When Melanie was a little girl, she bought a coloring book expressly because of the picture of a stork that it contained. When she saw the drawing of the stork, Melanie thought to herself that it would look very beautiful if it were glossy and black, and so she bought the book and went home to color the stork with wax crayons. Well, you know what generally happens when you press very very hard on a wax crayon to produce a glossy effect (especially if you are very excited and eager to see a shiny black stork). But as she worked and worked on the picture, the stork came to look less and less like her imagined ideal and more like a mess till finally she grew so angry that she took her black crayon and drew a big black ‘X’ across the entire page. From that day forth Melanie (and I) came to speak of ’storking’ something when our ambitions exceeded our capacity and we got so furious that we felt driven to mutilate our work beyond redemption.
Sheila Ryan
Cross-posted at remembery and clusterflock.
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Remembery’s Rick Neece posted a charming photograph of a Christmas tree ornament at clusterflock, and the sight sparked a remembery of my own favorite childhood ornament, “Two-Star Hennessy”. Two-Star Hennessy was a golden ball figured with two glittering pink stars, one centered in each hemisphere. (Its name, bestowed by my father, referred to Hennessy cognac; two stars perhaps designated V.S.)
I must have been four (perhaps I was five) when Two-Star Hennessy’s spell so enchanted me that I hooked it over my ear (to this day I love big dramatic earrings) and whirled about the living room in a dizzy waltz.
And shattered Two-Star Hennessy.
I felt as though a shard of rose-gold glass had pierced my heart.
But you know what? Come next Christmas (or maybe it was that very same Yule), another Two-Star Hennessy appeared on our tree. Thus did I learn of mass production, and with that knowledge came a slight but perceptible rift between my household world and the realm of enchantment.
(Cross-posted at Remembery)
Sheila Ryan
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Baby’s First Memory? Clambering into her slatted Junior Bed (a step up from the Crib in sophisticated styling) and sucking on a sugar cube (one of two), a customary treat courtesy of staff at The Torch of Acropolis, a Greek restaurant her parents frequented.
But when – and how? – did she assign the designation First Memory to a mental event, an association of sugar cube and Junior Bed? She was four years old, perhaps, or five (no more) when the scene reconstituted itself unbidden on her mental stage with such force that she said to herself, “That is My Earliest Memory,” then wondered, “Did I know how to talk then?” and asked herself, “Where has that Memory lived until now?” (She was a precocious and introspective child, inclined to converse with herself.)
Then she considered how it came to pass that she recalled the source of the sugar cube – The Torch of Acropolis, its waiters. Surely her memory of The Torch sprang from a later time – or might it have been an earlier?
And so she formed the habit of lying awake at night and contemplating the past.
(Cross-posted at Remembery)
Sheila Ryan
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