ON STAIRS....

There are bookcases in my living room—an upper level of five shelves that go up to the ceiling stacked over a lower level of countertop with shelves underneath. The bottom section has matching latticed doors that I keep shuttered at all times because it’s always incredibly messy in there.

         

Every so often, I open the doors and clean things up. I sort through photos, jigsaw puzzles, board games, old packs of cards, books that are too big to stack on the upper shelves, old records, etc. I pack things to donate to charity, shove others in trash bags to hit the curb on collection day; I also end up putting things back into the cupboards—things I’m just not ready to part with yet.

I stumbled across my 1966 college yearbook the other day.

I poured a cup of coffee and thumbed through: page after page of young women who looked remarkably alike…page boy hairstyles, knee-high socks, plaid skirts, wool sweaters, Peter Pan collars and the occasional turtleneck.

We weren’t quite “Barbies,” but it was mighty close!

I digress.

         

Anyway, as I was looking through the photos, I noticed that the school photographer had taken all our class group photos on stairways—page after page of sequences of young women posed (alphabetically, by surname; we’re of so little importance that we don’t even have first names) on stairways, one after the other, all lined up like little Stepford Wives, hands on the railing.

We are all the same.

The caption reads: D. Gould, W. Gillingham, E. Grant, L. Goldey, D. Gannet, N. Glesmann, K. Gardner, C. Givens.

And there I am, at twenty years old, standing on the bottom step.

 I am so young that it makes me ache...

THE VOICE....

The Voice.

         

My father adored her.

He joined the Navy in 1940 with dreams of becoming a pilot; he had his flight training in Jacksonville, Florida.

After successfully completing flight school, he flew transport planes for the US Navy during the war, hopping between Miami and Rio every few days.

          Before he married my mother, he lived in a small house in Miami with three other US Navy pilots and a chimpanzee named Violet (she’s a whole different story), a charismatic group of flyboys who spent their evenings in the bars and nightclubs of Miami, slamming down drinks, appreciating the women and listening to jazz and swing bands that toured the area…Basie, Goodman, Dorsey, etc.

         

And then along came Ella Fitzgerald.

         

The first time he heard her sing, my father was transported.

He spent an entire night at a little table in a nightclub, smoking Chesterfields, sipping Manhattans and listening to a voice that left him speechless.

When she took a break between sets, my father (emboldened, I’m sure, by the alcohol), approached her, asked if he could buy her a drink.

She said yes.

He never could remember what she had to drink; he remembered her eyes and her laugh and her voice.

The Voice.

ROXANNA ADAMS WILDER SABIN...

I’m fascinated by seeing photographs of people as they grow, as they mature; there’s something magical about this aging process.

Here’s two photographs of my great-great grandmother, Roxanna Adams Wilder Sabin, 1832-1926.

The first shot is Roxanna at 1850 or so, just before her marriage; the second was taken at Newton Upper Falls, Massachusetts, shortly before she died in 1926.

Here’s the story:

When Roxanna’s mother died, she and her siblings were taken in by relatives (a common practice back in the early 1800s). Roxanna was placed with childless aunt who was, unfortunately, married to a man who wasn’t particularly fond of children; he eventually tired of the situation and took her to the Poor Farm and left her there.

          The entire community was outraged.

A man named Prescott Wilder rescued her from the Poor Farm, took her home; he and his wife raised her. She grew up as Roxanna Wilder, even though Prescott Wilder never officially adopted her.

Roxanna married Lucius Sabin in 1851. They lived in Ashburnham and Gardner, Massachusetts; they had four children: Lucius (Lute) Wilder Sabin, Frances Taylor Sabin (my paternal great-grandmother), Edwin Alonzo Sabin and Ethel Wheeler Sabin.

One of the things I love about these two photographs is the pose -- hand to the cheek, etc. I wonder if it was intentional?

To see what other people have found to match this young/old theme, visit Sepia Saturday, a blog that calls for others "to share their history through the medium of photographs."

To see what others have posted, visit

http://www.sepiasaturday.blogspot.com

DECEMBER 25...

CHRISTMAS GLASSWARE...

Christmas dinner in Boston was a mighty affair!

Grandparents, aunts and uncles, a bunch of cousins—even a few great-uncles (one in particular who was a lawyer; he was slightly on the shady side and smoked little cigarettes—my grandmother ran around after him holding a tiny silver tray just in case he wavered, spilled his ash).

I remember dressing up: little white socks with scalloped top edges and what we used to call Mary Jane shoes—black patent leather with a strap over the instep – dreadful things, but fancy enough for small children (they were named for Buster Brown’s sweetheart in the old comic series!).

          I had a crinoline and a taffeta dress, too – it itched like fury, but it was gorgeous – it changed color whenever the fabric moved. I was fascinated by that color-changing bit.

