Archive for February 16th, 2010

Don McLean sang, in American Pie,

A long, long time ago…

I can still remember how the music used to make me smile

and I knew, if I had my chance

That I could make those people dance

and maybe they’d be happy, for awhile

I won’t put all the lyrics here, though they are definitely worth it. Ah, lost innocence, the end of an age – we all get there, a day when the ideas of childhood are not lost, but put behind, perhaps even buried – like in the song The Long Ride Home:

Someone dug a hole six long feet in the ground

I said goodbye to you and I threw my roses down

That song is about burying one’s spouse, but the sentiment is similar: sometimes we lose things while still trying to cling to them, sometimes they fly off on their own, and sometimes one makes the calculated and often bitter decision to leave them behind.

I love the words “a long long time ago, I can still remember.” We all have memories that seem like yesterday, yet a million miles away. What comes to mind when I think of “a long, long time ago?”

Well, lunchtimes around the table in Toronto, eating tomato soup, cheese, and apple slices while my mom read Garrison Keillor’s poems to  us. We had finished much of our schoolwork, likely – a Saxon math lesson, a journal entry, likely some grammar and handwriting. Soon, we would go outside to play – perhaps digging a huge hole that we planned would turn into an underground home, or trotting Playmobil guys around, giving them names like Iguanadon Poster, Mr. and Mrs Rich, Indiana Jones, TTC Man (and family). If it was warm, we might pedal around the yard on our three wheelers, playing a ridiculous game called “street sweepers.” Or, we might play “King” or “Recruit,” both based on the premise of one child being in charge and ordering everyone else around (the former involving appropriation of  various goods, the latter mostly just marching around the yard).

In a while, we would go inside for an hour of reading, then maybe practice our instruments. At 4pm, when the schools were letting out, our little homeschool would similary let out for the day, and I might go out into the neighborhood to see a friend – perhaps the one with the carpenter father and a crazy Jack Rusell named, of course, ‘Jack.’ I might take a trip down to the convenience store, known for its large “Special K” sign. Some weeks, my sister and I would walk down to St. Claire West, get on the streetcar, and go to swimming lessons at the local rec center – once, coming back, I realized my hair was freezing, breaking off if I touched it, and I ran home and sat my head down in front of one of the heater vents for a long time.

There is music, too, a “long long time ago;” songs like American Pie, or the Beatles. Operas, occasionally. The Rolling Stones. Movies, also – we used to watch one a week, Saturday night. Old Japanese Godzilla films were a favorite. We made pizza on Saturdays, too, just like today. Some Saturday mornings we would get on bikes, ride across town to the best bagel shop, and bring home a baker’s dozen for “big breakfast.” Tall glasses of orange juice, scrambled eggs cooked slow by my stepfather. Some Saturdays we would go even farther, taking our bikes on the streetcar to the subway to a bus and out into the country, where we would ride out to the stable. I rode Penny, a impetuous and quite green pony. The house at the stable was the one Anne of Green Gables was filmed at; it was very pretty.

Sundays saw us again on the streetcar to the subway, going downtown to church. There is a picture, somewhere, after a snow of several feet: all of us, in a row, making a path down the street on the way to church. I had a long pink coat in the picture – I have a vague memory of sneaking a guinea pig onto the subway while wearing that coat. I also used to carry one of my pets in a fleece jacket.

Speaking of pets, this was the time when Achilles showed up, a skinny little puppy from a breeder in the suburbs, who grew up with me; I would walk him (not often enough). We took him camping, and even trained him to sit still in a canoe.

These things are gone; I didn’t even have a chance to say goodbye. But, I still have the music, and the memory. In Gone with the Wind, Ashley says he thought over his favorite memories so many times, they became threadbare – perhaps as we get further away, the images do get blurry. Glossing over the bad parts, and feeling bittersweet as the the visceral feeling of being younger, and knowing nothing of so much we now know; living in a different world, though in the same body?…well, that will always be.