December 29, 2002
It’s my 5-month old grandson’s first Christmas, and I go crazy taking digital photos. My brother shows up with the fading 16mm frames of my chubby childhood Christmases copied onto a computer disk. My daughter gets me to rummage through the now-lopsided boxes filled with what I managed to hang onto of my kids’ stuff. She’s looking for her own baby pictures, her baby book, her grade school folders, her high school yearbook, her modeling and acting head shots. My mother drags out my baby book, the poetry I wrote in high school, my senior prom photo. I find an envelope full of b!X’s memorabilia – copies of the underground newspaper he published in high school; a photo of his feet in the ratty, sole-flapping sneakers that he wore to his high school graduation; crumbling newspaper articles from when he and his cronies played music (literally) on the Henry Moore sculpture gracing the college campus that he deigned to attend for a couple of years; the ‘90s Rolling Stone article that interviewed him as one of a dozen twenty-somethings trying to change the world. The living room becomes surrounded by moldy mounds of memories -- Kodak and otherwise -- most of which are unyieldingly stuck, one to the other, having succumbed to the dampness of cellars, the frost of garages, the immutability of impermanence.
The baby is cutting his first tooth. My mother’s gums are receding. My daughter’s hair shows strands of silver. The old photos stick and fade and peel. There’s so much I don’t remember any more, so much faded and stuck and peeled.
I drive my grandson and his parents back to the Boston area (neither parent has yet to learn how to drive). We listen to Eva Cassidy’s CD “Imagine,” because her voice is the one thing that calms the baby in times of stress. Teething is a bummer. You can listen to some of her songs here.
With her bluesy soulful voice, Cassidy sings “Who knows where the time goes.” Time is gone for Eva Cassidy. Time is a bummer.
On my way back home I finish listening to Louise Erdrich’s novel, Antelope Wife. She tells her story in Native American time – non-linear, like the spinnings of Grandmother Spider. It is the story of Woman through the stories of women borne to ride the tides of time. Out of Erdrich’s lyrical prose flow great one-liners that I want to remember. But I don’t write them down, and time goes and takes the one-liners with it.
These are the mothers and the son who were snowbound together over this gone Christmas. Impermanent as time, we have already changed from what you see here.
On my way home from Boston, I stop and buy myself Eva Cassidy’s CD and ride the rest of the way outside of time.
Across the evening sky
All the birds are leaving
But how can they know
It's time for them to go?
Before the winter fire
I will still be dreaming
I do not count the time
For who knows where the time goes?
Who knows where the time goes?
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Old Comments (4)
Yom Shugart on 29 Dec 2002
A great four-generation photo! Thanks for sharing it. Happy New Year to all of you.
Melissa on 30 Dec 2002
Yup, it was my son's first xmas...(yah, that's me there, with him on my lap). And the fact that he is, indeed cutting his first teeth already makes me feel he's growing up so fast...he strains to be free of my hold (even while he hangs on), wanting to be mobile, to be more dexterous, to be more independent. Already he yearns to move forward into the world. And already I yearn to keep him my baby.
suzanne on 31 Dec 2002
I love that picture. I cry instantly at the lyrics of the song and hear Judy Collins on my old album singing it. My daughter who looked like that baby yesterday is now almost fifteen and introduced me to Eva Cassidy. How beautiful her music is. Thank you for the moving post and comments.
Burningbird on 31 Dec 2002
Happy New Year, Elaine! Nice family photo.