Memories

  Ellen and I remember some things from our childhood differently.  She remembers getting full size candy bars on Halloween from Mrs. Miller at the north end of our block.  I remember getting those full size candy bars from Mrs. Tarble at the south end.

  She remembers going out trick-or-treating no more than two nights every year.  I remember going out every single night the entire week before Halloween.  

  And those red Marshallette boots that Ellen talks about in her first blog post, I very distinctly remember them being white.

  Our parents are both gone, so there's no referee available to set us straight when we butt heads about these memory discrepancies.  Although, in all honesty, I'm not sure they would be much help even if they were here, since we trick-or-treated unaccompanied by parents, and spent a large part of our childhood running out the front door at the beginning of the day, with the sole warning of "be home before dark."  

  This isn't to say that we had bad parents.  They were great.  Ellen and I both remember an idyllic childhood and grew up thnking we were the center of our parents' world.  It just turns out that maybe we weren't.  At least not in the same sense as kids are now.  

  This was brought home to me when I read Ellen's second blog about her memory of 9-11, and how she knew where each of her grown kids were when that memorable event happened.  I was struck by what she wrote because I remember where my kids were too. And I'm pretty sure that my memory of the recent death of bin Laden will be framed just as much by where my kids were in their lives as where I was in mine.

  I'm not sure why, but parents these days seem much more intimately involved in the lives of their children, even when those children are adults.   Ellen and I have both had adult children living in our homes, and days seldom pass without  phone calls and texts between us and our grown kids.  There are also Facebook pages to check, blogs to read, and online scrabble games to play to keep us informed and in touch. 

  When the kids were younger, Ellen was cheering in the bleachers at every single game her kids played in and singing along at every musical performance.  I gave myself permission to stay home from most of my kids' away games, but was never able to completely get rid of the guilt that came along with that luxury. We both drove the kids to school every day, picked them up from practices, and, in the summer, put on our own bathing suits and went with them to the pool.

   In contrast, Ellen and I walked to school with friends every day and road our bikes across town to the swimming pool, where we stayed by ourselves until it closed. Although we grew up before Title 9, and were relegated to being cheerleaders and Marshellettes instead of sports stars, I don't remember Mom going to a single game where we cheered.  I remember Dad being there occassionally, but I'm pretty sure he was on the sidelines watching the game rather than Ellen or me.  As we got older and moved out, once and for good, we kept in touch with our parents almost entirely with weekly phone calls on Sunday nights.   

  Remembering this more relaxed age of parenting has made me wonder if I might be mistaken about another memory I've long been sure that Ellen was wrong about.  

  She remembers little plastic toys being thrown out of airplanes at our town's annual easter egg hunts.  I've always insisted that, even in a small town in the '50's, where bicycle helmets were unheard of, toys didn't have warnings, sunscreen and seatbelts hadn't been invented,  and kids went to swimming pools and roamed the streets unattended from morning til night, nobody was foolish enough to be throwing little plastic toys out of airplanes and into the wide eyes of waiting kids.  

  But maybe I've been wrong.   As best I can remember, there weren't any parents around to stop it.