Rememberings

I remember sprinting in spurts alongside my mom who would go running on the college track behind her grandparents’ house. 

I remember going for hikes and going out to the lake with grandparents, great-grandparents, aunts and uncles and cousins. 

I remember being at the lake in the winter when it was frozen over, and secreting walks out on the ice while listening to John Mayer’s Room for Squares album on my iPod nano. I knew my mom wouldn’t let me walk on the ice, so it was my little secret rebellion (I only went out a couple feet though, being a cautious kid at heart). 

I remember collecting rocks on the rocky Lake Superior beaches with my grandma Roz and her late husband Dic, who showed me how to stack the rocks on the beach in ways that seemingly defied gravity. 

They had an art studio together and decorated dried gourds with beautiful designs. I remember touching one before it was dry and, horrifyingly, smudging it. 

I remember playing Uno later that night and watching the movie Watership Down, which made me cry.

I remember my great grandma Louise’s doll collection, and the curious way those dolls would watch me looking at them.

I remember the vampire chapter book I read in the basement where the dolls lived, and being utterly terrified to sleep that night.

I remember the sewing kit my mom inherited from her grandma, and how protective of it she was (I think I was a bit negligent with the contents)

and the ceramic cookie jar she has from her grandma, and the the excitement of finding fresh cookies in that cookie jar after school. I remember thinking that this was how she felt when she was a kid and her grandma would put cookies in the jar.

I remember going for a hike on a windy day, and wondering how the tall birch bark trees could sway like that and not fall over. Someone explained to me that they did that so they wouldn’t fall over, and I remember thinking that maybe this was how people should be too.

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