One childhood memory that stands out to me is the plays my sisters and I used to perform almost nightly for our poor parents. We would either reenact a story we had heard before (Has anyone ever heard the story of One Eye, Two Eye, Three Eye??) or we would make something up to go with whatever props or costumes we had at the time. Our poor parents had to sit through so many ghastly performances, but they always did so with a smile on their faces.
One thing about the plays that I love is the fact that they taught me a lot about creativity and not being afraid to step out of the box. Being that I'm quiet, most people assume that I'm always serious. However, thanks to my sisters, I am actually quite wacky and like to goof around as much as the next person.
I'm looking forward to hearing your memories!
9 comments:
My favorite memories are the holidays. I know that's really predictable, but we did things differently in my house. When we went to get a tree, we didn't go to a lot, we went out to Cuba and cut one down ourselves. If we found one we liked, we would ask Mom if she liked it too and if she said yes, then it was that tree that came home with us. No ifs, ands, or buts.
The there were the cookies and candy. Mom LOVED aniseed cookies, but I used them for house hockey. So I learned how to make cookies me and Zoe, my sister, liked. The we would make batch after batch of slap yo mama toffee (more delicately known as Christmas candy).
But my absolute favorite thing was always the Christmas fort. It was a special fort that couldn't be taken down by Mom or Dad. Because it's Christmas. We would take blankets and pillows and set them up to make a fort very much like the one in The Holiday (if you haven't seen it, I HIGHLY suggest it for Christmas time). We would round up all the animals and they would spend the night in the fort with us until the morning.
We had to go wake up the parents before we saw the tree, it was a rule that no one could see the tree before anyone else on Christmas morning. The presents weren't nearly as important as having fun with the family.
I have to say that some of my favorite memories with my mom were going to go see plays together. Ever since I was little I've been involved in music and musical theater, and my mom would take me to go see different plays, and that was always special to me. I remember once when I was like 14, my mother and I went to NY for spring break. While we were there there was a lottery drawing for front row tickets to go see Wicked. We waited for like 2 hours in the freezing cold with about 300 other people for them to draw names, and somehow, my mother's name and my name both got drawn! We sold the other two tickets to a mother daughter pair we had made friends with while waiting. It was such an incredible experience; I literally had goosebumps the entire time! It was also just really special because it was something that she and I will always have together.
It was extremely difficult to come up with one great memory from so many, but I would have to say one memory that stands out to me is when I swallowed my tooth at church when I was six. I remember bawling after the fact because I was so afraid that the Tooth Fairy wasn't going to visit me that night because I didn't have a tooth to put under my pillow. My mom tried her best to comfort me through my ridiculous situation and told me to write a letter to the Tooth Fairy and explain to her what had happened. I ended up writing a two page letter about what happened. Now that I think about it, the letter was my first and only apology letter.
I guess this memory stands out to me so much because it shows how much my mom tried to make the worst situations better for me. She also tried her best to keep my imagination alive by encouraging me to believe in any crazy thing I liked. Even today my mom tries to comfort me when I am having a rough time, and I don't think I'll ever be able to thank her enough!
Carolyn, your memory is by far the cutest ever!!!!! Haha. Ummm... I can't focus on a specific memory exactly, But one that I always remember is telling people a made up story about a ghost with one black eye. My mom would have me tell it to everyone. It was pretty cute. What I learned from it would probably be the fact that I was able to develop my story telling abilities and am not scarred expressing myself or telling jokes. Good time ;)
When I was younger, my sister had a little plastic Beauty and the Beast tent that we practically lived in for weeks at a time. The instructions for putting it together were a little complicated however. There were several (unlabeled) different sized plastic pipes to put it together. It was quite a challenge, so we always had to beg our parents to help us put it together. Typically they would just let us leave it up so that they did not have to keep struggling to put it together, but eventually they got smart and labeled the pipes so it was an easy assembly. The other problem was this tent was that it did not exactly breathe! Haha. It was a plastic cover that fit over the frame, and there was only one little three inch by three inch square window in the back of it. My sister and I had so much fun playing in it that we never realized how cramped or beastly hot it was in there! We would always beg our parents to come in and play with us. However they could pretty much only fit their head in. The memories of our little plastic tent just make me think of many days of my happy childhood when my family would play together. It also shows how much my parents loved us not only because they would be constantly putting the tent together, but because they would brave the tight space and high temperature inside our tent just to make us happy! :)
I love this post! Reading all the stories before mine bring back so many memories! First I remember that me and my brother for Christmas would always sneak out before my parents and try to catch a glimpse of what Santa got us. Our Christmas tree always was between the two couches in our den and my toys were always on the side next to the shorter couch and my brothers were always next to the long couch under the tree and we each had our own 'side' of the tree. One Christmas, I went out in the wee hours of the morning where the light was barely enough to make out vague shapes under the tree, but I had forgotten that my dad's cousin was sleeping on the couch, so I went to go peer over the side of the couch and there was a person there asleep, so then after my heart got a kick of adrenaline, I had to try and get back to my bed without making any noise.
