The Gummer loves to shred things. Loves it. Every day, she opens the mail next to the shredder and goes to town. BWAAAH! BWAAAH! It has become a regular part of my day. It is how I know that it is 10:45 and half of my “Mommy!”-free day is over.
A few weeks ago, she was BWAAAH! BWAAAH!-ing off-schedule. I walked into the computer room to find her shredding family photos. Were they selections from the endless stash of unfortunate holiday photos taken before I realized my hair cannot-should not-must not be permed? No. They were from the “Photos Were Really Thick in the Early 70s” collection and the “When the World Was Sepia” collection. (I used to think this was true, by the way. Surely, all those frowning, fresh off the boat from the Old Country, relatives were living in a brownish-hued world. Look at ‘em. ) (Alright, on some level, I probably still think that the color in the world evolved at the same pace as the color on television. The 70s, for example, had color, but things were blurry. The 80’s looked like “The Facts of Life” and “Fantasy Island” and so on. I generally do not like superdigital, hi-def, whatever you call that new-fangled shit, TV, because it looks unrealistic. I am skeptical and cannot focus on shows with birds gracefully hovering over landscapes that don’t look like any birds or landscapes or hovering maneuvers that I’ve ever seen. )
I digress.
I began to completely flip out.
I did not know that the photos she was shredding were doubles, triples, and miscellaneous photos of thumbs and the ground. I wasn’t expecting anything logical. This is a woman who threw away her wedding veil a few years ago because "it had holes in it”. If A&E decides to build on the success of “Hoarders”, I know where there is a camera-ready little old lady purging like Karen Carpenter. (Ipecac-ac-ac-ac-ac-ac-ac-ac…You oughta know by now.)
Lovely, um, so anyway, I started freaking out. The content of said freak out is best left within the walls of the Gummerplex. It did end with me saying, “You are the least sentimental person I have ever met” or something like that and her looking just stunned, bewildered, by my accusation.
An hour or so later, she handed me a plastic bag full of plastic bags. (This is an arrangement I am quite familiar with. “Must. Compartmentalize. Everything.” is her mantra.) The bags in this bag of bags were photos which had been subdivided by time period. I will explain the significance of this photo collection in the next post. For right now, what matters is that there were photos of my parents which had been taken in the late 50s and early 60s. At this time, much in the same way that the world was once basted in a sepia haze, there were two bizarro alternate versions of my parents who appear to have spent a lot of time laughing casually while riding bicycles and walking around being slender and well-dressed. The people in these photos are not wearing polyester pants while they watch me open my birthday presents. The people in these photographs are attractive. These people are kids, and they are falling in love. This is a love story. Her life, the way these clusters of photos fit together, is a love story.
Forty-eight years ago today, on August 31, 1963, my parents were married. They bought polyester pants and wrapped birthday gifts for their kids. They kept their love story safe, protected it, and put it away until it was time to be told. This, of course, was always intended to happen on the day the bitchy younger kid accused the woman of not being sentimental.
“Once upon a time, long before the world ever revolved around you, there was a tavern. In that tavern, a beautiful girl and a man who had been at a bowling tournament all day found themselves lost in a magical sprinkling of uma…”
(You know: “This doesn't sound like the usual mindless, boring, getting-to-
Dating- Football Game
Grand Avenue in St. Louis. 