I love that phrase: “I should say.” I hear it in a stuffy, 18th century, crisp British accent, complete with Mr. Carlyle pulling a kerchief from the lace wristlet of his velvet coat mid-quote. Do you know who Thomas Carlyle is? It’s okay if you don’t. He’s but a click away.
The weird thing about me coming across this quote is Mr. Thomas Carlyle wrote The French Revolution: A History, which was the favourite book of protagonist Sara Crewe in Frances Hodgson Burnett’s children’s book A Little Princess which is my favourite book. So that makes me want to read this enormous 3-volume account of the French Revolution (while remaining largely ignorant of our own right here in the U.S.) I feel the need to learn more history. All kinds of history.
My father and I went on a ride to Massachusetts today and I “interviewed” him from a book I’d bought, Conversations with my Father, which asked questions and left blanks so you could create your own memory book. What was your first memory? What were your grandparents like? Did you have a nickname when you were young?
So I listened to my father’s the stories and wrote as fast as I could, and it was a beautiful day; we drove to both Magic Wings and Mt. Greylock, he telling me about his parents, grandparents, uncles, his brother — so many stories and memories. I could almost see him disappear into the memories…as ballboy for his Uncle B’s softball team, full of adolescent pride to be part of the game. His mind re-visiting the comfort of living above his grandparents, and having them nearby to visit. He told me how his grandmother used to put an egg in her hamburger meat before cooking it, to make the burger extra-moist. How he still remembers how delicious it was; how her apple pie beat all. And how, when he was a very little boy, his pretty, sturdy, red-headed mother sang the Irish Lullaby to him at night.
It’s obvious he is someone who learned honor and respect at a young age. Maybe even someone who didn’t need to learn it, because it was part of his personality already and then reinforced by necessity. Who knows what makes us what we are? It’s all these stories, all these memories, all these little details. We came nowhere near finishing the book, but it was a good start.
Magic Wings: where butterflies abound year-round
And
Dad & me up on Mt. Greylock. Gorgeous view!
I guess I’m going backwards in the telling of things this weekend…
On Saturday it was the usual visit to see Boo. It was so usual, it was almost an amalgam of all the visits we ever have. He was good about half the time but definitely what Andy and I have come to call squirrely and he did, at one point, pull my hair in a double-fisted hard yank, but I know what to do — you grab the child’s wrists and push their hands into your head. If you pull away it will hurt. Then he mangled my spare glasses (thank God and little baby Jason I remembered to bring the spare pair). But other than that, he was mostly just wild to swim. Take a bath. Go to the swim-pond. Go to the river. There were many kisses and smiles, and all was certainly not ruined. So, a pictorial for you…
swimmin?
he was meditative for a while
i like this picture
It has, I should say, been an eventful weekend. Now I’m getting a wicked headache and may go to bed even though it’s only 8:13pm. ‘Night.
The Never Normal 
Magic Wings…memories of my BFF Jim and I before he died, taking me to all his favorite places. I should say, the man I ever loved (but not in that way). I miss him dearly. How smart of you to ask open-ended questions to get a history of your parents’ past!!
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How smart of you to ask your father to share his memories with you!
When I was nine, our family of five moved from the Catskill Mountains to New Jersey. While my two little sisters made their first real friends the next summer, my mother and I were lonely and missing our friends and family. So every day we clocked in tons of time at the kitchen table, where my mother told me story after story of her childhood. I learned her first memories and those of elementary and high school, about relatives who had passed when she was a kid, how my grandparents met and eloped, how she met my father and all about their sporadic WW II courtship. I treasure those memories. They enabled me to understand my mother and mitigated somewhat the stormy years of my adolescence. Today I am a walking family history book to whom my sisters turn when they’re curious about something our mother experienced.
Enjoy every moment of every conversation with your dad as you scribble down his history. Your bond will grow stronger and stronger, and you will treasure the closeness of your conversations as well as his memories for as long as you live.
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Thomas Carlyle, though born in 1795, lived primarily in the 19th century, not the 18th. He was a “proper Victorian” who probably wore a dark wool frock coat & carried a plain linen handkerchief. Velvet & lace would have been a sign of foppishness to him. As for The French Revolution, there is a famous anecdote connected with that: he lent the ms. (only copy) to John Stuart Mill, whose housemaid thought it was scrap paper (1000 pages?) & used it to start a fire. destroying it utterly. Carlyle had to write the whole thing, including scholarly notes, over again! Even if not true, this is a good story, proving that “persistence pays,” and your “chronicle of Jonah” is more evidence of that.
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I was describing my imaginings about Thomas Carlyle, not giving a dissertation on his life & times.
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The kids answered their own question about whether Jonah can swim when they saw these pictures!
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