When I was in third grade my parents were part of a bowling league. Every Thursday they'd leave the house at 5:30, have dinner out with the other people on their team, and then bowl from 7 to 9. My mother's parents (Nan and Pop) would already be there when I got home from school at 4:30. I'd play games with Nan or listen to Pop tell stories until my parents left and then it was homework time. I still don't completely know my times tables because all it took was a cute pout and they'd tell me the answers instead of helping me get them myself. At bedtime, Nan would come upstairs with me, wind up one of my music boxes and sing along with it. Then she'd lie down with me and stay there at least until I fell asleep. I don't know if she stayed around and napped until my parents came home or what, but I always fell asleep with her on Thursdays.
Ah, crap. I've made myself cry. Boogers. I miss Nan. :: uses sad Maggie Smith icon in which Maggie Smith looks remarkably like Nan, which does not help the crying ::
Well, instead of jogging memories about overnights or being tucked in, this memory got me thinking about a particular set of cousins (eight kids) who lived in rural Maryland. My family used to go visit for a few days every summer, adding our gang of four kids to the mix.
Thinking of those vacations triggered a sensory memory (a little late for the discussion on that topic, but what the hell): the smell of crabs boiling. Ugh! What a stench. It permeated the house for over a day.
Even though I had helped catch the crabs (which was a lot of fun), I couldn't bring myself to eat them after smelling them cooking (not that I'm much of a seafood fan to begin with). I've never eaten anything crab related since then.
I don't know what boiling crabs smell like, but if they're as redolent as most raw seafood, then I can imagine how that would put you off eating them when they were done.
We used to walk past the Fulton Fish Market on our way to the South Street Seaport in Manhattan, when my sister and I were young and hadn't eaten much or any seafood because our mom never cooked it. To this day, I remember that place when I pick up a piece of not-so-spectacularly-fresh fish or shrimp from the supermarket, and it can spoil the meal if you still smell-taste that reek when it's on your plate.
Anyway. Eight kids, huh? And twelve when you lot showed up? I don't think we would hit a dozen if we combined all my first cousins in one place. *counts* Nope, nine, including my sister and me, and two of those cousins weren't born until I was in my teens. I wonder what it would have been like to gather in big groups of relatives like that.
I wonder what it would have been like to gather in big groups of relatives like that.
Absolute pandemonium. I enjoyed it as a kid, but now I wonder how the adults kept from going crazy. Of course, since it was summer, we kids could spend most of the time outside playing, which probably helped.
I think the most memorable episode this reminds me of, is that time in 1989 when my maternal grandparents, Momme & Moffe (nicknames derived from the names for maternal grandparents in Danish - mormor and morfar), where staying at our house and watching my sister and I. It was late autumn. My parents were in London. One night we were watching the news and saw those fantastic images of bits of the Berlin wall falling, of happy people streaming across the divide and into the west. People crying with happiness. It was a fantastic moment.
Sounds like it. I don't remember the wall falling. Whether that's because I was too young or because I was too busy watching Star Trek and being oblivious, I could not say. :)
I do have a related memory, though it's more amusing than poignant: My sister and I were staying at our paternal grandparents' house, and I don't know where my grandfather was at this particular time, but the other three of us were sitting on the couch watching SeaQuest: DSV (the only episode I'd ever seen, actually) when the show was interrupted by footage of O.J. Simpson being chased by police down the highway. LOL. It was on every channel we checked, and it stayed on even though nothing was happening. We never found out what happened in that SeaQuest episode.
LOL! That's a good one too! I remember that footage as well as it did get run on the news over here as well. Not worthy of interrupting anything for, though. The Wall wasn't either, actually. It's very rare to see such things here. The most we do is have extra newscasts, scheduled in a hurry, but timed to start between other programming and then cancelling or postponing the rest of the programming.
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I surprised myself by how many details I was able to recall...
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:) Thanks. (Is that even the right response?)
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Thinking of those vacations triggered a sensory memory (a little late for the discussion on that topic, but what the hell): the smell of crabs boiling. Ugh! What a stench. It permeated the house for over a day.
Even though I had helped catch the crabs (which was a lot of fun), I couldn't bring myself to eat them after smelling them cooking (not that I'm much of a seafood fan to begin with). I've never eaten anything crab related since then.
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We used to walk past the Fulton Fish Market on our way to the South Street Seaport in Manhattan, when my sister and I were young and hadn't eaten much or any seafood because our mom never cooked it. To this day, I remember that place when I pick up a piece of not-so-spectacularly-fresh fish or shrimp from the supermarket, and it can spoil the meal if you still smell-taste that reek when it's on your plate.
Anyway. Eight kids, huh? And twelve when you lot showed up? I don't think we would hit a dozen if we combined all my first cousins in one place. *counts* Nope, nine, including my sister and me, and two of those cousins weren't born until I was in my teens. I wonder what it would have been like to gather in big groups of relatives like that.
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Absolute pandemonium. I enjoyed it as a kid, but now I wonder how the adults kept from going crazy. Of course, since it was summer, we kids could spend most of the time outside playing, which probably helped.
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One night we were watching the news and saw those fantastic images of bits of the Berlin wall falling, of happy people streaming across the divide and into the west. People crying with happiness. It was a fantastic moment.
Reply
I do have a related memory, though it's more amusing than poignant: My sister and I were staying at our paternal grandparents' house, and I don't know where my grandfather was at this particular time, but the other three of us were sitting on the couch watching SeaQuest: DSV (the only episode I'd ever seen, actually) when the show was interrupted by footage of O.J. Simpson being chased by police down the highway. LOL. It was on every channel we checked, and it stayed on even though nothing was happening. We never found out what happened in that SeaQuest episode.
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