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I know, I know. I said I was on a blogging break – and I still am. But I found something yesterday that I simply had to share with you.
Just to give you a bit of backstory, Dan and I were full-time residents of the Los Angeles area back in 2004. That fall, we drove two thousand miles to visit my family in New Orleans – and to clean out my old bedroom (in my mother's house) of any pertinent items. So, into the super-tiny rental car, I managed to squeeze my Lego collection, my high school yearbooks, and boxes filled with photographs, among other things. Although I don't believe in a higher power – other than the universe, of course – I do believe that some benevolent force was smiling at me that day. After all, roughly ten months later, Hurricane Katrina flooded my mother's house and destroyed everything but the Christmas decorations in the attic – which means a lifetime worth of photographs would be history now.
While I did lose a lot of precious memorabilia in the floods that ravaged the Big Easy – old videotapes and math trophies, for instance – I thank Serendipity every day that my photographs were spared. On the other hand, while Katrina taught my mother – who lost most of her possessions, including her old photographs and yearbooks – not to get too attached to material goods, the big bad storm only made me more paranoid to lose mine – which is why I currently keep my photographs in a storage facility in southern California and drag my negatives with me around the country. Dan, naturally, thinks I'm a little loony – for one thing, he claims, the negatives are more likely to burn up in a horrible car accident (thanks, honey, for that image) than be flooded in a storage facility, and for another thing, he believes I'm way too attached to the past.
On that second point, he could be right. Recently, we purchased a negative scanner – in order for me to begin transferring my old negatives to digital files – both to preserve them for posterity and to satisfy my need for travel-related images for my American Nomad blog. After all, I've only been using digital cameras for the past few years – prior to 2006, I used nothing but Kodak film.
So, long story short, I decided to begin scanning my negatives yesterday – no small feat, given the thousands upon thousands of negatives I possess. Although my ability to use the scanner (and color-correct the images) is a work-in-progress, I relished this walk down memory lane. So far, the images that have tickled me most are the photos from the three-week-long East Coast trip that I took with my mother back in 1988 – when I was, gulp, just a few months shy of my twelfth birthday. That summer, Mom and I journeyed from New Orleans to Canada and back again, visiting everything from Williamsburg to Monticello to Washington, D.C., to Niagara Falls (all of which are pictured here). Each photograph brought back a mass of memories, proving the old adage that “a picture is worth a thousand words.” But no image haunted me more than this one of me in New York City – which proves that some moments are truly frozen in time.
And, with that, I'll quietly slip back into my self-imposed break. See you in 2010 - and may all your resolutions come true!
Reflecting on yesterday’s post about Cracker Barrel and the misleading nature of nostalgia, I stumbled upon an old game this evening – a game that I’d rescued from my mother’s house less than a year before Hurricane Katrina slurped all the rest of our board games and jigsaw puzzles under eight feet of water. It’s called Pass the Pigs – and if you’ve never heard of it, you’re in for a treat. It was, in fact, one of my favorite games as a kid, and my mother, an avid swine lover, was equally fond of Pass the Pigs.
The particular version that I own is, big surprise, intended for travelers. Contained within a sleek black case (embossed with two pig shapes at the top) are two small plastic pigs, two golf-style pencils, and a tiny score pad. The object of the game is simple: to be the first player to reach 100 points, which you earn by rolling the two pigs simultaneously (like dice) on a smooth surface. How the pigs land is what determines your score – the more difficult the position, the higher the score.
This is where the game gets really hilarious. If the pigs land on opposite sides (with one pig lying on its right side, and the other lying on its left side), this is called a Pig Out – you get zero points and lose your turn. Common positions include the Sider (one point for both pigs lying on the same side), the Trotter (five points if a pig lands on all four feet, twenty points if both pigs land that way), and the Razorback (five points if a pig lands on its back, twenty points if both pigs land that way).
The toughest positions are the Snouter (ten points if a pig lands on its snout and two front feet, forty points if both pigs land that way) and the Leaning Jowler (fifteen points if a pig lands on an ear, its snout, and a front foot, sixty points if both pigs land that way). Of course, most of the time, the pigs will land in different positions, which is called a Mixed Combo. Pray to the Piggy God that you don’t roll an Oinker – where the pigs are touching when they land – a position that will end your turn and zap all of your accumulated points. The worst roll that can happen, though, is a Piggyback – whereby one pig ends up standing on top of the other one – “an unnatural pig position,” according to the instructions, resulting in an instant boot from the game.
