i remember 100 percent

memory. distinct. sexual harassment.

yes, i remember certain things distinctly.

and not just about being harrassed, which is just a condition of being female.

i remember my beloved dog coming out, finally after weeks of hesitation, from a tunnel during an obedience training class and looking up at me with trust.

Best dog ever. (Katy Buchanan)

i remember sharing a brief moment with a stranger asking for directions on penn avenue in pittsburgh and laughing when we both realized her destination was about 10 feet away and in plain sight.

i remember being angry during a winter drive in massachusetts with my sister suzanne and her two kids in a scary snowstorm.

i remember a man walking past me on a Cleveland street in the early 1980s and saying at me "nice bouncing boobs." i remember what I was wearing (knee length, pink knit dress, quarter length sleeves), but not what he looked like, just his words.

i remember a mainstream television network science reporter, also in the early 1980s, at a press conference at the University of Pittsburgh, telling me he would like to "take a nap" with me.

i remember a man named Peter who was in my Ohio State karate class helping me 'caress' his private parts in a corner of the natatorium. he told me he was teaching me certain blocks (me, very young, inexperienced and without knowledge to convey my ... discomfort?) .

i remember parts of lots of things. being in NYC as a young woman in the late 1970s with a college friend who wanted to sample a dish at a restaurant in Chinatown ... really rude, she just helped herself to my plate.

i remember being rude myself, when a roommate was smoking in our dorm and i told her to "put it out, it offends me." (this was also in the late 1970s when people still smoked everywhere, freely.)

i remember the taste of ripe tomatoes and crusty french bread at summer camp in the French Alps in the early 1960s.

i remember many years ago, also early 1960s, when our young family was traveling, sitting at a motel pool somewhere in North or South Carolina ... or maybe Virginia, and being hit in one eye with a hot pepper.  painful and blinding. someone did that to me. i remember that distinctly.


i don't remember all the specific details of any of these life events, i just remember those moments. and isn't it interesting that these memories were formed when i was very young.

  
my point is, that I think certain things sear themselves in our brains. maybe we don't capture everything about events, but the important, memory-making details, never go away.  maybe the brain just captures what's most important (how does brain know? i have no idea. brain has it's own secrets). i'd be willing to bet combat veterans have a lot to say on this subject.

so, yes. i believe dr. ford.

Memory & narrative

This is 2012 and I have a personal trainer at the gym. Twice a week for 30-minute sessions. Thursday was our get-acquainted session. Liz is a nice young woman and good in the enthusiasm/cheery/friendly mode.

While I warmed up on the treadmill, she asked me about me, my interests, etc. Kind of like the dentist asking same while you have a mouthful of gauze. I talked, jobbed and puffed, watched by Liz's very bright blue eyes.

I love to take walks, that was one of my interests for Liz. I got to explaining how Dad's mom would drag/march/accompany us kids all over D.C. when we were little. Not for the purpose of dragging or marching, but for pleasure and enrichment. Gram loved D.C. and she loved exposing her grand-kids to its treasures.

So few of the memories Grandma and Washington remain with me in full. So many years later, they are impressions.

A Marine band concert on a summer night.
The fountain of Mercury at the National Gallery.
The heart tree at the Library of Congress (we called it that because it had a scar in a heart shape).
The furniture at Gram's apartment at 215 C Street; the ladderback, cane-seat chairs from (I think) Aunt Clara's house in St. Louis. The heavy jar of change she kept in a bureau drawer, which she brought out for us to count on every visit.

Such tiny fragments. I don't remember Gram's love, or attention, but I hang on to those fragments so I can keep telling that story; a story that has helped build who I am. Someday the story may become part of Brynne and Henry and Louis and Graham, and it will get distilled and changed again.

Another memory, prompted by my evening ritual of braiding my hair:

My mother's mother, in her 70s and 80s, with a thick grey coil of braid wrapped around her head. Watching her plait it, the coil pulled around front to her chest it was so long. I thought it was beautiful and I loved that she tied it off with a strand pulled from her brush, wrapped tightly around the end of the plait.

After GrandDad died, she cut it off, Mom says. It was too much to take care of. I don't remember that at all.

Carl & I went to "Laugh Out Loud" by the Second City comedy group Friday night. (Wow, the improv was impressive and funny! I cannot imagine thinking that fast on my feet.)

We had a nice dinner, went to the show and chatted briefly with friends afterwards. It was really a lovely evening; a date, something, like traveling, we have gotten away from in recent years.

On the way back to the car, I took this shot of a pop-up art installation on 6th Street. Fraley's Robot Repair.