wet green brown and purple

The rains of spring have arrived, and with them have come bursts of color and inspiration and memory inside my brain. A good friend posted several photographs from college yesterday on a fairly public website; I've been enjoying them and thinking of those times since. Those pictures have stories; those stories have smells and textures and strange little jests. I do not want to forget these things. They must not disappear behind the cloudy eyes of days not yet born.

It makes me think of my parents telling me stories from their college days. They both maintain that the happiest days of their lives (at least until parenthood) were those in college. I remember a few of these stories, but not enough. My stories and memories matter to me, and so do the stories of my parents and family. We're not famous; I very much doubt any biographers are going to pieces together our miniature sagas in decades of the future. So, I want to save some snippets. I do not know where this will go.

-A sideshow performer hailed from the region of my mother's birth, and he still spent his time off the circuit in the area. The Knots of Knott County had small growths all over his face. They projected, dripped, bumped and stuck out from every part of his face; his specialty consisted of using his eyebrows to wiggle a long one that hung out over his eye. He did this to scare and amuse children. When he did this in my mother's direction, she was terrified and indignant.

-When asked, my grandma would always say that she choose to marry my grandpa, a salesman eight years her senior, because he was the best dancer.

-When I was a very little girl I spent lots of time outdoors. One day my grandmother came with me to spend time near my tree in the apple orchard. We brought my little round basket filled with play jewelry and decorated the early tree with these sparkling baubles. Plastic hearts, rhinestones, and all my assorted treasure made my already special tree otherworldly in the bright sunshine. Somehow we even managed to gather most of the jewelry back into the basket though, if I recall correctly, that was much harder.

More to come.