon and Garfunkel
Milord, 1959, Edith Piaf
Goin’ Out of My Head (Can’t Take My Eyes Off You), 1968, Lettermen
The Cuckoo Song (Dans La Foret Lointaine), Traditional French
Il Etait Un Petit Navire, (Traditional French)
Benny and the Jets, 1984, Elton John
Playground Love, 1999, Air (from the Virgin Suicides movie)
In the Air Tonight, 1981, Phil Collins
Could Be Anything, 2004, The Eames Era

Musing over Memories

Have you ever had anyone ask you: "What were you doing on (such and such a date)?" Well, many of you probably weren't even alive on this date, but I remember exactly what I was doing on the afternoon of July 21, 1969. But mostly, I remember the place: the lifeguard chair of the Charleston Naval Air Station's Officer's Club Pool. Of what import you ask? Let me expand...

Just finished an article in this week's Newsweek regarding memory: "Mysteries of Memory" wherein Jeneen Interlandi speaks of the idea that "the physical space in which events occur may, in fact be that scaffolding..." upon which human memories are created.

As a child, we moved frequently. My mother joked that in 26 years of marriage, she had moved 17 times. That's a bit of moving. But it's also a bit of locale changes, which makes for somewhat easier retrieval of memory as they are associated, say, with the time we lived in Virginia Beach (where we experienced Hurricane Donna, for example, and lived across the street from Alan Shepherd, but also lived in a time when no one locked their house doors, or even had house keys!) or Quonset Point, Rhode Island (where we ice skated on frozen Naval base pools, swam illegally late at night in those same pools, glimpsed John Kennedy in the flesh as-close-as-from-me-to-you) or Charleston, South Carolina (where we found the bar scene quite lively with the likes of our cousins' oh-so-successful group "The Wayfarers" and heard Neil Armstrong's words as he walked on the moon from the loudspeakers on the naval base).

I've always had a strange connection to place, anyway, and now maybe, I have a scientific explanation for why. Put me next to the ocean, and I feel almost primordial; leave me for a while underneath the peaks of Yosemite Valley, and I am rejuvenated. Take me 40 years back, as I did last fall with my high school reunion, and I want to re-visit all those spots, those places that actually look the same to me as they did way back when. (Despite some minor changes, of course.)

In the same Newsweek article, Harvard psychiatrist Salzman discusses Alzheimer's patients and ends one question with the strangest of advice: "...singing songs from the person's childhood may help you maintain contact with them, (late-stage victims of the disease) at least for a few moments." Do the songs take the person back to a place, that scaffold of memory, where those memories were laid down/embedded in the first place? I like to think so; bravo for Salzman for sharing that with us and to Interlandi for sharing the research that suggests that place might be as important in brain function as it is, at least, for me, in memory.

So much for my thoughts on memory on this beautiful September afternoon, when moving back into our old (yet renovated) offices at work/school was such a drudge, and a place I definitely was relieved to leave at day's end.

Babbles

Smashing the idea that blogs have to be written only during times of elation or catastrophe, I offer my first attempt at a blog. For Stephanie, no, the world is not coming to an end, but your mother is indeed blogging. For Cathie, your insights waiting for Ike to barrel through have been an inspiration. I have always told others that the story waiting to be written has little to do with great events. In fact, I make much of my living helping others do that: telling their stories through essays but I write little myself, preferring instead to revel in their anecdotes and to help them find their voices and profer those voices in hopes of attending this or that college. So, there you have it. More to come...