Blast From The Past

So, I was cleaning around my bed this weekend a little, digging out everything, matching shoes, throwing stuff away.  And I found my box.  My box is an old wine box from about 1965, New's Year Eve and some of the worse hung over people since the invention of wine parties.  (Wait a minute I think my left eye just rolled back into my head at the horror of the memory of that next day!)

In the box are memories.  News clippings and photos of my canoeing from Minnesota to Hudson's Bay and back.  The first shooting award I won - age 10 in France.  Letters from dead relatives.  Photos of people whom have been important in my life but are now long gone.  A gaufrette recipe from my mentor (see dedication at beginning of Pleasures in Cooking).  Awards from when I sang competitively and musicals I was in.  A tiny rock from Gibraltar, another from Fort Sumter.  The comic book I bought for the flight from Germany to the USA - I should have bought maybe 6 - what a flight!  Mementos which bring a smile to my lips - of another day, another time, another Kris.

First drawings from my first God-children, children and ones of great importance to me.  In fact were this house to burn down, that is the only thing that I will make sure to retrieve - even if I am burned doing so.  Those drawings are incredibly valuable to me.

Photos of my father, my grandfather, my grandmother, my beloved great uncle whom raised me.  Pictures from the farm so long gone and ones I took with my first camera around Seaside in the days of black and white!  All of my ski patches from being on the ski patrol, from being Rocky Mountain Search and Rescue, my rescue diver credentials.  The list goes on.

No it would not be the death of me if all was lost but it would hurt to lose them from my life.  But, it also hurts to see the long dead, for my heart mourns the loss of them.  We were never created to know death.  ...  And the lone Polaroid, taken when Dutchman and I went out for an evening with our intendeds.  Well, I think she was beautiful, I thought her mother was as well, so she probably still is.  But, it was what was behind the glasses that had drawn me to her ... an honest heart and intentional spirit, whom could have known how tragic it would all turn out, but that special someone died a very long time ago.  (I have only seen one other person with an honest heart and intentional spirit, in my lifetime ... )  Adrienne, an Italian friend was out with us took the pictures with her new Polaroid and we all laughed at how geeky Dutchman and I looked in our photos.  The femme fatales were perfect of course.

I guess I can share this, it has been 42 years ago now .... a time of leisure suits, white shoes, turtle necks and hot pants.  I was so terrified, out of my league and I knew it, but she liked this computer nerd.  I drove a 1964 Rambler American (my Austin Healy Cambridge was dead at the time) and she had a 1967 fastback Mustang.  I did mention I was out of my league, right?  And it was a difficult photo, I was 6'4.5" and she 5'10".  So, I was actually leaning on the wall behind me with my legs shot out in front.  It was easier for Dutchman and Sister Becca, they were both 6 foot tall!

Now that I think of it, we were in Dutchman's Opel Kadet that night, I had lost my water pump in the Rambler.  It is always something with any car I own or drive!  At the time, Dutchman was hooked on a nurse - Rebecca, yes same Sister Becca I have mentioned in past blogs.  No one could tell him she did not feel for him as he did for her.  She was a beautiful Christian young woman but was determined to never be dominated by a man.  And she was not, she - like my Swedish Model - are still single, having never married.  No neither are/were "gay".  Guess you have to say that these days.

A few years ago I flew my children to see my grandmother, stopped for lunch at Red Robin and I kept hearing this voice, so familiar, so vague, I just could not place it and yet I knew it well.  I finally turned and took a look at the booth across from us to behold SM out with some girl friends.  I guess that she is let out of the hospital occasionally.  I was so tempted to walk by and whisper something mysterious in her ear that would leave her screaming at two in the morning when she figured it out.  (still makes me smile to think of that!)  But, I am nothing if not a coward, hiding behind his breeding as a Gentleman ....

And later I crossed paths with her mother several times.  But, that does not make for happy memories, so I will end that one here.  Besides it is somewhere in the Little Apple ...