The longest history (part 1)
If a person were to ask what I liked to eat as a child, my favorite meal and all, I might say tuna fish, only because Mother made it for lunch a lot, on a bakery roll white-edged, easily flattened and sprung back in 5 seconds. Everyone knows how the mayonnaised liquid, coddled in the center portion of the tinfoil bundle for a while, slowly saturates the roll, and eating it, finally, is sweetly soggy, white juice dribbling over your knuckles, the essence of motherly protection.
Strange, I don’t remember where I kept my sandwich until lunchtime. We had no fridge in the classrooms, it must have resided in my overlarge knapsack till 12 each day. Smelling like apple, ah yes. The ones I’d never eat at recess and we’d find it, stinking brown lumps in our bags, halfway through summer vacation.
The tuna juice and the arpeggiated classical guitar. Mother and Father respectively, and their unique markers for instantaneous, though increasingly faded, recall of occasional childhood securities. With father it was a matter of bright obedience to sit at his feet and watch the blurred strumming, his head thrown back a bit while his mouth opened to sing, looking almost but not quite like a spread smile or teeth-showing. I was also mesmerized, so I sat for longer than I could, compelled by a sense of binding urgency, unless I pressed all five of his strings fretboard-wise to prevent the tone from coming out. I giggled madly, which I am as likely to do at 30 as I was at 10.
Now I’m reminded of the bus in the morning, running for it out of breath, my boulder knapsack bounding heavily on my shoulders, hoping the cousin would not be there in a seat by the window, leaning towards the aisle with brickwall breath and a caricaturized pleading eyebrow set. She was my first bug that I trapped in a cup and watched die. There have been others since.
Strange, I don’t remember where I kept my sandwich until lunchtime. We had no fridge in the classrooms, it must have resided in my overlarge knapsack till 12 each day. Smelling like apple, ah yes. The ones I’d never eat at recess and we’d find it, stinking brown lumps in our bags, halfway through summer vacation.
The tuna juice and the arpeggiated classical guitar. Mother and Father respectively, and their unique markers for instantaneous, though increasingly faded, recall of occasional childhood securities. With father it was a matter of bright obedience to sit at his feet and watch the blurred strumming, his head thrown back a bit while his mouth opened to sing, looking almost but not quite like a spread smile or teeth-showing. I was also mesmerized, so I sat for longer than I could, compelled by a sense of binding urgency, unless I pressed all five of his strings fretboard-wise to prevent the tone from coming out. I giggled madly, which I am as likely to do at 30 as I was at 10.
Now I’m reminded of the bus in the morning, running for it out of breath, my boulder knapsack bounding heavily on my shoulders, hoping the cousin would not be there in a seat by the window, leaning towards the aisle with brickwall breath and a caricaturized pleading eyebrow set. She was my first bug that I trapped in a cup and watched die. There have been others since.