          I had a matching ribbon for a headband.

The dining room had two big windows along the outside wall; on the inside wall, opposite the windows, there were two doors into the hallway. There was a pantry, too, off one end—a magical space full of various sets of china; dinner plates and luncheon plates and butter and dessert plates; cups and bowls; drawers of silver (all wrapped in maroon or gray flannel protectors); all manner and kind of table accessories!

          The table itself?

          A centerpiece, of course; candles and place settings: Two forks (salad fork, dinner fork), two knives (salad and meat) and a couple of spoons (teaspoon, soup spoon). (“Work from the outside in,” my mother coached us.)

Sometimes a desert fork and spoon placed horizontally above the dinner plate, one pointing left, one pointing right.

Little bread plate to the left, with a bread knife across; silver salts with blue glass insides and tiny little spoons—oh, how I loved those tiny silver spoons; I imagined little people scooping salt from them.

And the biggest napkins I’d ever seen – blazing white, with my grandmother’s initials in the corner (VMH); not a stain on them, although I can’t imagine how that happened—probably due to Annie Sagan’s hard work in the laundry room downstairs.

And the glassware!

Crystal wine glasses with a tapered rim, a shaped stem and full bowl, with cut starburst and ivy pattern…after dinner my father would set all the glasses in a row, wet his finger and run it around the rims of the bowls, make the glassware sing!

It was magic to me back then; it is magic to me now.

SNOWMEN...

Time passes…

          …and we’ve had our first snow here in Maine!

A few inches fell the other day. It was barely enough to shovel, but shovel we did—the sound of neighbors working at sweeping their cars and clearing their drives and walkways is nearly musical to me.

I took a break, stood at the end of my driveway and just listened.

Although I choose to ignore the religious trappings and crass commercialism that dominate our lives at this time of year, I still find promise in a few traditions from my childhood—a very few, to be sure, but ones that give me small pleasure.

And speaking of “promise,” here’s one kept: another shot of the wonderful calendar I found for this year.

Here’s the snowman.

He’s refreshingly traditional!

          He’s got a black top hat (with a bright red band), coal buttons and a carrot nose; he’s got a scarf, knotted jauntily around his non-existent neck!

When I was little, we used to stick tree branches in his sides to make arms; the little twigs at the ends made fantastic fingers! We never had a top hat, but used instead one of my father’s fedoras or the real bomber hat he wore during his stint flying for the US Navy during WWII—an old, fur-lined, moth-eaten horror that resembled a dead rodent; my mother threatened to throw it away for years.

She never did, though; she knew what was important.

 I opened the little door for December 8 right after I took the picture of the snowman: here’s the inside.

Those eight tiny reindeer: “Dasher, Dancer, Prancer, Vixen; Comet, Cupid, Donder, Blitzen…” (If you’re from Boston, by the way, those names are second to those of Robert McCloskey’s famous ducklings: Jack, Kack, Lack, Mack, Nack, Ouack, Pack and Quack).

On Christmas Eve, we used to leave a bowl of dog kibble for those reindeer, right next to Santa’s Budweiser and Ritz crackers with cheese—my father always told us that Santa liked stopping at our house better than any other house in Maine, thanks to our creative snack offerings!

He was right, I’m sure.

WAITING...

I’m a lapsed everything these days.

I’ve lapsed to the point of having an atheist sticker slapped on the backside of my Toyota Yaris.

There’s no coming back from that.

Still, there are shreds of my childhood that come soaring back to me at this time of year, and I’ve learned to hold them dear: the brass angels that flew in a circle above the lighted candles and rang little bells as they passed by; the snowflake patterns we cut from folded pieces of paper and taped to the front windows of our house; the smell of spruce cuttings; the branches of bright blood-red winterberries arranged in a floor vase in our front hall.

And advent calendars.

          I remember the ritual each December morning: searching for the little numbers on the little doors, lifting the flap and opening it wide to find a small surprise within.

It was part of the magic.

I saw this one in our local indie bookstore.

It’s a farm scene: red barn, two-storied farmhouse with green garlands wrapped around the porch pillars; it’s chock-a-block full of children on sleds and skis and toboggans and flying saucers (remember those?); there are wreaths hanging on doors and silos and fenceposts; there’s a cat on the porch, a dog on the steps and a squirrel in a tree; warm light pours out of all the windows.

There’s Santa in a sleigh (and his little door is No. 24, of course!).

But my favorite part is the lower right corner.

          A rail fence; two cows—one Jersey, one a small Holstein—three sheep; a manger full of bright yellow hay; that trio of geese (the Magi?) parading across the drive; that bright red cardinal on the fence post.

They’re all looking in the same direction, they’re all waiting…

Advent.