Monday, July 27, 2009

When does it become problematics?

It's a day of remembrance, a day of washing-up memories of the simplest things. Funny how listening to a single piece of music, say, Marvin Gaye's 'What's Goin' On' reminds me of the days of working at the flower market at, like, 2 AM and Ginger, my supervisor, always played the local R&B station. Now it's George Michaels' 'Careless Whisper' and how my prom date and I danced(sort of) to it in 1986. Not "happy" nor "sad" memories, but sweet in the remembering. The Eagles 'Lyin' Eyes' was a song from an album that my mother used to put on(when she was feeling "secular") around the house, mostly on Saturdays, to fuel her cleaning frenzies. Funny how I still smell the Pine sol and hear the vacuum just now. And of course her yelling at us to clean our rooms and put stuff away when we are finished with it. She didn't devote tons of time to cleaning, mostly spastic and periodic, which is just how I am today. She's gone now and if I could just get back one Saturday morning cleaning with her, I would scrub the crap out of every surface just to have her in the same room, even if she were yelling at me. I miss her ginger mullet and need to vocally dominate our behavior as her way of trying to ensure that we turned out OK. She was doing her best, no matter how flawed. And when she played Creedance Clearwater Revival she liked to get us to dance together with her in the living room. The negative emotions and upset that we all lived through has washed away and I can sit with what is good from those days. That ridiculous olive green, heavily textured carpet in the living room was actually a good piece of vintage flooring for dancing on. She used to listen to such a wide variety of music that inspired so many different things for her, from country, to gospel to rock and roll, often would put on something unexpected to inspire something which we, as children, couldn't conceive of nor understand but were paramount to the moment for her. I often find myself doing such things too that inspire good feelings, rich and pure and quiet and personal. Things that I can write down, but to speak of these moment-by-moment reminding would be sort of boring, or hard to explain to others. I am awash in good feelings, fueled by coffee with hazelnut and good music. David Sedaris writes like I think. I enjoy reading his missives because I can clearly see the minutiae of the moment and know it is how my mind runs along around small things.

1 comment: