Snapshots in My Memory

It used to be a photographer’s worst nightmare, back before everyone carried a cell phone and every cell phone included a camera. That perfect, once-in-a-lifetime picture looms before you—and you’ve left your camera at home.

The first time this happened to me, I couldn’t have been more than 10 years old. My parents had given me their old Brownie box camera (Anyone else remember these?), and I’d taken some pictures I’m proud of to this day. But this particular day my camera was sitting at home on a shelf.

The spring had been, not unlike most Illinois springs, rather erratic, with cold temperatures giving way to warm temperatures in early March, then reverting to cold temperatures and snow flurries later in the month. As I was walking home from school, I passed an ancient tree with gnarled roots radiating in all directions. The wind suddenly picked up and whirled a mix of snow and brown leaves out from between two of them to reveal, hidden among the remaining leaves and snow, a small clump of violets in bloom.

I could do nothing but try to remember it—like a snapshot in my memory.

Several years later, I was in a car with my parents, riding through the countryside between Flora and Olney in Southern Illinois, and there was the perfect sliver of a moon high in the sky long before sunset, like a fleck of gold floating in a turquoise eye—a snapshot in my memory.

Nearly grown, I was on horseback in the Fox River bottoms near Olney. It’s a wild area. Parts of it look like humankind has never walked there. But most of it is laced with trails like the one I rode this warm autumn day, and small pockets of crops are planted in open places to take advantage of the rich, loamy soil. I was riding past one of these when a red-winged blackbird glided down onto a full, golden head of wheat and balanced there, wings outstretched, for long seconds—a snapshot in my memory.

When I was a young mother living in the Kiamichi Mountains of Southeastern Oklahoma, I woke one night to find my bedroom glowing with silvery light. I rolled over and peeked out the window to find a full moon high in a sky covered with puffy clouds that looked like lily pads. They were reflecting the moon’s light so completely that the dirt road leading to our house looked like a stream of molten silver—a snapshot in my memory.

I was visiting my sister on the plains of Nebraska one summer when her husband called from the airbase to tell us to go to shelter because a severe storm was on the way. As we left her mobile home, I looked across the prairie to see a perfect anvil-shaped cloud preceding the storm front, grumbling thunder and dropping bolts of lightning as it approached—a snapshot in my memory.

My kids grew up in a little town south of Champaign, Illinois. I used to take evening walks past a small, picturesque grove. One evening, mist curled around the trunks of the trees and the air was filled with fireflies. Crouched in the mist, surrounded by fireflies, was a wild rabbit—still as death and poised to flee—a snapshot in my memory.

I’ve seen double and triple rainbows—even an upside-down rainbow once. I didn’t have my camera. I’ve seen sundogs and “the new moon hanging from a star,” and I didn’t have my camera. I’ve seen comets that swept the sky—one with a double tail—and I didn’t have my camera. I’ve seen brilliant sunsets, fiery dawns, bursts of lightning in pink and green that came down from the clouds and up from the earth and met in the middle—and I didn’t have my camera.

All just snapshots in my memory--until now. Now you have those snapshots, too.

Hidden Places and Secret Spaces

My father loved hidden things: boxes with hidden locks, secret drawers in furniture, hidden cubbies in unlikely places…

            I’d known about his fascination with boxes for quite some time. He loved the way the fit together, especially those with dovetailed joints. I found out about his interest in hidden locks when I accidentally bought him a box for Christmas that had one. I’d bought it for the beauty of the wood; he enjoyed learning how to open it.

            Later, when Hubby and I had had our adventure in the world and limped back home to raise our two children, our financial situation forced us to settle in a very small house. Our older daughter wound up with the smallest of the three bedrooms. In my search to maximize the space, I found a picture in a magazine of a twin bed built over a double row of drawers and with bookcases rising up from the side against the wall. It was perfect.

            I showed the picture to my father, explaining why I felt Katriena needed it. He and Hubby drew up a plan, bought wood, and went to work. It was perfect: six dresser-like drawers in front and a door in the back that wasn’t included in the model bed where long objects could be stored. I don’t remember what Katriena had that made him think she needed that. Then he pulled one of the top drawers completely out to reveal a secret drawer where Katriena could store things she didn’t want just everyone to be able to find.

            But my father’s real masterpiece was the house on the lake. My mother had always wanted to live on a lake, and my father’s goal in life was to give her everything she wanted. (She really didn’t ask for much, to tell the truth.) They’d bought the lot several years earlier and used the garage/cabin on weekends. Then when he retired, they started the house.

            They’d built a house together before—the house I grew up in—all by themselves. They made a few mistakes, but nothing most people ever noticed. This time, at the age of 60, my father wisely decided to hire a little help. He had a man to dig the foundation and help laying it and a team to install the sheetrock, and my teenaged nephew spent the summer with him, learning how to build.

            My father had read that most houses destroyed by tornadoes are wrecked because the tornado lifts the roof, usually attached to the frame only with a few nails. (They call it toe-nailing, I believe). So he bolted the frame to the foundation, then bolted steel straps to the top of the frame and over the roof trusses. Going to take a Class 5 to blow that baby down. But just in case, in the hall he put a trapdoor that led down to the crawl space, which was plastic lined to keep it clean and dry. All hidden.

            Then he decided the house needed secret hiding places—I was never sure for what, since they had very little worth stealing.  Nevertheless, he built them—not in the living room or bedroom, where most thieves would look, but in the bathroom. One, I believe, was behind a built-in magazine rack. The location of the other was so funny that I remember it well—behind the recess in the wall that held the toilet tissue.

            I wonder still if the people who live in that house now have found all the secret places and hidden safety features. As for the bed, it still has a place in my home. My granddaughter sleeps in it when she comes to visit, but the hidden drawer is empty. I, too, have very little anyone would want to steal—even my small amount of jewelry has mostly sentimental value. But I can almost hear my dad shouting across the vale, “Put it in that drawer! Don’t you know that’s what it’s for?”