Not comical enough for you? Well, in Pass the Pigs, the scorekeeper is called the swineherd and the players can opt for another version of the game, Hog Call – whereby players must predict the position in which the pigs will land. Take my word for it – this game is a family-friendly laugh riot, and even though I miss all the games, puzzles, stuffed animals, trophies, photographs, and other childhood memorabilia that I lost in Katrina, I thank my lucky stars that smile-inducing things like Pass the Pigs were spared from Mother Nature’s wrath. 'Cause, unlike Cracker Barrel, this game is still just as awesome as ever - I even plan to challenge my husband to a round tomorrow night. I'll let you know which pig-tosser prevails.
Ever since I was a child, growing up in New Orleans, I’ve been cuckoo for jigsaw puzzles. As with many of my longtime interests, I have Mom to thank for my puzzle obsession. Over the years, we worked on a variety of puzzles together – from a silly 1000-piece map of the United States, with crazy little characters that kept us giggling all week, to a 550-piece snapshot of chocolate slabs that made us both ravenous every time we assembled it.
No matter where we were living at the time – the house in New Orleans East, the place north of Lake Pontchartrain, the last one in Lakeview – there was always a stack of puzzles in my mother’s closet. When I visited her in the fall of 2004, I rescued my favorite one from the stack – a vibrant drawing of a unicorn in a meadow. Thank Serendipity that I did, for less than a year later, Hurricane Katrina broke the levee between Metairie and Lakeview, and submerged nearly all of my mother’s belongings, including our beloved puzzles. When I finally saw the house again – several months after Katrina had uprooted my mother and forced her to relocate to Baton Rouge – all that was left of our puzzles were a few scattered pieces in the moldy carpet.
But I’ve never forgotten the joy that I felt working on puzzles with Mom – and the sense of accomplishment whenever we finished one. I’ll never forget, too, our ritual – we would work steadily until the very last piece, which we would insert into the puzzle together.
Today, I still work on puzzles – occasionally with my nieces, but more often by myself. I find them at once relaxing and challenging – so much so that I decided to mention them in my first novel, Hollow Souls. Of course, the novel is soon to undergo a major revision, so it’s possible that the puzzle scene will have to go. Whether it stays or not, though, I’d like to share it with you:
After a leisurely dinner with her friends, Caroline followed the Littletons up to the third level. Most Hollowites were so active during the week that they had to reserve specific nights for uninterrupted family time. For the Littletons, three hours every Sunday were theirs to spend however they wanted – no homework, chores, guard shifts, or other appointments – just board games, jigsaw puzzles, art projects, storytelling sessions, moonlit strolls, anything that allowed them to have fun together. Caroline was flattered to be included in such a precious family ritual.
By half-past seven, a dozen individuals sat on the floor of the Littletons’ cozy parlor, trying to assemble a jigsaw puzzle that had only been completed once before – when it was first crafted. Earlier in the year, Mariah Singleton, a skilled portrait painter, had invited Anna and Agnes to pose for a joint picture. Two months later, in celebration of her lifelong friends’ thirty-seventh wedding anniversary, she’d created a life-sized depiction of them, portrayed from head to waist. Instead of handing over the painting, however, she’d sliced the thin wooden canvas into a thousand smaller pieces and stored them in a hand-carved box. Though grateful for the gift, the couple had yet to see the actual portrait, so tonight they’d convinced the family to help them complete the puzzle, which they planned to glue, frame, and hang on their bedroom wall.
For four hours, the family discussed everything from schoolwork to Christmas presents, while diligently laboring on different sections of the picture. Margaret, Julia, and Agnes toiled over the rose-colored background while the children struggled with the women’s faces. Although the subjects of the painting were in their very midst, all of them, including Anna and Agnes, found it challenging to complete the puzzle without a comparison image. Eventually, they were compelled to raid their closets for the outfits worn during their studio sitting. With the clothes draped across the sofa, the image emerged more quickly, though it still proved a difficult project for the men, whose patience wore thin after the first hour.
