Pictures in Time

Last week we had to submit pictures for my son’s high school yearbook, which included his senior picture and a picture from when he was a baby. As usual, we waited until the last day, so we spent the night before going through albums and boxes with an assortment of pictures. As much as it was kind of annoying to have to do that when I could have been getting my beauty rest, it also made me really happy. 

As I was going through the pictures of my kids when they were little, there were a few things that really stood out to me. Foremost, was that both kids were smiling and happy in almost every picture. I’m not just talking about posed, “say cheese” pictures, but also unplanned, unscripted pictures. That is how I remember them; smiling, laughing, playing, just doing the funny, goofy things kids do. Another thing that was quite noticeable was that my kids did a lot together. It was really hard finding a picture of just my son, all by himself. In almost all the pictures of him, my daughter was right there with him, both of them smiling and laughing. Somehow there were also quite a few pictures that included me with the kids, which amazed me since I don’t remember my wife taking all those pictures. However, I’m glad she did, and I was glad to find there were also a number of pictures of my wife with the kids. At least they can’t say we never spent time with them, because we’ve got the proof!

The sad part is that they probably don’t remember many of those times. I know I don’t remember much before first grade. Sure, I remember a few things here and there, but not a whole lot. Even when we’ve broken out old pictures with my family and talked about what was going on when the picture was taken, I either vaguely remember or I don’t remember at all. I’m in the pictures, so I know I was there, but the memories are gone. In one way it’s sad that I can’t remember those times, but in another way it’s nice to hear my older brothers and sisters talk about something that they remember so vividly.  

One of my uncles once took a bunch of pictures at a family party in our backyard when I was just a little guy, maybe about six years old. There were aunts, uncles, cousins, brothers, sisters, parents and grandparents at that party. He had them made into slides and years later he brought them and a projector to our house to show us. As we worked our way through the slides, I realized that one way or another I managed to get into a large percentage of the pictures. Here’s a picture of all the adults standing together as couples – with me lying on the ground, peeking out between someone’s legs. Here’s a picture of all the older kids – with me sticking my goofy face in from the side. Here’s a picture of random people standing around talking, unaware their being photographed at that moment – with me facing the camera with a cheese ball smile a mile wide. Strange, but I have absolutely no recollection of that event.

I’m sure that someday we’ll sit down with the kids, maybe even the grandkids, and look through those pictures and reminisce about that birthday party, or the time that my daughter made a whole snowperson family, or how my son always wore a hat or a visor, or the summer vacations on the Vineyard, or the first day of pre-school or kindergarten or first grade. Or hundreds of other things that my kids barely remember but I happily remember like they were just yesterday.   

PBJ

I bring my lunch to work almost every day. Part of the reason is because it is much less expensive to make your own lunch than it is to buy it somewhere every day, but another part of it is that I don’t want to have to go out and get it all the time. However, there are some days, like this morning, that there are no leftovers and nothing to make a sandwich with. So on some of these days, I just make the old standby – peanut butter and jelly. I don’t want to have a PBJ sandwich every day, but every once in a while is alright with me. Actually, there are times in the winter on a Saturday afternoon that a toasted PBJ just hits the spot. The peanut butter a gooey, melty mess and the jelly nice and warm – yum!

There was a time when I was a kid that I had a PBJ sandwich almost every day for lunch. The only times I didn’t, I had a peanut butter and fluff sandwich (a fluffernutter). That’s how much I loved peanut butter. Even when I started elementary school (I didn’t go to kindergarten) I still had PBJs or fluffernutters for lunch because I brought my lunch to school most of the time the first few years. It wasn’t that the school lunches weren’t good; they were much better back then than they are now. They actually made the food in the school kitchen in those days.

To this day, I still vividly remember a day in second grade when I thought my lunch was ruined – and probably my life with it. We used to get to school a little early and hang around outside, playing with our friends. Sometimes we played with a football or played catch with a baseball. This particular day, there was one guy throwing a rubber ball off the brick wall of the school to a pack of us to see who could get “three outs” first and become the guy to do the throwing. It was intense and we were going after the ball like there were two outs in the ninth inning of the seventh game. Guys were getting run into, pushed out of the way and even knocked down. We were having a blast!

The bell rang, signaling the end of our fun and the start of classes. My teacher, Mrs. O’Reilly, was an older, no-nonsense teacher, so when she came out to get us, we didn’t mess around. It was near the beginning of the year, but I already knew to do what she told you. I quickly went to pick up my jacket and my lunch and then I noticed it. My lunch was squashed. Someone had stepped on it and flattened out my brown bag lunch. I picked it up and slowly opened it to see a PBJ pancake. The tears started welling up in my eyes as I contemplated my poor, flat, mutilated PBJ sandwich. I held it out in front of me, finding Mrs. O’Reilly through my tears. “What’s the matter with you?” she asked. I was in such a state of shock I couldn’t even speak.

