Where we grew up, there was a print of a painting on the wall of our childhood bedroom that was the first thing we saw when we woke. It was a scene of an early horse-drawn fire engine racing through a nineteenth century city street. It was an overall dark painting with red brick buildings and the brown hues of early American northeastern cities. It was a strange thing to see every morning upon waking up, but as a family we never discussed it.
It was similar in spirit to the lithographs of Currier and Ives, except that it wasn't their work. Instead it was the work of Ernest Opper, who called his 1889 painting "Fire-Engine on Broad Street, Elizabeth, New Jersey". It hangs in the museum of the Rhode Island School of Design.
The facts about this painting did not come easy. It took half a century for them to surface. As a family, we never discussed it. The painting was just there, a given, as unexplained as the sun or the moon or the sky.
No one even knows how it got there.
As a child I think I took it as a message about the world I was born into. It was a world that was evidently dark, built of brick, and on fire.
*******
As a family, we never discussed what kind of cheese we liked. There was always lots of Swiss cheese, and later Jarlsberg, which as a child I ate a tremendous amount of. I ate it partly because I liked it and partly just because it was there.
This behavior proved unhealthy as I ended up in the hospital with some sort of clinical constipation that to this day I don't fully understand.
It wasn't until much later, when I had gotten out in the world, that I experienced a broad spectrum of cheeses. Eventually, after several decades of sampling, it emerged that I was a Gruyere man. This was an important discovery because, once I realized that I liked strong salty cheeses with a bite, I also realized I didn't need to eat as much to be satisfied. In other words, Gruyere is a highly efficient cheese, getting you faster to your cheese destination. Whereas Jarlsberg and Swiss keep me eating more and more in the hope of arriving at a destination that never materializes. Well, sometimes it materializes, but it takes longer.
All of this seems true, but as a family we never discussed it.
*******
The house we grew up in had lots of scratchy wool socks that went up fairly high above the ankles. That meant that the covered portion of the legs felt scratchy. I think this was supposed to make the long, cold winters tolerable, but I'm not sure it worked in my case. I seem to remember that the winters were cold AND scratchy.
To be fair, some of these socks didn't fit me at all. Sometimes they were so loose that the scratchy wool was a good half inch away from my leg. This extra space was perfect for storing snow while walking outdoors. Unfortunately the snow melted upon going indoors.
It wasn't until later, when I had gotten out in the world, that I experienced a broad spectrum of socks. Eventually it emerged that my sock of choice was very different from those old woolies.
My sock of choice stops at my ankle, is made of smooth cotton or synthetic material, and clings tightly to my feet. My legs stay warm because I spend most of my time in warm places.
Not that there is anything wrong with scratchy wool socks, but as a family, we never discussed it. We never discussed the nuances of socks, scratchy or otherwise.
*******
There were two shards of soap in the downstairs bathroom. One was white and the other was yellow. Neither of them got very soft while showering. Neither of them was particularly effective. As a family, we never discussed how we felt about those shards of soap.
I think those shards may have dated back to when my mother passed away. In that case they were fraught with the spirit of that difficult time. Or they may have dated to when my father fell and injured his hip, forcing him to take up residence in the downstairs bedroom. In that case the shards were fraught with the spirit of that difficult time.
Since I use that shower on my visits, I was always confronted with those two shards of soap and the fact that they didn't get soft and were fraught with the spirit of those two difficult times.
Since both of those events were in the past, and I felt that my desire to get clean in the shower was legitimate and sincere, I decided to replace the two old shards with a fresh bar of Yardley. Yes, I am a Yardley man. It gets better results and makes for a better experience.
Still, we never as a family discussed any of this. To this day, we never formed a cohesive, comprehensive, family-wide philosophy of soap.
- copyright 2019 by P.T. Gachot
No comments:
Post a Comment