Tag Archive | personal: childhood

Blog Post: The Cottage

Jul14

It was always just The Cottage to me, the way Lake Ontario was The Lake.  Sometimes I have to remember people down in Ithaca don’t have the same context.

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My aunt and uncle – my mother’s older sister & her husband – are selling their cottage on Lake Ontario. (3)

It got flooded badly in 2018 – standing water for months 🙁 (1) and it got very moldy, and they are not young (my aunt must be, let’s see, 50+2020[year]-1+7… 76, and I think my uncle is within a year of that) and not in phenomenal shape.  I understand why they are selling it. 

On the other hand, I am mourning.

This is the last family childhood memory place still in the family – Grandma’s House, my great-grandfather’s house (other side of the family) are both gone.  All that remains is my parents’ place.

So I wrote them up a thing on Facebook, and I thought I would share it here, too.

This was part of my childhood.  I think it’s okay if I’m crying a little.

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I’ve been thinking about this for days. There are so many memories for me associated with the cottage – it’s more like a feeling, a set of emotions, than a memory.

For me, thinking about the cottage says “summer” and “family” in one breath. It brings to mind sand castles and sailing and German Potato Salad; it brings to mind Andrea at the kitchen window saying “Service!” and bridal showers and baby showers…
Grandpa at the kitchen table, telling us things he still remembered, even then, about his earlier life.

I remember when there was still a little cottage between [house of last-name], and [cousin and cousin] and I played make-believe in its doorway/on its porch. I remember, vaguely, the renovation, the new wall, how it looked before the garage.

Summer picnics, of course, Memorial Day, Fourth of July, Labor Day. It never seems right, not being at the cottage, Uncle [Uncle] manning the grill. Bacon and cheese on triscuits and asparagus wrapped in bread.
I love that the cottage was part of Uncle [Uncle]’s family history, that it became part of our family history. It will always be a part of the geography of my childhood, one of the few places in my life that were not my home that felt, nevertheless, like home.

Wonder Woman… and gardening

Jun12

I have this very vague memory of being a very small child and playing something like Wonder Woman (we almost never did make-believe straight from the shows), and opening up a box (an imaginary box) my character had buried, in which she kept her golden bracelets.

Pat might have had a pair too. We were pretty equal-opportunity.

All that’s left of my very-young make-believe are flashes like that: bracelets. rolling off both sides of a cot to indicate born at the same time (okay, we were weird kids. That surprises whom?). Tiny ball-bearing prisons we pretending to shrink people into.

(My interest in bondage goes back way far, too).

Right, so.

Buried Wonder Woman bracelets.

I really, really, really liked seeing Diana, Princess of Themyscira, bouncing bullets of her bracelets. ​​I have to admit, that might have been my absolutely favorite part of the movie.

It was a fun move, I really enjoyed it, and it was easily the best DC comics movie I have ever seen in the theatre.

That’s daming it with faint praise, but it was fun.

But now I’m thinking about digging in dirt, and make-believe, (And never stopping playing make-believe) and gardening.

Which I did again this weekend, of course. All of our raised beds have now been bolted sufficiently that they will not fall apart this year!

Everything except one last-minute impulse purchase of bok choi is planted.

Well, and the corn seeds and the sunflower seeds….

We’re getting there!

We’ve got some squash planted in mounds, garlic and purple potatoes, asparagus and broccoli and muskmellon in the ground, seeds in pots for habanada and shiso and cilantro…

We’re doing really well, and it’s exciting.

Not quite as exciting as bouncing bullets off of one’s bracelets, but more humanly do-able.

And almost on the level of my make-believe characters who garden, so go me!

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A Random Blog Post

Mar26

So, I tried this, and wrote to the first suggestion I got!

Write about a teacher.

Okay, first, a real teacher. Or a series of them. I don’t remember much about my school teachers, but certain moments stick out. Mr. Lynd, who taught Global Studies, Really Liked Japan. A lot. My 5th grade Social Studies teacher Really Liked Hawaii. A lot. It led to a certain amount of tuning them out, which means I know about the slippers thing for Japan and ah, pineapples for Hawaii. And that’s about it.

Actually, it was really hard to engage in history/world studies classes, and I don’t know why. I’m fascinated by those subjects now – why wasn’t I back then? Then again, I’ve always learned history best when looked at through a lens of fiction…

Real teachers were a long time ago for me. The fictional ones are a bit more recent, but some of them have traits borrowed from various real teachers.

Instructor Pelnyen, in Edally Academy, reminds me a bit of teachers I’ve had who thought I wasn’t living up to my potential. If I took some time to get into Kaatzie’s head, he’d be a lot more like my high school Physics teacher.

Kairos, in Addergoole Year 9, will end up being like my Social Problems professor, Darwin Davis. And as for the rest of them in Addergoole – To be honest, other than Mike, Reid, and Luke, I’m still working on developing personalities for them 6 years later. Pelletier and Valerian suffer the most from this, but many of the others are very thin indeed.

Somehow, the first time I was writing Addergoole, they seemed very secondary to the whole school experience. *cough* I wonder what that says about my IRL teachers?

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