Imagine yourself hovering...

Peggy’s prompt—imagine yourself hovering—35 minutes—011811




Just imagine yourself hovering over a scene from your childhood---perhaps your family at the dinner table. Who do you see most clearly? Yourself, or someone else? In my case, I can hardly see myself at all. I see, first of all, my Daddy, who sat next to me on the long side of the table, where I sat at the foot of the table. Then I see my Mama, sitting across from me at the head of the table. Then, comes into view my sister Mary, sitting next to Daddy, and catty-corner to Mama. It sounds spread out, but really it was very close quarters, as one side of the table was pushed up next to the wall under the kitchen window. I remember a lot about those supper times, but not so much about any one in particular.

I remember that my Mama and Daddy usually did most of the talking, when there was talking. Sometimes we ate in virtual silence, if Mama was mad at Daddy, usually for staying out late drinking with his buddies. But most of my memories involve talking. Daddy would reminisce a lot about when he was a kid growing up in pioneer times in Fort Pierce, Florida. Mama would tell about her childhood on various farms, and about her grandmother (Grandma Minnie) and the summer visits they made to her house. I heard so many stories, sometimes repeated many times over the years, about Frank Parks, the iceman, and Theo Davis, a fisherman, and Terrell Hayes, a fisherman Daddy admired mightily, and Aida Wooley, an Italian woman who married my father’s cousin, and Heavy Root, who was somebody—I forget who. And the relatives, Uncle Berry, Pa’s brother, and Aunt Lee, Grandmother Roberts’ sister, and Uncle Olin and Aunt Bonnie, Grandmother Hunter’s brother and sister. And my mother’s sisters Martha and Betty, and her brother William and his wife Olive, who was red-haired until she was about 80 (when she suddenly became white-haired) and was older than William. And my father’s seven brothers and sisters, whom my mother would list in order—Joe (my father), Bob, Lorena, Libby, Mabel, Hazel, Curtis, and Lloyd. And Daddy would mention Johnny Johanson, who was Scandinavian, along with several other local fisherman. How they got from Scandinavia to south Florida I never heard. And Marcelle, a French woman who married an American GI during WWII in order to get to the USA, and then divorced him and married my father’s friend John Stenroos. She owned a restaurant near the Indian River when I was a girl. And Mr. and Mrs. Simonsen, who were from Michigan or Minnesota, and who went back home every summer and brought back canned fish from the Great Lakes that they shared with my folks. The Simonsens owned a restaurant next door to the fish house that my father was a member of during my childhood years, and they used to buy pompano and kingfish from my father when he caught them.

My mother would talk about the Longs, Sammy and Elizabeth. He was a farmer who had struck it big several times in his life, followed by bankruptcy, His daughter Alberta was married to Dick Innis, and the two of them were perhaps my parents’ best out-of-town friends. They used to come visit us every year or so, and go charter fishing and bring the fish and shrimp and oysters home for my mother to cook. They were much more outrageous than my folks, and swore a lot, and told off-color jokes (which my sister and I could never hear the punch line to, as they always lowered their voices to say the last line.)

I have really good memories of those dinner times. I probably would have hardly known my father  at all if we hadn’t had those sit-down suppers every night. Not all of them were memorable, or even pleasant, but the overall effect on me was awareness of my father and his family and background, and wonder at his interaction with my mother. I’m glad I didn’t miss out on those family suppers, and that I can go back in my mind and hover over that table again anytime I want to.