She was looking at me, probably trying to figure out where I was bleeding. I just held my mangled lunch bag up to her. She looked at it, looked at me, and said in a slightly annoyed manner, “What’s the problem?” What’s the problem? WHAT’S THE PROBLEM?!?! Was she blind? I thought it was pretty obvious.

Between heaving breaths I managed to get out the horrible truth, “Someone stepped on my lunch!” Again, she looked at my lunch, looked at me, and in a noticeably more annoyed manner said “You can still eat it, it’s just a little flat!” She handed it back and I stared at her in disbelief. Couldn’t she see that my lunch was ruined? Heck, my whole day was ruined! Obviously she didn’t understand, because she started to push me toward the door and into the school. My classmates were all looking at me, wondering if I was OK, that I must have gotten hurt. But the only thing that was hurt right then was my feelings. I remember thinking something to the effect that my Mom would NEVER have done that.

Lunch time came and I took out what was once my wonderful PBJ sandwich, trying to conceal it from everyone else. I was embarrassed to have to eat such a pitiful sandwich, but eat it I did. I think I even fought back a few tears from my eyes at lunch, too. When it was done, Mrs. O’Reilly came by and asked me if my lunch was OK. I hated to admit it, but my sandwich tasted just fine, even if it was about an eighth of an inch thick. She smiled at me and patted me on the head the way adults do and I couldn’t help but smile back. That day I learned that Mrs. O’Reilly wasn’t such an old Meany after all, that she was actually pretty nice.

I also learned something else that day. Call it a life lesson, call it a metaphor for life. Sometimes your lunch is going to get stepped on and squished, and you have a choice to make: you can sit there and cry about it, or you can pick it up and eat it anyway. That day, for probably the first time in my life, with the help of a wise teacher, I chose to eat it anyway.

Making Some Noise

No one in my house besides me needs to get up early in the morning during the summer so I’m usually the only one up before I leave for work. I have to admit I don't enjoy summer mornings as much as I could because everyone else gets to sleep as late as they want but I still have to get up and go to work. It has recently come to my attention that I make a lot of noise in the morning. Both my daughter and my wife told me that I’m really loud in the morning while I’m getting ready for work.

I must say that I was kind of surprised by this because I try hard to be as quiet as I can in the morning. I don’t think I make too much noise in the bathroom in the morning. About the only thing I do that makes any noise is blowing my nose after I take my shower and I do that with the door shut. Due to allergies, about the only time in the day I can breathe normal is right after taking a shower, so I need that. I also brush my teeth and that’s about it. I haven’t used a blow dryer my whole life and don’t really need to these days with the amount of hair I have left. Not much noise here.

I may make a little noise when I go downstairs. I usually put away any pots, pans, utensils and the like that were hand washed and left to dry. I have to admit that putting away the pots and pans does make some noise, I mean they are metal, but even with those I try to be as quiet as possible. I tend to let the refrigerator door close itself  instead of holding onto it and going slow, but how much noise can that make when you’re upstairs in your room with the door closed? I also use a blender every morning for my protein shake (I need to eat something and regular food makes me tired, so I drink one every morning on the way to work) and that can be a little loud for about a minute. Maybe I make more noise than I think.

My mother has told me that she never had to worry where I was as a kid because she always knew exactly where I was because of how much noise I made. So if I was in the house or out in the yard, Mom knew where I was. I can kind of see that looking back now. I was a little heavy on my feet walking around and I was a bit klutzy, tripping over things or banging into things. I used to try to imitate things I heard, too, like birds, music or voices – irritating to everyone but me. I think I was kind of a yapper, always talking about something, even if no one was listening.

Outside, I would have a running play-by-play when I was playing. It may have looked like I was just throwing a ball up in the air or off the house and catching it, or just taking shots on a hockey net by myself, but there was a whole game going on and I was right in the middle of it. Of course, my team always won whatever game was being played. I guess if you can’t be a star in real life, you can still be a star in your own little world. There were times I realized I wasn’t just saying it in my head, I was actually saying it out loud. It makes me wonder what it sounded like to others in the house or just passing by the yard. I know I found it quite entertaining when my own son did the same thing as he ran around the backyard, participating in some imaginary competition when he was little. 

