Let’s start at the very beginning,
A very good place to start…
“Do, Re, Mi”
As I mourned intensely for Mom during the winter of 2015, I increasingly found myself thinking back to my early childhood: I guess it’s not surprising since we tend to reminisce about our first attachment not only in order to retrieve and relive a happier past, but to figure out how these very attachments were created in the very beginning.
Not that this act of recollection was ever unusual or uncharacteristic for me. (Is this why I’m drawn to history?) In fact, over the years, Mom herself would ask me ever so often, “why do you constantly think about the past? Hardly a day goes by without you saying ‘I remember.’ Why do you never think about the future?” (I do, and it increasingly frightens me…on a personal and geopolitical level.) In later years, she would laughingly accuse me of going senile, because “that’s what old folks do, think about their past night and day. You can remember what you did 30 years ago but you can’t remember where you put your gloves.” Well, then, I quipped, I must have been going senile from the age of five. Nonetheless, she would marvel at my ability to recall details, especially of my early childhood trips—although as I read about other people’s faulty recollections, I’ve begun to wonder if my Mom and I were not collectively amiss at times. What if our recollections were flawed to begin with? Yet, sometimes it’s the recollection rather than the actual event that matters more since it shapes our perceptions and interpretations of just about everything else as Kant might have suggested. All I know is that I had a blessedly idyllic childhood. It was perhaps the only time that I felt close to both of my parents—not just my mother.
So what do I recall? In some ways, I’m shocked by how little I can of the first two years of my life. Of course, it’s not too surprising that I don’t remember much of Princeton, where I spent the first three months of my life: although maybe, somehow, somewhere, my mind has retained early images of the rooms there, seemingly unfamiliar images that may have cropped up in my dreams without my recognizing them. I am rather more disappointed that I don’t recall much more of my first two years at our first apartment near the Jerome Reservoir either. Even my first clear memory of Mom as she held me in her arms to get fresh, cold air on the front steps of our building is not exact; according to Mom, I had passed my first birthday by a few months but I thought I must have been at least two since I remember it so well, right down to her dark blue floral chiffon scarf and the mirror in the lobby of our apartment building. And even though Mom recalls that she and Dad took me to the World’s Fair in 1964 and that I relished the “It’s a Small World” ride, wanting to ride it again, I do not have the slightest memory of it: in fact, I made a point of riding it when visiting Disneyland at the age of 10 out of curiosity to know why I liked it so much as a small child! Ultimately, however, it would seem that I was not fully born, recollection-wise, until I was three when we moved two floors up in our building.
My parents were generous to me then, which I didn’t realize for the longest time. I remember gasping at a Burberry or Gucci dress for toddlers costing a few hundred dollars. “Which idiot would pay that much for a child’s dress, knowing she will outgrow it in a year?” I asked Mom. “Well, we did,” she answered. “You know that light gray coat with the fur collar and matching pants? That set was $200 in 1965.” My jaw dropped—this was my superthrifty mother who was aghast that I had spent $150 on a pair of shoes for her in the 1980s! And for ten weeks, Mom added, Dad bought a new dress for me on a weekly basis at Alexander’s, the local department store, in order to get a little 14K gold ring. But perhaps it was not to be unexpected of a 30-something couple who finally had a child after three miscarriages.
Although my recollections from my pre-kindergarten years are not much clearer, I do recall my activities at home. I remember waking up earlier than my parents, grabbing a box of cereal, and eating straight out of it as I sat on the floor in my pajamas, watching dancers on TV. I remember the days I sat next to Mom, eating lunch with her as she watched Dark Shadows. (She would turn me into a horror fan—and eventually a scholar, but more on that later.) Sometimes after lunch, Mom would take me to the park just yards away enroute to the A&P down the street; no visit to the park was ever complete without my gathering bunches of dandelions as I loved flowers. And on weekends, Dad would take us either to the Bronx Zoo or the Botanical Garden. On nice, warm days, we’d have picnics there—which were all the more enjoyable when my aunts and uncles joined us.