Another memory that came up was that my brother had a tent kind of like the one Lauren talked about but it was made out of cloth and it was just simple colors like yellow and red and green and I was super jealous because this was one kick ass little tent with little cloth windows and everything and pipes that you had to connect and slide through the cloth slots on the corners and such, so my parents, because I wanted one too, bought me a barbie one, which I loved, but it wasn't nearly as cool as his, because mine had a whole bunch of piping but mine was just the plastic cover that slid over the top, and although I had so much fun with that propped up in my room taking up most of my floor space, it reeked really bad of plastic, but it was so cool because it was so much fun to play in! And then I would want to go 'camping' in it at night in my room, but it wasn't long enough to lay down in, so I would either have to curl up super uncomfortably or stick my feet out of the end, underneath the barbie cover.
And one last memory. I remember when my brother was sick, I'd try to make him feel better by bringing him his Teddy Eddy (a little teddy dressed in a baseball uniform that he had loved on so much the stuffy only filled half it's body; I also coveted this animal, and my parents had another one, but it was a healthy, unloved one that was still plump with stuffing, but I wanted the loved on one). Anyway, I would bring him his Teddy Eddy to make him feel better, trying to be a mom, like we talked about in class where we discussed our old souls. He would sit on the couch with the blanket and soup my mom made for him, and I would bring him is Teddy Eddy thinking that it would automatically make him feel better and he would be healthy again.
SO, yeah, those are my three very long, and detailed memories, whew!!!
Hmm. I guess I'd have to say that my absolute favorite memory of when I was growing up is this one day when it snowed outside. (which if you've lived in Albuquerque for a long time you know is a rare enough occurence). This time was especially rare since there was enough snow on the ground to make snowmen and the snow was actually sticking together instead of being all wet and melty! So my mom, my brother, and I were outside in our backyard revelling in the snow and making snow men and snow angels, and out of nowhere my mom starts a snowball fight with us. So my broher and I gang up on her and all of a sudden, my dad who was at work as usual, comes out the backdoor and joins in on my mom's team. It's my favorite memory because it shows one of the few times that my family has been all together, and all happy, and all participating in the same thing.
Leah! This is a great topic!! Reading your post made me think of how me and my sister used to do the exact same thing. We would set up a stage and curtain and take the coffee table out of the living room. We would dance around and around making our parents, grandparents, and anyone else unfortunate enough to have to sit through it and watch us. I have a lot of great memories from my childhood, I can't choose just one, but the topic has got me thinking about a lot of times. Riding bikes with my dad, playing baseball in the front yard, and playing school with my sister are just a few. I think these times in my life definitely helped me to shape my out going personality. I wasnn't a very shy kid, and although I didn't ever get into sports those active activities showed me it is important to always include fun and exercise. Thanks for the great topic Leah
Great topic! It's hard to pick out a few memories from so many, but one tradition my family had was to go see the Nutcracker every year. We would all dress up in our little fancy Christmas-y clothes and go watch it at Popejoy. We haven't been in a few years but I recently told my mom that I'd like to go again. I'm not sure how my brothers ever felt about it but I always thought it was so much fun to watch! It taught me a lot about appreciation for the arts, I suppose, rather than just thinking "Ew what a boring ballet." Haha. Also, I remember one year my mom accidentally got tickets to Nutcracker on the Rocks instead of the traiditional Nutcracker. Or maybe it was the Russian version. I don't remember which one it was, exactly, but I remember us all being very surprised when it was not our usual Nutcracker! It was fun all the same, and we laughed about it later.
Another thing I remember (and that we still do) is going to pick out a Christmas tree and decorate it together. We always used to go to the same lot until it shut down a couple years ago, and me and my brothers would pretend that it was like a maze, and we would try to scare one another in the maze of Christmas trees.
Wow, my family has too many traditions to even try to describe more, but the role they all played on my life is that they taught me the importance of the togetherness of family, and how the Holidays are all about family, not presents.
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