{this moment} 109

{this moment} is a Monday ritual that my father started in May 2011, and that I have maintained since May 2014. He described it as "A single image - no words - capturing a moment from the past. A simple moment along my life's Journey - but one over which I wish to linger and savor each treasured aspect of the memories it evokes." When he passed away in February 2014, he left a folder containing images that he hoped to share in the months and years ahead. For some, I share my perspective of the story behind the moment on Thursdays, in a companion ritual called {this memory}. For others, the story is lost in the ocean of time, but I welcome flights of imagination and speculation from readers.

A high school play, perhaps?

{this moment} was adapted from cath's wonderful blog ~just my thoughts. She, in turn, borrowed it from Pamanner's Blog. My dad suggested, "Check out their blogs, and if you're inspired to do the same, leave a link to your {this moment} in the comments for each of us to find and see. If you are moved or intrigued by my {this moment}, please leave a comment." I encourage the same.

AECB

(this memory: then and now} 2

This is the story behind last Monday's this moment.



The man pictured above ready to jump into an enticing swimming hole, in a really ridiculously awesome bathing suit, is my paternal grandfather, Brownie. The picture is undated, but he looks young, perhaps even younger than he was when he met and married my grandmother in 1942, when he was in his early 30s.



This picture of his son, my father, is also undated, but I'd guess it was taken at least 50 years later, around 1990. The swimming pool - and giant inflatable killer whale - belonged to my cousins (my mother's brother), who lived about a mile down the road from us. My dad looks like he's making a lap around the outside of the pool, which was usually how the adults (larger size being a must) got a good whirlpool started. Ideally, the child-sized among us were just along for the ride - particularly, the excitement of "swimming against the current" and getting sucked into the middle of the pool.

Good times, happy memories.

~AECB

An American girl in Europe, part 1

Recently, whilst packing for our move, I came across the bright pink spiral notebook I kept as a journal for part of a summer trip to Europe when I was nine. It was not our first family trip abroad, but it was the first trip we had taken outside of Italy...which may explain why I didn't start writing until we were leaving Torre di Passeri and heading to Paris. 

Let's recap the highlights of Perugia, Paris, and London from the elementary school perspective:

August 9, 1991

(1) "I saw St. Francis' tomb" does no justice to the level of confusion I remember. Particularly since I remember it being massively packed and chaotic with pilgrims, and that only my father and I went down to the tomb itself - my sister and mother stayed behind. It's one of many times as a child that I felt quite suffocated by the number of much taller adults surrounding me and intruding into my airspace...does everyone feel like that as a child?

For at least a year afterwards, I thought that Jesus was buried in the basement of our local church. I mean, why not? 

(2) I appreciate my parents' apparent honesty in teaching twentieth century history: "...we went to a church on top of a mountain. Some of the things in it were over 1000 years old. It was rebuilt 4 times. One time was from an earthquake, and the other times, America bombed it."

(3) My religious education was fuzzier: "There was a church from before Christ just up the street from where we were staying." To be fair, the foundations of the church were in fact built on a pre-Christian Roman temple, and my upbringing was sufficiently ecumenical that I would not have distinguished between the type of worship going on in a structure before calling it a church. 

(4) Oh by the way, that sleeping car? Did. Not. Have. Air-conditioning. Lord, it was hot. And loud, once we opened the window to survive the heat. My parents, the academics, when explaining that we gave up A/C to take a more scenic route through the Alps failed to mention that we would be passing through the Alps at 2 o'clock in the morning. 

I really love trains, and sleeper cars in particular, in fact. Many years later, when I was living in Copenhagen, I took a train to Milan to visit our friend Tonia. I was gleeful to discover I had my own sleeper car, and that it was far more modern with a window curving around the top of the train that allowed me to lie on my bed and stare at the stars. 

And it was air-conditioned.

August 10, 1991 (my dad's birthday)

(5) I will pause to note that I occasionally spelled "tomorrow" with two m's, but I got "Louvre" right every damn time.