Nevertheless, the family persevered. Caroline proved especially dexterous; she’d assembled many puzzles in her room back in Lexington. Ignoring the children’s normal bedtime, the family managed to achieve their goal, and Caroline was given the honor of securing the last piece – a smidgen of Anna’s brown eye.
When the image was again whole, the family surveyed Mariah’s handiwork. Against the rosy drapery that the artist had hung in the background, Anna and Agnes posed in a comfortable, smiling embrace. Wearing a maize-hued corduroy dress, with her thick black hair pulled into a single braid, Anna stood behind Agnes, her arms encircling her companion’s waist, her brown-skinned fingers interlaced with her partner’s pale, slender hands. Agnes’ curly, grayish-blonde hair was cropped in a customary bob, and her cotton blouse was the shade of sea green. Well into middle age, the women seemed younger in Mariah’s rendition, perhaps because, after nearly four decades, theirs was an embrace of two women still in love.
“I like it,” Jesse said. “You both look really happy. Younger, too.”
“Yeah,” Caroline agreed. “And the colors are all so pretty.”
“You should definitely get it framed,” Joshua added. “Me and Dad could do it for you.”
Anna squeezed her partner’s hand. “I think the kids are right.”
Agnes smiled. “Think it does us justice?”
Margaret laughed. “Ladies, if an artist manages to capture your unique styles, illustrate your love for each other, and make you look younger, the painting’s definitely a keeper.”
“Thanks, everyone, for helping us put it together,” Anna said as she lifted the board.
Agnes picked up the other end, and together they walked toward their bedroom door, balancing the puzzle between them. “Yeah, if we’d had to do it on our own, we wouldn’t have finished ‘til our fortieth anniversary. And we see these faces every day.”
Just to give you a bit of backstory, Dan and I were full-time residents of the Los Angeles area back in 2004. That fall, we drove two thousand miles to visit my family in New Orleans – and to clean out my old bedroom (in my mother's house) of any pertinent items. So, into the super-tiny rental car, I managed to squeeze my Lego collection, my high school yearbooks, and boxes filled with photographs, among other things. Although I don't believe in a higher power – other than the universe, of course – I do believe that some benevolent force was smiling at me that day. After all, roughly ten months later, Hurricane Katrina flooded my mother's house and destroyed everything but the Christmas decorations in the attic – which means a lifetime worth of photographs would be history now.
While I did lose a lot of precious memorabilia in the floods that ravaged the Big Easy – old videotapes and math trophies, for instance – I thank Serendipity every day that my photographs were spared. On the other hand, while Katrina taught my mother – who lost most of her possessions, including her old photographs and yearbooks – not to get too attached to material goods, the big bad storm only made me more paranoid to lose mine – which is why I currently keep my photographs in a storage facility in southern California and drag my negatives with me around the country. Dan, naturally, thinks I'm a little loony – for one thing, he claims, the negatives are more likely to burn up in a horrible car accident (thanks, honey, for that image) than be flooded in a storage facility, and for another thing, he believes I'm way too attached to the past.
On that second point, he could be right. Recently, we purchased a negative scanner – in order for me to begin transferring my old negatives to digital files – both to preserve them for posterity and to satisfy my need for travel-related images for my American Nomad blog. After all, I've only been using digital cameras for the past few years – prior to 2006, I used nothing but Kodak film.
So, long story short, I decided to begin scanning my negatives yesterday – no small feat, given the thousands upon thousands of negatives I possess. Although my ability to use the scanner (and color-correct the images) is a work-in-progress, I relished this walk down memory lane. So far, the images that have tickled me most are the photos from the three-week-long East Coast trip that I took with my mother back in 1988 – when I was, gulp, just a few months shy of my twelfth birthday. That summer, Mom and I journeyed from New Orleans to Canada and back again, visiting everything from Williamsburg to Monticello to Washington, D.C., to Niagara Falls (all of which are pictured here). Each photograph brought back a mass of memories, proving the old adage that “a picture is worth a thousand words.” But no image haunted me more than this one of me in New York City – which proves that some moments are truly frozen in time.