I was always happy when books arrived through the mail as Mom subscribed to a Dr. Seuss series. I liked nothing better than curling up by her side on the couch as she read the books aloud to me in the afternoons. Since I had not learned how to read yet, my favorite books were determined by the pictures. Having already expressed a preference for cats—the first book I picked out in a store was a tiny paperback on cats—I already had a special fondness for The King, the Mice and the Cheese solely on account of its four pages of cat illustrations; my burgeoning inner cat lady couldn’t understand why anyone would dislike having a palace full of cats! More than 50 years later, these pages still amuse me:
(If these pictures look a bit familiar, that’s because the illustrator is Eric Gurney, author of The Calculating Cat.)
It was probably around that time that I also managed to find a number of volumes of Mom’s Time-Life art history series stashed away in a carton. I would pore through them in the little room by the front entrance adjoining the kitchen as Mom prepared dinner. Each day was an adventure as l leafed through the pages, rapt with wonder and admiration even though the vast majority of the reproductions of paintings and sculptures were in black and white. Where were these beautiful places? Why didn’t people dress like that anymore?
Then there were the days when Mom brought me shopping in what she called “downtown,” namely the Kingsbridge shopping area of the Bronx that was dominated by Alexander’s on Fordham. I was mostly bored when Mom combed through the racks but I enjoyed eating hotdogs and sundaes with her at the local Woolworth’s. (Shopping is so exhausting…lol!) Sometimes we’d stop at Carvel’s where I had my favorite banana flavored ice cream. At other times, we’d hit Chock Full o’ Nuts where Mom had coffee. But perhaps my most cherished memory was of a late wintry afternoon, after the sun had gone down. I was so tired that I insisted on Mom carrying me home. I still marvel at the thought of that—a petite woman weighing less than 110 lbs calmly carrying a four-year-old in a snowsuit along with an assortment of shopping bags. (Would I have been able to manage this myself?)
At other times, I would think about my early obsessions and how my parents humored me. As Dad and I flipped through photo albums and chatted in the family room a few days after Mom had passed away, he brought up my childhood love for The Sound of Music. Indeed, it would not be an exaggeration to say that this enjoyment was more like a fixation—the first of many throughout my life—and one that lasted for at least two years until it was replaced by The Wizard of Oz. The Sound of Music mania started when my parents brought home the soundtrack: how they chose it is a mystery to me but I suppose they must have heard about its popularity when it was released in 1965. Since Dad, oddly enough for an aeronautical and mechanical engineer, was never very interested in technology, and as such didn’t bother to unpack his stereo system when we moved to the Bronx, he played the album on my plastic child’s record player.
I was quickly hooked, playing it over and over on a daily basis—where it got to the point that my mother would bring the record along when we were visiting their friends to keep me amused. (Too bad there were no tablets then, I joked with mom when I bought my first iPad the year before she passed away.) Every day, I’d take out the record from its cover, looking at the accompanying sleeve with screenshots from the film, while playing it from nearly beginning to end on both sides—except for “Climb Ev’ry Mountain,” which made me cry. And every night, Mom would sing “Do Re Mi” as a lullaby.
But it wasn’t until I watched the movie with my parents that I was completely swept up, becoming fully immersed in it: for this 3-year-old only child, the movie was Utopia. Looking back at the movie reviews—the critics were absolutely correct when they said it was perfect for the 3 to 5-year-old: even though it continues to be a favorite musical for many adults. How I loved the verdant scenery, which suddenly made my local playground with the huge green expanse shrink into nothing.
I was struck by the beautiful interiors of the house and the church. But above all, I liked watching the children singing and frolicking with Maria—maybe I was lonelier than I realized without any siblings or playmates my age. When the movie ended, I burst into tears: I wanted to watch it all over again.
At any rate, the movie became my everything where everything around me seemed tied to it, however farfetched. Pictures in books—including my mother’s art books—were somehow made to relate to it. I was only 3, after all: and this was the only world I had seen outside of the Bronx. (I suppose if there was anything in common between the art books and the movie, all were centered in Europe, which I didn’t know then.) When we took cross-state trips with my grandparents, I always wondered if we were headed to the Von Trapp house. And when we visited the White House with my grandparents, I didn’t want to leave because I thought it was—you guessed it, the Von Trapp house. Not least, I liked visiting churches as they were one more reminder of the movie. The movie even inspired a vivid dream, where I imagined my parents and I taking a long journey to visit the house even though I had no idea where it took place. (Truth be told, I don’t think my newly immigrated parents did either because they’d never heard of Austria even though Dad learned German.) Little did I know then, that my interest in Salzburg would reignite when I developed an even longer fixation with Mozart a few years later—and that my parents and I would visit Salzburg one day.
