My son the Rugby Player

My son the Photographer

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My Edison Park August

The dog days of summer

 It brings sweet memories of riding my bike up and down the hills formed by new construction at Peewee Park. I can smell the hot tar being poured into the cracks of the street outside my home. I remember standing with my eyes closed awaiting a cool breeze to hit before a storm and the smell of oncoming rain that would permeate the the air.  The grass was crisp and, when mowed with the push mower, gave off a perfume that could lull me to sleep. I spent endless days doing nothing and imagining everything. I spent those endless days of August longing for the first day of school… my youth in Edison park.

   The busy days of summer were over.  YMCA Camp or, in my earlier years, the day camp at the public school called "Social Center" were only memories.  While friends were on vacation I would sometimes spend my days reading, lying on my bed watching my violet flowered curtains blow in the breeze.  And there was the day dreaming, always the day dreaming.  I was a dreamer in every way.

The trip to 6 corners for my new school clothes would happen every august.  This was always so much fun in my earlier years until somewhere around 6-7^th grade my taste in clothes took a definite turn to the left from my mom’s taste.  There was joy, argument, tears.  I remember the sales ladies intervening, giving advice to both my mom and to me, to find a medium ground.  I can’t imagine that happening today.  But my Mom would listen to them, after all they are the fashion experts and I would listen to them, after all, weren’t they really on my side? And eventually, at the end of the day, I had a working wardrobe for my first day of school …This all happened at Sears.  Then there was the trip to the store for school supplies.  I loved crisp white paper and unsharpened pencils and new pens just waiting to be used.    Not to mention the lunch boxes.

Labor Day weekend was the last hurrah.  I thought the day after labor day was the beginning of fall.  I hated those 90 degree autumn days. The dog days of summer..always waiting for the next season, always waiting.

Deep thoughts for a bright June day

Just read an article about the lack of spirituality of our country. So sad, it is so satisfying to lose yourself to spirituality now and then.  It helps you find your center, your purpose in life.

The way I see it, humankind will always form religious groups.  We are tied together by certain belief systems.  We believe in Jesus as our savior, we believe in not eating meat, we believe in Allah as the one true God, we believe in a homosexual lifestyle, we believe in the power of mother earth, be believe in saving the earth. 

What if the religion that we practice today grew out of people who held certain beliefs to be true, who banded together and made rules and laws to preserve the lifestyle that they had, and as we progressed  towards a more complicated belief system they made up of rules and laws to maintain the status quo.  Maybe the future will bring us new religions based on the wants and needs of the individuals of this century.

Just syain’

May 2012

Typical snow day on Myrtle Avenue

Life keeps moving on

I received some bad news today.  The toughest dancing partner in my world passed away.  This was no old boyfriend or some past dance instructor but merely the father of some kids from the neighborhood that raised me.  

It was at someone’s wedding in 1979-1980.  I thought I was the quintessential Donna Summer dancing queen and had been such for half a decade until I danced with Michele and Mary’s Dad, Harry.  Little did I know that Harry really did know how to “cut a rug” and my smoking habit made me lose steam about half way through the dance.  Harry laughed at me and I felt squarely put in my place.  So much for my ever dancing again, at least with men who came into maturity in the 50’s.

When I called Barb, Harry’s wife, today I did so with dread, just knowing that the news would be bad.   After Barb related to me that Harry had died of a massive heart attack we began to talk.  Barb and Harry Tadda were wonderful to me as I was growing up.  Barb got me my first job as a swim instructor at the local YMCA and then later as a camp counselor.  We chit chatted about the wonderful neighborhood that raised us all. We talked about all those who have gone. About Ryan, the Kluth’s, the Mulvey’s, the Jones's, the Pearson’s, the Kolbus’s, the Thompsons, the Marshalls and so many who called the 2 blocks on Myrtle Avenue from Oriole to Talcott their home. We are really strangers now as our lives all moved on, as lives tend to do.  Strangers, but we are tied to one small street and a common history.

So in honor of Harry Tadda who died May 18 2012 a song of tribute as written by the kids on Myrtle so long ago, to the tune of  Ta-Ra-Ra Boom-de-ay!

“We live on Myrtle Street

We think we’re pretty neat.

 Come on and smell our feet

We think they’re really neat.”

Restless

I am in an odd predicament.  I am too old to do Rio at Carnival, too young to be on a sightseeing bus, too timid to zip line and para-sail, to active to sit on a beach.  Limbo.  When did it begin? What do I do while I here?  I have already done so much.  I have marched arm in arm with fellow students singing Yankee Doodle Dandy on Red Square, I have laid on my back beneath a sail on the open sea and gazed upon the stars, I have touched all 4 corners of our country, lived on an island, canoed, backpacked, showed my children 45 of the 50 states and spent wonderful weekends with my husband in just about every romantic place within driving distance of our home.   And yet I am still restless but I don't know what to do next.  It really is an odd feeling.  I think perhaps I will garden.

Sadness

As I told my second cousin Nancy of the death of my cousin Steve I realized that to her Steve is still Max’s son, as in Max’s son died. He lost his beautiful wife Donna just 3 weeks before.  She was a good friend and a kind soul. Extended family is like the universe, it just keeps growing further and further apart.