archives

So I was reading some of Wendy Bernard's Knit and Tonic blog archives, and I came across this post. I read the whole post with pleasure, and proceeded to read all of the comments after.

(Oh, yeah, I haven't mentioned yet that I'm one of those people that has to read the post plus all the comments, just as I'm the person who gets the DVD with all the extras and watches all the outtakes and deleted tracks, and not only listens to but actively enjoys the director's commentary.... We'll talk about listening to both the French and English audio tracks on the Wasabi DVD some other time, when I'm discussing Jean Reno, perhaps.)

Anyway, about the post:
First thing, I start hearing this music in my head, this peppy instrumental led by a trumpet that somehow reminds me of The Dating Game. Of course it's Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass, silly. How many times did I wiggle around in the living room to that music? To this day it gives me that warm feeling that you get when you reminisce of happier childhood moments.

Next thing, Wendy talks about her bad-girl friend Raylene and how they pulled their hair over their foreheads, and I think of how I always wanted to do my hair like the two hench-maidens of the Mice, the distaff branch of the Ratz, Harvey Lembeck's 'sickle gang in the Frankie and Annette beach movies. I especially liked Alberta's hairdo, which was a cross between biker-tough and the 18th Century Georgian hairdo Natasha Richardson gave Rosemary Harris in Blow Dry. And Raylene and the Mice remind me of my babysitter Ann Timm, who stole jewelry from my mother and had long conversations about shoplifting with her girlfriend while she was babysitting me (oblivious to the fact that I heard, understood, and registered everything she said). And her the daughter of a cop, too. Tsk, tsk.

Now, Wendy shows us a photo of her daughter's Barbie wearing a chic Koigu suit, lovingly knit by doting mama. (Remind me to insert a photo of the low-rent outfits the action figures in this house are wearing, to point out the drastic difference in style and material.) Très, très haute couture. Barbie in Koigu? I've never even dressed myself in Koigu! It's like my grandmother's cats eating off of Wedgwood saucers.

Then I'm reading the comments section with all these references to my childhood (thanks Elizabeth D. for starting the memory slideshow of all those images in my head!), and (thanks to Mary Lou for the olfactory jump-start) I can smell the smell of Cray-Pas and Dippity-do, and remember the texture of the green goop in the glass jar (firmer than the pink goop). And my mom, my very own Mom, had a genuine Sassoon haircut! I remember a photo of the two of us standing on the flagstone steps of her parents' house with the pansies growing on either side, and Mom in her sleeveless dress and her Sassoon haircut with that one big curl under her left ear. She looked so fantastic in that photo.

This is all about memory: a memory of sounds, of smells, of textures, of places and people long gone, of a photo that I can still see even though I don't have the physical object anymore. While accessing Wendy's archives, I accessed my own. Thank you.