Autumn Memories
(This is actually (I feel) on of my better/more literary posts - I am re-sunning this today because you can truly sense fall approaching - also because I am feeling kind of home-sick for the hills of Pennsylvania....)
Autumn memories
I grew up in the foot-hills of the Allegheny mountain range, just near Pittsburgh PA, in a small town called Verona. I laugh now when I think of it because a long time ago on the Internet via an IRC chat room I earned the name of Juliette because some guy from Switzerland found out I was born in Verona and was ½ Italian *shakes head* those were the days….I should try and find him sometime....
My family was very poor and the town was very small so there were few rich people. I attended a Catholic school run by a group of nuns that seemed hell-bent on beating any imagination, curiosity or rebellion out of us. I don’t think they succeeded with me – I was after all, the rebel in my family and NO ONE was going to beat that out of me. For the most part, I spent my time with the other kids in the neighborhood who were also poor. Most did not even qualify for what would now be considered, middle class. We had lots to do all the time, it seemed – we were always playing, always riding our bikes, always running through the woods, hanging out at each others houses where our mothers would put up with all the noise and sometimes offer cookies and kool-aid. It was a good childhood.
The richest lady in town lived across the street from our small house in what to my mind, as a young girl, seemed a very grand house indeed – she had a vestibule, a long hall-way, that lead to a winding staircase that went to the second floor and, I am sure, many bedrooms, a parlour, a living room, a dining room and a kitchen! There was also a porch in the back that looked over her small garden. Her name was Mrs. Nicholas and she was a widow. She sticks out in my mind because my mother used to have me run errands for her since she was our neighbor. I thought Mrs. Nicholas was kindly but I did not like her much – there just seemed to be something about her that I found scary and cold, but, I did the errands because it gave me a chance to see the inside of her house and all of her wonderful old furniture. Sometimes, I would even earn a little candy money for my efforts.
I remember one evening in particular when I was sitting on the porch steps outside of our small house. For some reason I remember it being very quiet and I was not with anyone, no one else seemed to be outside. Dusk was approaching and it was late summer – you could feel a slight chill on the air and you knew your days of being out until 9:00 PM, playing and not having to get up and go to school in the morning were coming to a close. It was one of those late-summer evenings where you just wanted it to go on forever.
I happened to glance across the street to the old-lady’s house. I saw Mrs. Nicholas sitting on her porch and she was gently swinging on her porch swing. Slowly she put her hands up to her head and I guess in my absent-minded youth I had never noticed how she wore her hair before. I just knew she had white hair. She began un-pinning her hair and slowly the hair fell in long braids all around her shoulders and down her back – almost to her waist. She slowly began unbraiding her hair (I was absolutely fascinated by this for some odd reason) and when she was done – she has the most beautiful cascade of white, wavy hair creating a shawl around her – making her look like an aging faerie queen. She looked beautiful. And at that moment, something inside my 11-year-old brain signaled to me that I had witnessed something which was probably very private, something that no other person besides her husband had probably witnessed in many years. It was almost sacred.
After that moment, I never looked at Mrs. Nicholas the same way, I would go to her house without being asked to offer to help her and, I even refused her money. Somehow we began a small friendship and I would bring things to her that my mother would bake for her and she would buy items that the Catholic school would force us to sell.
Mrs. Nicholas died the winter before I moved to Cleveland; I was saddened by her passing. Not in the same way I was sad from losing my grandmother, whom I lost that same year, but more like I was losing the last vestiges of my childhood and those long summer evenings that seemed to go on forever.
Autumn memories
I grew up in the foot-hills of the Allegheny mountain range, just near Pittsburgh PA, in a small town called Verona. I laugh now when I think of it because a long time ago on the Internet via an IRC chat room I earned the name of Juliette because some guy from Switzerland found out I was born in Verona and was ½ Italian *shakes head* those were the days….I should try and find him sometime....
My family was very poor and the town was very small so there were few rich people. I attended a Catholic school run by a group of nuns that seemed hell-bent on beating any imagination, curiosity or rebellion out of us. I don’t think they succeeded with me – I was after all, the rebel in my family and NO ONE was going to beat that out of me. For the most part, I spent my time with the other kids in the neighborhood who were also poor. Most did not even qualify for what would now be considered, middle class. We had lots to do all the time, it seemed – we were always playing, always riding our bikes, always running through the woods, hanging out at each others houses where our mothers would put up with all the noise and sometimes offer cookies and kool-aid. It was a good childhood.
The richest lady in town lived across the street from our small house in what to my mind, as a young girl, seemed a very grand house indeed – she had a vestibule, a long hall-way, that lead to a winding staircase that went to the second floor and, I am sure, many bedrooms, a parlour, a living room, a dining room and a kitchen! There was also a porch in the back that looked over her small garden. Her name was Mrs. Nicholas and she was a widow. She sticks out in my mind because my mother used to have me run errands for her since she was our neighbor. I thought Mrs. Nicholas was kindly but I did not like her much – there just seemed to be something about her that I found scary and cold, but, I did the errands because it gave me a chance to see the inside of her house and all of her wonderful old furniture. Sometimes, I would even earn a little candy money for my efforts.
I remember one evening in particular when I was sitting on the porch steps outside of our small house. For some reason I remember it being very quiet and I was not with anyone, no one else seemed to be outside. Dusk was approaching and it was late summer – you could feel a slight chill on the air and you knew your days of being out until 9:00 PM, playing and not having to get up and go to school in the morning were coming to a close. It was one of those late-summer evenings where you just wanted it to go on forever.
I happened to glance across the street to the old-lady’s house. I saw Mrs. Nicholas sitting on her porch and she was gently swinging on her porch swing. Slowly she put her hands up to her head and I guess in my absent-minded youth I had never noticed how she wore her hair before. I just knew she had white hair. She began un-pinning her hair and slowly the hair fell in long braids all around her shoulders and down her back – almost to her waist. She slowly began unbraiding her hair (I was absolutely fascinated by this for some odd reason) and when she was done – she has the most beautiful cascade of white, wavy hair creating a shawl around her – making her look like an aging faerie queen. She looked beautiful. And at that moment, something inside my 11-year-old brain signaled to me that I had witnessed something which was probably very private, something that no other person besides her husband had probably witnessed in many years. It was almost sacred.
After that moment, I never looked at Mrs. Nicholas the same way, I would go to her house without being asked to offer to help her and, I even refused her money. Somehow we began a small friendship and I would bring things to her that my mother would bake for her and she would buy items that the Catholic school would force us to sell.
Mrs. Nicholas died the winter before I moved to Cleveland; I was saddened by her passing. Not in the same way I was sad from losing my grandmother, whom I lost that same year, but more like I was losing the last vestiges of my childhood and those long summer evenings that seemed to go on forever.
Labels: Growing Up, Memories, Pennsylvania, Re-Posts
posted by Colette at 10:04 AM
1 Comments:
Nice story and very well written.
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