George Dawson's childhood

My brother told me this evening that a childhood friend, Pete, was coming to Louisville this summer for a visit. I have not seen Pete since about 1960. I reflected on him and wrote the following:

Funny thing about Pete; he liked his cereal soggy. He lived with his grandmother on the other side of the alley. He would come to our house each night and pour a bowl of his favorite cereal, wheaties, add sugar and milk and then place it in the refrigerator, and then leave. Early the next morning he would march right in, drag out the bowl and plop down at the breakfast table and dig into the goo.

I don’t recall why he did this but we never thought about it. We three boys had our own peculiariarities. Joe could not stand paper napkins; I could not drink a glass of milk with even a drop of water in it and Bruce -- heck forget Bruce because he was 7 years younger than I and it didn’t matter what he did.

Anyway we knew Pete’s grandmother gave him plenty to eat so needing food was not why he bothered to come 50 yards or so in the dark to make this culinary creation. Anyway she would not let him make this brown sludge mix. Perhaps there was not enough room in the refrigerator. Those old Frigidaires always looked like they could hold a lot but they couldn’t. The insulation was poor. So the company put a lot of fluff in the walls making the insides small. I guess there was no room for the bowl of swamp looking cereal that was too gross to share space with real food. I bet she wouldn’t let it sit in her cooler as something might spontaneously generate overnight.

Whatever the reason Pete was like a fourth boy in the family if only for breakfast.

Such was life at the corner of Taylor and Thornberry in the 40’s.

The Hug

The Hug

The goodnight hug is still there. The kisses, the lap-sitting, the bath-giving, the carrying-when-too-tired are all gone, only memories now. But, thankfully, the goodnight hug still perseveres. I don’t see my son all that often—haven’t for years—so physically touching him is now rare and special, not just because he’s not near, but also because he’s a grown man. Grown men don’t sit in their Mommy’s lap, and they don’t tell her “I don’t think I can go to college, Mommy, ‘cause I don’t want to leave you”, and they don’t sit squeezed up beside their Mommy, plastered to her leg and side. But I still get the goodnight hug every night when he’s home. And no matter how the day has been—laughter or tears, smiles or frowns, angry words or loving words, there’s always that hug at the end of the day. It’s so precious, so wonderful, so much an expression of Mother-Son love.

Knees

Knees

You don’t hear much about knock-knees any more. But when I was growing up, the status of one’s knees, especially if you were a girl, was very important. There were three categories of legs—knock-kneed, bowlegged, and great legs. I tended more toward the knock-kneed, where my cousin Carolyn, who had a knock-out face and boobs was, regrettably, bowlegged. My sister had great legs, although she didn’t have the knock-out fact and boobs.

I don’t know why we paid so much attention to knees. Maybe because what we called Bermuda shorts had just come in to style and so for eleven months of the year in South Florida, we all wore Bermuda shorts when we weren’t in school. That’s a lot of exposed knees. And not much else on the body to look at, as exposed midriffs were decades away and only loose women wore plunging necklines.

The other way to have ugly knees besides knock-knees was to have knobby knees. Boys usually had knobbier knees than girls, but on them somehow it looked strong and athletic. On girls like me, it just made me look even skinnier. And skinny was not yet “in”, as this was the era of voluptuousness with Marilyn Monroe and Ava Gardner. Twiggy, with her skinny knobby knock-knees hadn’t even been born yet.

But it just goes to show that what’s in today will be out tomorrow and vice versa. Which is why I’m holding on to my pot belly.

Where is the Joy?

Where is the Joy?

Where is the joy? my acupuncturist asked me. There isn’t much joy, I said. He stood by my side looking out the window, his hand on my arm, thinking about my recalcitrant blood pressure. There’s more to health than just handling stress or getting past the sorrow, he said. Think about how to get some color and music out of life.

This must be why it’s called holistic medicine. It isn’t just needles and herbs, it’s life lessons as well.

So, I’ve been practicing joy. Or, rather, I’ve been trying to notice the joy when it occurs and not let the precious moments slide past unnoticed and unappreciated.

Moments like when the synagogue choir of very amateur singers that I play piano for finally gets all the notes right in the new song and their harmony clicks in and you can hear the beauty.

Like when Sid, the white cat who has been so sick and cost me so much money stays in my lap after I have poked the prednisone down his throat and pushes his head under my upper arm and quietly purrs.

Like when Jonathan shows up unexpectedly and his face lights up when he comes through the door.

When Brad, the 80-something year old neighbor comes to the door to invite me to pick lettuce in his garden.

When I remember going to the beach as a child and Daddy would let me ride on his broad back while he dog-paddled in the waves.

The taste of Mama’s roast beef sandwiches she’d make for the car trips to Orlando to visit Grandmother and Granddaddy.

The ferry ride from Galveston Island to High Island, with porpoises riding the bow wake and white pelicans cruising overhead.

The smell of mullet frying in the kitchen in Fort Pierce.

The view of dogwoods from my bedroom window in Pfafftown.

The whole entire trip to the Netherlands in 1974.

The moment Jonathan was born.



I was wrong. There’s a lot of joy. I just temporarily forgot it.