{"id":297,"date":"2019-02-21T11:25:56","date_gmt":"2019-02-21T16:25:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/donnadufresne.com\/~donnadu1\/?p=297"},"modified":"2019-02-21T11:26:02","modified_gmt":"2019-02-21T16:26:02","slug":"stardust-1958","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/donnadufresne.com\/~donnadu1\/stardust-1958\/","title":{"rendered":"STARDUST 1958"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

          I might not be able to tell you what I had for dinner a few\ndays ago, and I might not remember your name, but I sure as heck can dig up the\nmost obscure details about your family history and my own. My memory has always\nbeen funny that way. I\u2019ve never been good with tedious details such as dates\nand time, which is why I prefer fictional memoir to auto-biography. As a\nhistorian, I won\u2019t be able to tell you the names of all the presidents and war\nheroes or the dates of births, deaths and wars. \nBut I can tell you more than you want to know about the social construct\nof a given period of time and its companion of human behavior.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

 I think it\u2019s about the lens one carries\nthrough life.  My mother was obsessed\nwith details. It was the bane of her life because she couldn\u2019t let go of the\nsmall stuff. She held onto every insult, snub and snide remark anyone had ever\nmade to her. It was the manna upon which she supped. A rumination of little\nstories she had constructed about people based upon one tiny detail. Something\nthey said or did that offended her a gazillion years ago was enough to fence\nthem in a life sentence of being \u201csuch and such\u201d or a certain \u201cso and so\u201d.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

          I, on the other hand, was always more of a big-picture gal.\nThe details were always a bit fuzzy, since I am made up of mostly water and air\nand just enough earth to ground me (barely). But not enough to build a wall\nthat keeps me from seeing who you really are. Insight was my game from the\nget-go. A natural empath, I could walk into a room and immediately sense things\nabout people. Who was in trouble, who was in pain, who could be trusted with\ntruth. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I believe that\nI have always read life with the voice of a writer. When the world is a watery\nplace, you swim in it with your eyes wide open. It\u2019s amazing what you can see\nthrough that watery lens. For example, I have some incredibly vivid memories\nfrom my early childhood which are steeped in that watery detail. Deeply descriptive,\nyet fuzzy on the edge of time. I have verified facts such as a particular\nsweater-set I wore, or the time which is marked by before and after, such as\nbefore my Grampa Johnston died, or after cousin Tina came to live with us. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

          One such memory is the first time I was conscious of the\nstars. I was about three years old, and it may have been November, because it\nwas nippy, and I recall the harsh chill of the plastic seats of the car and the\npeculiar mix of gasoline and stale cigarette smoke nipping at my nose when my\nfather placed me in the back seat. My grandfather died around Thanksgiving when\nI was three years old, so I know I wasn\u2019t any older than that.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

We had been\nvisiting my grandparents in Chelmsford, Massachusetts. My father was carrying\nme and walking down the cement walk. As we turned to wave goodbye to my grandpa,\nI was brushed by the night air which felt cold and harsh, and I snuggled down\ninside the little mint-green angora sweater with the soft furry hat that matched.\nI can still recall the tickling scent of that angora sweater with the little pearl\nbuttons. I wriggled and stretched out in my father\u2019s arms much the way I\u2019ve\nseen puppies do, and his grasp on me was strong and safe. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

When I looked\nup at the sky, it was the blackest of velvet blacks and for the first time\never, I noticed bright lights piercing through the dark. I was suddenly\nfrightened by those twinkling lights which reminded me of the big factories we would\ndrive past on our way home \u2013 those factories of Lowell and Lawrence that marched\nthrough the night to a drumbeat of machines – the drivers of bad dreams. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I was so\nfrightened by the factories and the dark water of the Merrimac River, I would\ncover my head when we drove through the city. I would crawl down to the floor\nbehind my mother\u2019s seat so that the wrecking balls (there were so many back\nthen, as Route 495 was being built), wouldn\u2019t see me. I thought the great\nclawed arms of demolition machines would pluck me out of the car and place me\nup in the sky.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the safety\nof my father\u2019s arms I became suddenly confused, thinking we would have to fly\nup in the sky like angels to get home, past those twinkling lights from the\nnever-ending windows of the Lowell mills.  I thought we would be lost forever in the dark\nsky with those piercing factory lights, and my older brother Richie would cry\nbecause he would miss us. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I cried out,\n\u201cNo Daddy!\u201d pointing at the sky.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

No one paid\nany attention. The grown-ups were too busy tying up the threads of loose\nconversations. They didn\u2019t know the world had been turned upside down. I began\nto sob, knowing we were doomed to float endlessly in that black sky searching\nfor our way home over bridges and canals and those factory lights with their\nmarching band drone would swallow us up.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cShe\u2019s tired\u201d,\nI heard my grandpa say.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was the\nlast time I remember seeing my grandfather before he died. I can still see him\nstanding in the doorway on the porch with a halo of light behind him. He would\nbe the one swallowed up by the sky where the factories still hold the patents\nof his inventor hands.<\/strong>\n\n\n\n\n\ne<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

          I might not be able to tell you what I had for dinner a few days ago, and I might not remember your name, but I sure as heck can dig up the most obscure details about your family history and my own. My memory has always been funny that way. I\u2019ve never been … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “STARDUST 1958”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-297","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","entry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paDBMs-4N","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/donnadufresne.com\/~donnadu1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/297","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/donnadufresne.com\/~donnadu1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/donnadufresne.com\/~donnadu1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/donnadufresne.com\/~donnadu1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/donnadufresne.com\/~donnadu1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=297"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/donnadufresne.com\/~donnadu1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/297\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":298,"href":"https:\/\/donnadufresne.com\/~donnadu1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/297\/revisions\/298"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/donnadufresne.com\/~donnadu1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=297"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/donnadufresne.com\/~donnadu1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=297"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/donnadufresne.com\/~donnadu1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=297"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}