So as I occasionally watched clips from The Sound of Music in those few months after Mom’s passing, I couldn’t help but laugh, cry, and feel nostalgic all at once. (How does that song go? When the bee stings, when my mom dies, when I’m feeling sad…I simply remember my favorite things and then I don’t feel so bad.” ) I suppose, not so secretly, that I wanted Mom to return just like Maria does after the von Trapp kids go searching for her at every church (they must have been exhausted since there are around 30 churches in Salzburg). I cried tears of joy watching the “Do Re Mi” segment, remembering how thrilled I was when as a child when watching that scene and remembering my first visions of Salzburg with Mom when we visited years later in 1983; I thought about how the child in the undergraduate me felt almost loathe to leave the small city because it was even more breathtaking than I imagined. Mozart might have detested his birthplace for its backwardness but I loved it! How I wept listening to “Climb ev’ry Mountain” and the reprise as I did when I was a child, both for the sheer sublimity and beauty of the song and the sad awareness that my happy past was gone for good with Mom’s death. Would there be any rainbows or dreams one true for me now that she was no more? So long, farewell—again.
As if to lighten this poignant remembrance of things past, I’d go to the kitchen, dig out a carton of ice cream, phone in hand, and listen to songs from my childhood…or at least songs I had already associated with my preschool days by the time I was 10. I could smell the playground grass when I played the Cowsills’ greatest hit:
But I knew (I knew, I knew, I knew, I knew)
She had made me happy (happy, happy)
Flowers in her hair, flowers everywhere
And I’d think about the excitement I felt when Mom and I walked to Alexander’s on sunny days:
I love you more today than yesterday
But not as much as tomorrow
I love you more today than yesterday
But, darling, not as much as tomorrow
Sometimes, I reflect on these memories, acknowledging to myself a la Wordsworth, that the child is very much the mother of the woman. Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive in the 1960s—even if I was far too young to understand its revolutionary appeal. But it was Heaven indeed for me: the cozy one-bedroom apartment, the walks downtown, the music, and the love. As I grieve the loss of my mother, I know I am also grieving over my lost childhood.
This is not to say that those days were completely perfect: nothing ever is. As Mom had a very irascible side, she was not always predictable. I still recall the morning she yelled at me for no apparent reason (after all, I didn’t wet the bed) and told me she was leaving, never to return: only to return several hours later with bags full of toys. (Did she feel sorry for scolding me? Or did she invent a crisis so she could surprise me with toys? I will never know.) I remember the time she spanked me in a department store because I threw a tantrum, wanting her to buy a stuffed white Persian cat with green eyes; I was fortunate then that a visiting uncle (the husband of my aunt in Alabama) who was staying with us for a month felt sorry for me and bought it for me.* (It was such a favorite toy that I would sleep with it for several years.) Then there were times when she locked me in the bathroom. Not to mention that she had started a lifelong habit of throwing or giving away my things without asking me: perhaps that triggered my hoarding tendencies? But like old photographs, these images have softened over the years.
And yet, here I am, so different and so much the same. As I study and teach horror, I am perhaps still that little girl who sat next to her mother watching Dark Shadows. As I eagerly wait for the books I order online via Amazon or Alibris, I still get that feeling of excitement. (Even if Mom will never read to me again.) Not least, like the three-year-old me, I still have a fondness for Chinchilla Persians—except that now, I have two of my own who sit and sleep by me. And not too long ago, I succumbed to my inner 3-year-old me when I scooped up this compact, complete with flowers and two Persians:
As I gaze upon it, I know I am not just admiring the flowers and the cat, but remembering my childhood years. And I know that Mom, who had come to like Chinchillas too, would have approved.
Holy smokes, that Cowsills video was about the most surreal thing I've seen in weeks !!