Long days of quarantine alone in my little house in Carazo have lulled me into meditative introspection, as they doubtless have nearly everyone with too much unoccupied time and too little human conversation. It is familiar territory by now, as mine has been largely a life of the mind for these past five years. Lately, though, I am increasingly conscious of the tenuousness of my recollections, which will surely vanish when I do. It is surely a normal preoccupation of people in the "third age," as it is called here on signs directing disabled, pregnant or elderly customers to use a designated window at the bank.
I have been giving myself guided meditations, visiting various places in my past to try and re-experience the feel, the ambience, the smells and sensations that float up and put me in touch with my younger self. I barely recall the little row house I lived in for the first five years of my life. It is instead my grandmother's house that framed my childhood in Bellefonte, Pennsylvania.
Because my parents produced their first four children in rapid succession, and I, second-born, needed the attentions of a distant eye surgeon over several years, it often fell to my Nana to take me to doctor's appontments in Sunbury, PA. She drove a large Buick, with my taciturn grandfather, "Pop," in the passenger seat, smoking. I sat behind, often wedged between sisters of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, who happily accepted a ride between convents in Bellefonte and Sunbury. Happily, that is, until my carsickness erupted and I barfed all over their neat black habits. I can still smell that awful cigar smoke, but I dared not complain. My grandmother brooked no nonsense from children. She certainly loved us all, but she was a rather starchy sort of lady with strict expectations that I knew to respect. Once I started school, Easter vacation/Holy Week became my special time to visit Nana. She was a convert to Catholicism, meaning she attended every single service and ritual, and those were some very long hours on the kneeler in the family pew at Saint John the Evangelist church. But she also took me shopping for a nice outfit and new shoes and hat, and I loved being in her gracious home, which had been one of the first to acquire electricity back in the day. Plus, Nana had a television! My parents resisted buying a boob tube until I was fifteen. Until then, it was only at Nana's or my Aunt Eleanor's house that I could watch TV. At Nana's, that meant Lawrence Welk, Perry Mason, and Gunsmoke. Aunt Eleanor let me watch The Twilight Zone with my cousins Debbie and Katie. (O, the nightmares!) She also had a record of the Peruvian singer Yma Sumac that I never tired of hearing!
When I was five, Nana took me to Geisinger Medical Center in Danville for the second of three eye surgeries to correct strabismus. I distinctly remember being changed into pajamas, and taken to a playroom where an older boy was dragooned into helping me eat lunch. I felt incredibly special to have his attentions, and never noticed Nana's departure. My parents were under orders not to visit me following the surgery, to avoid having me cry, I expect. My mother's younger brother Bill, unaware of the order, decided to visit me on his way back from Philadelphia, and I remember being so happy to see him. I had a third surgery when I was eight. My happiest childhood memories are of my mother reading to me during the two-week periods when I was functionally blind after returning home from Danville. She read "Heidi" when I was five, and "Little Women" after the third operation. How she wrested time from caring for four young children to read whole books to me is a mystery. But it made a lifelong voracious reader of me.