OK, so I probably do make a lot of noise in the morning getting ready for work. I probably make a lot of noise throughout the whole day. As much as I try, I just can’t seem to help making noise. I guess it’s in my DNA. Maybe I should start a support group, Noisemakers Anonymous (“Hello, I’m Joe and I make a lot of noise.”), so me, and others like me, won’t have to feel bad about our noisiness. There are many things much worse than being loud and making noise. My Mom didn’t seem to mind it. At least she always knew what I was doing.

Spring Is In the Air

Spring is in the air. There’s about a million birds around my neighborhood, chirping away like they’re on "Bird Idol" and gathering stuff for their nests. The grass, while not what I’d call green yet, is starting to come alive. We’ve even had a couple of days where I didn’t need to wear a jacket! This being New England, those days were followed by temperatures in the 30’s again, which felt even colder after having been in the high 60’s or 70’s. The first day of spring was last Sunday, so of course we got some snow on Monday. I would have been surprised if it didn’t snow.

The biggest difference, however, has been the number of people outside. People are actually going outside for longer than it takes to get from the house to the car. One of my neighbors has two kids, a boy 5 and a girl 3. They’ve been riding around on their little bikes and using the swing set. I heard their voices the other day, looked out the window and saw them swinging up to the sky, having the time of their lives. They had their winter jackets and hats on but you would have thought it was the middle of July with the fun they were having. Just the fact that they could get to their swing set after all the snow we got was an accomplishment. 

My neighbor across the street has two boys, about 11 and 9. Those two have been outside playing basketball, street hockey and baseball. They’ve been tossing the baseball back and forth and they even have one of those pitch back devices so they can throw the ball at it and have it come back to them. What caught my attention one day was the older boy trying to make the younger one do something by throwing him to the ground, sitting on him and torturing him into doing whatever it was. Nothing like the love between brothers. Eventually, the younger and smaller one wiggled his way free, put a move on the older one and was suddenly on top. The older boy started yelling and screaming and about 30 seconds later their mother came out and told them to break it up and to stop making so much noise. The younger boy never yelled or screamed; he just worked his way out of the death hold his older brother had him in and came out on top. Did I mention that the younger boy is also smaller? Yet the older, bigger boy did all the yelling and screaming. As far as I’m concerned, justice was not done.

When one my older brothers got me in one of those choke holds when we were kids, I would try my hardest to get out of it and gain the advantage. I may have gotten lucky once or twice and escaped, but that just meant when they got me locked up again it was a little rougher and harder. However, I never stopped trying to get out of whatever hold they had me in. Why bother, why not just take it like a man and get it over with? Because it was kind of a measure of how “big” I was getting. If I could make them work to subdue me, that meant I was getting stronger. If I could escape, even for a few seconds, it meant I was getting tougher. I looked forward to the day when I could say that I beat them, that I got away fair and square, because that would mean I was on their level. All the kids I knew that had older brothers wanted the same thing – to be as strong as, as tough as, as good in sports as... as cool as their older brothers. Ultimately, what we wanted was to not be their little brother anymore, but to just be their brother.

However, we never got that victory as kids. Justice was not done. By the time we thought we were actually able to come out on top, our older brothers had moved on to bigger and better (maybe, maybe not) things. I’m sure they had long forgotten the times they knocked us down and pinned us to the ground, or held us in a head lock and gave us noogies, or grabbed us by the arms and gave us Indian rope burns. They probably even forgot they had given us the dreaded Cherokee Drag where they knocked us down and dragged us around by our legs, taking us across the driveway or street and into the bushes. In the summertime. With or without a shirt on our backs. Nothing like the love between brothers.  

But something happened to us little brothers, too. We also grew up and moved on to bigger and better things. Revenge? Nah, not for me. My older brothers were the ones giving me rides to my baseball games or somewhere else in their cool cars. While other kids got dropped off in their parent’s station wagon, I got dropped off in a souped up Olds 442 or a Chevy Camaro, tires spinning and tunes cranking. When I needed a ride, they were there. When I had one of those questions I just couldn’t ask Mom or Dad and knew my friends didn’t have a clue what they were talking about, they were there. I soon realized that when I needed just about anything, even some encouragement about something, they were there. At some point, I had crossed some unseen dividing line and was now on their side. Sure they still gave me a hard time, but it was different. Somehow I was no longer their little brother, and I may have still been their younger brother, but I was now just their brother.  

Now, some forty years later, we still make fun of each other at times and give each other a good ribbing when the opportunity presents itself. They may have laughed more then, but not anymore. Especially now that some of them are grandparents and proud card-carrying members of AARP!