August 11, 1991

(6) And by "breakfast was horrible," it's likely what I really mean is "they refused to serve me chocolate mousse for breakfast."

I am starting to question the veracity of my journal: I left out the part where, upon viewing the Mona Lisa, I said, "But it's so small! And not pretty." (I said the same thing - minus the pretty part - when I saw the David for the first time at the age of 13.) I made my reputation as an irritatingly small art critic with the brilliant realization that a sculpture's fame could be measured in the number of body parts lost over the years. (The Winged Victory of Samothrace and Venus De Milo are probably the "2 famous statues" mentioned.)

(7) Fun with historical simplifications: "The Louvre was once a place where kings lived. Then, during the French Revolution, they decided not to have a king."

(8) Although I mention the "beautiful fountain", I seem to have left out my most vivid memory, which is that children were swimming in the fountains. Sadly, my parents did not appreciate how awesomely fun that looked. Some day, I will let my son swim in a fountain. A clean one.

August 12, 1991

(9) "There was a restaurant I wanted to eat in, but we didn't." And thus I learned what a Michelin star was...

August 13, 1991

(10) I didn't yet know how to drive...is the only logical explanation for why I was surprised that the drive would sit on the right side of the car when driving on the left side of the road.

August 14, 1991

August 15, 1991

(11) "I stood half in the east side and half in the west." I remember clearly my dad convincing me that this was an essential thing I needed to do. (A year earlier, he tried to convince that I absolutely needed to stand inside a cell at Alcatraz and I said, hell no. Or whatever eight-year-olds say when they mean, Hell no, do I look that stupid?)

(12) This was my first visit to a Hard Rock Café, and my father hadn't yet adopted them as a hobby. Little did I know I'd someday visit dozens of them. And with time, I eventually stopped wearing huge sunglasses and scarves for fear that someone might recognize me at the Hard Rock Café in Berlin and started appreciating that their spicy mac and cheese is actually pretty good.

August 16, 1991

(13) Good Lord, it's like they fed us nothing but croissants and chocolate mousse for a month. 

(14) "We ate lunch in a cafeteria-like place [at the British Museum]. It was awful."

Not for nothing did my parents joke that I ordered from menus by covering up the names of the entrées and looking for the highest number on the page.

(15) For reasons unknown to my adult self, I collected commemorative pill boxes as a child. Do tourist shops still sell those?

To be continued...

{this moment: then and now} 2

{this moment} is a Monday ritual that my father started in May 2011, and that I have maintained since May 2014. He described it as "A single image - no words - capturing a moment from the past..."

{then and now} is a twist on that ritual. People often ask me if my son looks like his father, because he is blonde and blue-eyed, while I am dark-haired and dark-eyed. In fact, aside from those features, we are very much alike in looks (and, for better and worse, personality). Even more so, my son strikingly resembles my father as a young child. He has the exact same shade of steel blue-gray eyes that his grandfather had. Every so often, I stumble across a photo of myself as a child that seems like an echo of one I know I've taken of my son. {then and now} is a space to revel in the sometimes surreal elements of the passage of time.

{this moment} was adapted from cath's wonderful blog ~just my thoughts. She, in turn, borrowed it from Pamanner's Blog. My dad suggested, "Check out their blogs, and if you're inspired to do the same, leave a link to your {this moment} in the comments for each of us to find and see. If you are moved or intrigued by my {this moment}, please leave a comment." I encourage the same.

~AECB

Virginia Magazine: In Memoriam

I Like Paint

Finn Thomas Brown

American, 2012-

I Like Paint, 2014

Tempera on construction paper

No. 1 in the series More Is Better

Still life

Dinner whilst packing and preparing academic talks to give during job interviews this week:

Ommegang Three Philosophers, manchego, sesame crackers, La Quercia prosciutto, kalamata olives and Brie. 

A tree grows in Machu Picchu

This always reminded me of the White Tree of Gondor in The Lord of the Rings.

