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Aug. 27th, 2004 12:55 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
fleaI really need to write up something about my grandparents for the memorial next month. And I'm having a hard time getting started. So here are fragments:
All about food: in the house in Woods Hole, I remember Pepperidge Farm molasses bread, removed from the toaster with toast tongs. Portugese bread. Being asked if we wanted a glass of bitter lemon (I suppose they used it in a cocktail but I don't know what - we found some in the Kronig's on the Vineyard this summer and it's very bitter!) Being invited to have a "chocolate covered" (Eskimo pie) after dinner. Hamburger zucchini for dinner and the accompanying story of smart-mouthed Toby who when asked "do you want to sauce on top or beside" replied "underneath."
George I remember as a gentle man - when Toby told a story of him cursing at bad drivers on car trips I was so shocked! He was so intelligent and so intellectual in his approach to the world that I think he was a bit inscrutable to children. When I was perhaps 13 he asked me in all seriousness to explain to him what the appeal of rock music was - and really, he wanted a music theory/cultural theory answer, which I was unable to provide. (I could do better now, though I'm still not musical). He was impossible to defeat at scrabble, and threw awry a game of dictionary at Phoebe and Steve's in Brighton because he kept knowing every obscure word we could find in their weighty dictionary. (He is the coiner of a word in the OED - a scientific term - and right now I forget what it is - must ask Toby.) But not intelligent in a fierce or competitive way - more in an otherworldly, abstracted way. Yet, of course, very willing to roughhouse with small children. I feel remiss in my memories of him since so many are from after I came out from the darkness of adolescence, at which point his Parkinson's was pretty well advanced. I don't feel the adult me knew the fully functioning him.
Going to the beach, coming home wet and sticky with sand and sitting on a big plastic sheet in the back of George's Rabbit, then bathing in the big clawfoot tub. The magical day when we came home from the beach to a surprise birthday party (I was turning 4). Every time we went to the beach in August after that (our birthdays all early September) I wished for another party. Yellow cake, white frosting, gumdrops.
All about food: in the house in Woods Hole, I remember Pepperidge Farm molasses bread, removed from the toaster with toast tongs. Portugese bread. Being asked if we wanted a glass of bitter lemon (I suppose they used it in a cocktail but I don't know what - we found some in the Kronig's on the Vineyard this summer and it's very bitter!) Being invited to have a "chocolate covered" (Eskimo pie) after dinner. Hamburger zucchini for dinner and the accompanying story of smart-mouthed Toby who when asked "do you want to sauce on top or beside" replied "underneath."
George I remember as a gentle man - when Toby told a story of him cursing at bad drivers on car trips I was so shocked! He was so intelligent and so intellectual in his approach to the world that I think he was a bit inscrutable to children. When I was perhaps 13 he asked me in all seriousness to explain to him what the appeal of rock music was - and really, he wanted a music theory/cultural theory answer, which I was unable to provide. (I could do better now, though I'm still not musical). He was impossible to defeat at scrabble, and threw awry a game of dictionary at Phoebe and Steve's in Brighton because he kept knowing every obscure word we could find in their weighty dictionary. (He is the coiner of a word in the OED - a scientific term - and right now I forget what it is - must ask Toby.) But not intelligent in a fierce or competitive way - more in an otherworldly, abstracted way. Yet, of course, very willing to roughhouse with small children. I feel remiss in my memories of him since so many are from after I came out from the darkness of adolescence, at which point his Parkinson's was pretty well advanced. I don't feel the adult me knew the fully functioning him.
Going to the beach, coming home wet and sticky with sand and sitting on a big plastic sheet in the back of George's Rabbit, then bathing in the big clawfoot tub. The magical day when we came home from the beach to a surprise birthday party (I was turning 4). Every time we went to the beach in August after that (our birthdays all early September) I wished for another party. Yellow cake, white frosting, gumdrops.
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Date: 2004-08-27 05:34 pm (UTC)Nubby chair memory could well be true, since they visited us a lot in Maine. I think the chair was discarded in the move to Cincinnati, which is, like, 12 years ago now. You need a furniture update, sister!
I played Mah Jongg the summer I stayed with them when I was 9.