Machu Picchu, Perú

July 2004

Moving confessions

Sorry, patient readers, I have just a few weeks left here in Colorado and so things are a bit chaotic.

Moving confessions...

1. A couple years ago, I found a shoe box labelled "Cables and Cords." It was securely duct-taped closed, and I had every reason to suspect it had been sealed for at least three years (since leaving Philly) and possible six (a fair bit of my stuff went into boxes when I moved to the UK in 2006, never to be needed again).

I actually opened it and failed to recognize most of the items but didn't throw it out two years ago. Do I pack it now or bid adieu to the mystery cords whose associated objects apparently run on rainwater and daydreams?

2. I think it might be time to donate my collection of semi-disposable third-world cell phones. Possibly to a museum. The last time I traveled to the majority of these places, I sucked it up and paid AT&T for some level of service on my iPhone.

Along the same lines... I found an early-generation iPod (c. 2003) that my sister lent me when I dropped mine from the elliptical one time too many. I gave it back to her as a keepsake because the back had an engraved message from my dad - and because her kids are going to find it freakin' hilarious. Touch wheel? Is that like a rotary phone? 

3. Nothing gives me joy like taking a box of stuff I really never needed to Goodwill. However, Finn caught me giving away a pair of yellow pajamas (the top was a onesie and he is old enough that diaper-area snaps are pointless and annoying). He clung to the bottoms until I finally promised that I would put them back in his dresser...but I smuggled the top out of his room and back into the Goodwill box.

Incidentally, he also tried to rescue an old bottle brush from the trash and an egg carton from the recycling bin. 

3. My most intractable dilemma by far has been trying to choose which items should not go with the movers and be in storage. I've moved three times before with professional movers and I've used storage twice, all without any problems. However, every time I was also driving my car to my next destination, and so I transported important documents, photos, artwork, favorite and essential clothes, my great-grandmother's china and other irreplaceable sentimental and valuable items myself.

This time, we have decided that since 1) the drive is quite long, 2) Finn hates riding in the car, and 3) I plan to sell my car and lease a new one soon anyway, I will dispose of my car beforehand and we will fly back in New York. So on my last two trips to the Northeast, I dropped off large quantities of clothing and shoes, on the penultimate and final trips, I'm planning to bring more sentimental items (and clothes too, of course).

These are the two problems with that plan. One, I trust the airlines no more than I trust the movers. To be fair, they've never permanently lost my stuff, although they did shatter the wooden frame of one suitcase and also provided me with the opportunity to 1) show up for work in a foreign country wearing jeans without underwear and 2) get my credit card frozen by fraud alert for trying to buy suitable job interview clothes from a Houston Target at midnight.

Two, I have a lot more sentimental stuff than I can carry....even excluding the things that are clearly too large (boxes of china, canvas paintings).

A few of the decisions I've made myself crazy over...

4. A can of Mace. Yes, you read that right. Mitch (best described as my ex-stepfather-in-law, if any of the involved parties had been matrimonially inclined) gave it to me several years ago and, while I've thankfully never had cause to even consider using it, it truly was the thought that counted.

However, it's definitely on the hells-no list from the moving company. Rather than toss it (probably also illegal?), I think I may re-gift to someone I care about.

5. My beloved books. I shipped somewhere between 30 and 40 boxes of books from Philadelphia to Denver. I've managed to part with about half, keeping only those that I truly plan to re-read or passionately hope Finn will discover one day. Of the remaining half, probably about a quarter have some personal significance. Some of these include books like Neil Gaiman's The Graveyard Book, which I read over and over again at my dad's bedside five years ago. I had taken to writing the date and location of my first reading in the covers.

But finally, I conceded defeat. A handful of books that contain personal inscriptions or are no longer in print and expensive or difficult to obtain secondhand (namely, Machu Picchu, photographs with poems by Pablo Neruda) will be carried back in New York in my backpack. Journey from the Dawn, a child's introduction to early human ancestors, signed by Donald Johanson when my dad took 10-year-old me to hear him speak, also made the cut. My well-worn, beloved copy of the Williams-Sonoma Complete Entertaining Cookbook - which my parents helpfully gave me as I went off to college and is currently one cent used on Amazon.com - did not make the cut. I hope y'all are laughing by now, but it's no joke - I love that cookbook.

6. A hefty box of cards from birthday, holidays and other occasions. I pondered whether to sort out the ones my dad sent to me. And then I thought - what about everyone else? They matter too, and I have no idea whether I'll get another card from someone or now. Such is life, right? Finally, I chose a few pretty ones from the top and acknowledged to myself that his writing on this site and elsewhere is of much greater value to me, and to Finn someday, than his squiggly signature on a greeting card.

My beloved Berber carpet, in Philadelphia, 2008

I've already selected my absolute favorites of Finn's baby clothes to carry back in my suitcase and accepted that several beloved but, um, large items - like a painting I hauled back from Cusco, and a huge antique Berber carpet from Fez - the dealer tried to throw in his son's hand in marriage, a new twist on a dowry - must be entrusted to the care of the movers. A few small things made it into the padded lining of Finn's diaper bag to carry on the plane. Among them: a beautiful pair of fur-lined leather gloves that originally belonged to my dad and that I hope Finn can wear someday; an abstract interpretation of the Hawaiian goddess Pele that I bought in an art gallery near Kilauea when I was 16 (and took to the collegiate show-and-tell that served as my first-year dorm's first icebreaker); and the little brass alarm clock that I won in second grade for reading more minutes per day than anyone else in the school.

Finn was fascinated by this last object, and that caused me to dwell on why I've kept it so long, and how it had migrated from New York to Virginia to Copenhagen to Atlanta to Oxford (via Memphis, briefly) to Atlanta again to Philadelphia (via Guatemala) to Denver...

Oddly enough, I remember clearly certain parts of the night that I won it. The boy next to me in the audience asked to hold it. I said "no" - for no particular reason - and he said, "But my dad paid for it." Ha! It's funny now. At the time, I think I was embarrassed by my own unkind behavior. The embarrassment spilled over into the award itself, and for many, many years, I didn't think I deserved it. I hadn't been particularly accurate in recording my reading times, and I worried that I had somehow cheated. I realize now - ah, hindsight - that I read so much and so constantly that it is neither surprising that I couldn't keep track nor that I would actually have read more than anyone else. Even at age seven, I read past midnight some nights. I read under the table at dinner and under my desks during dull lessons.

In some ways, not much has changed...except perhaps that iPhones and Kindle apps have made it a bit easier. As a senior pediatric resident, I read the Hunger Games trilogy on my phone during particularly slow deliveries (pediatricians are called in advance for a variety of potential problems, such as meconium staining or IV narcotics).

But back to the moving issues...what do I do with Finn's framed casts of his 3-month-old hand and foot? I have to find a way to fit them in my suitcase, don't I? 

{this moment} 108

{this moment} is a Monday ritual that my father started in May 2011, and that I have maintained since May 2014. He described it as "A single image - no words - capturing a moment from the past. A simple moment along my life's Journey - but one over which I wish to linger and savor each treasured aspect of the memories it evokes." When he passed away in February 2014, he left a folder containing images that he hoped to share in the months and years ahead. For some, I share my perspective of the story behind the moment on Thursdays, in a companion ritual called {this memory}. For others, the story is lost in the ocean of time, but I welcome flights of imagination and speculation from readers.

{this moment} was adapted from cath's wonderful blog ~just my thoughts. She, in turn, borrowed it from Pamanner's Blog. My dad suggested, "Check out their blogs, and if you're inspired to do the same, leave a link to your {this moment} in the comments for each of us to find and see. If you are moved or intrigued by my {this moment}, please leave a comment." I encourage the same.

AECB

ww

Wander.

Wonder.