Sharani

Like Sumangali, this is my first response to a meme as well. It started over at John’s blog from New Zealand, A Sensitivity to Things when he first posted hilarious childhood commentaries written by Pavitrata and then John added his own as well with equally humorous aplomb. At first I was reluctant to jump on the bandwagon because my childhood wasn’t all peaches and ice cream. In fact, one of my childhood facts might be about my elaborate plans to run away to the local park on a lake where I would try to imagine I could live comfortably and make do under the picnic table/cooking grill mini-pavilions scattered through the park grounds. Ah the dreams of childhood! I did at least used to worry that it might get chilly in winter time living outdoors.

But as I looked through old photos in albums and shoe boxes, my new scanner seemed to just beg for the first foray into digitizing some of those bygone days. What fun to finally live dangerously and post a photo of myself in a tutu for the world to see!
Here goes:

1. Patent Leather Shoes

My mother tells me on good authority that I went through a longish phase where I insisted on wearing dressy patent leather shoes (preferably red) regardless of the occasion or accompanying attire. I scarcely recall as much but there are photos aplenty attesting to this early fashionista side of my nature at a wee age.

Note the patent leather shoes - me aged 6

2. The Swing of Delight

My favorite hangout was the backyard or school playground swingset. Whenever I felt down and out, I retreated to a session of high flying swinging, occasionally with a jump into the air off the swing for good measure. It was my personal version of sanctuary. When I first began meditating on the Eastern spiritual path of teacher Sri Chinmoy, I actually used to walk over to the swings in the park near the now 3100 mile race course and swing while singing a song to cheer me up that Sri Chinmoy wrote called Phulero Dola with the Hindu imagery of the swing of delight. In fact, I consider it a great act of restraint on my part that I have never bought a Hindu statue of Radha and Krishna together on a swing.

Me aged 2 on the backyard swingset

3. Ballet Ruled

In Michigan where I grew up, I started taking ballet lessons at the age of 5 or 6 at the Nancy Sue Whitson School of Dance which taught the Cecchetti method and continued with great devotion until my mid-teens when the teacher demanded that you give your life to ballet completely or drop out - I chose the latter. My favorite time of year was when we prepared our big recital productions. It took weeks to memorize and perfect the choreography and all the Moms had to either make or more occasionally buy the costumes. One of my favorite activities any time of the year was to while away hours in the living room that extended into a dining room, hearing a great flourish of music in my head and imagining intricate choreographed productions as I danced across the floor.

It is much to my chagrin and embarrassment that now in my adulthood I am the proverbial clumsy and nonathletic achiever despite my occasional super-sized efforts. One year I went every day to a health club and worked out with weights and other machines, ran 2 miles every day, did 8-10 mile runs on the weekend, aerobics, etc. and it still took me 6 1/2 hours to run the New York City Marathon. Maybe that super competitive ballet stage was a previous incarnation right within the current one??

Me Age 11 as Ballerina

4. A Doyenne of Domesticity

I loved to play with dolls, paper dolls, the clothes in the dress-up trunk in our basement and make-believe “house.” My youth and teenage years saw me quite the Martha Stewart of homemaking. For fun my girlfriends and I would host dinner parties for our parents to attend. I baby sat neighborhood children constantly - one summer full-time on weekdays for a working mom. I made and sold desserts to my Mom’s friends, worked for a catering company as my first outside job, worked cleaning houses, thought designing and stitching my own needlepoint was great fun, would spend hours stringing popcorn and cranberries and making homemade ornaments at Christmas time, the list goes on and on.

Proof yet again that morning doesn’t always show the day can be found in the eventual denouement of me as a radical feminist once I hit the ground in college and I never married or had any children in spite of all that practice in my youth. I don’t ever seem to have much energy for domesticity lately - what with working full-time and a long commute. Now if I vacuum the house once a month it is a minor miracle worthy of a blog post in its own right.

5. Learning to Read

My parents tell me that when I learned to read it became my raison d’etre. I read voraciously and without discrimination. I snuck books to bed with me under the covers, sometimes read a story at the same time as walking the mile home from school and loved to sit in a lawn chair or by the neighborhood swimming pool devouring yet one more novel. In one way at least I followed suit from my childhood in my current job as a public librarian. We don’t get paid to read books but we do get paid to read book reviews and decide what to order. Too bad I have to read the titles for the book group I lead at work on my own dime as well…

6. Forbidden Fruit

Can I blame my incurable fondness for chocolate on the childhood rule that we were only allowed to have a candy bar once a week on Sunday? While this didn’t mean we ate like raw food fanatics the rest of the week - somehow I think Pop-Tarts were a common breakfast food at our kitchen table - it did create an aura of mystery around chocolate that only increased its desirability as the “forbidden fruit.” Now even when on weight-reducing regimens, I still fit in prudent quantities of good quality chocolate as long as it is in moderation.

Well that’s enough meme for one day. Thanks John for the invitation to take a trip down memory lane. It was rather fun after all.

Today at the library where I work we had a big yard sale, bake sale and raffle of prizes donated by local businesses. It was a fund-raiser to benefit the library which finds itself in danger of losing state certification because of budget reductions in a town facing serious financial difficulties.

A yard sale, bake sale and raffle are not remarkable in and of themselves as far as homegrown-style fund-raising goes. What made it remarkable to me was that the entire effort was the vision of an elementary school child in town who loves the library and emphatically declared to her mother that they should have a yard sale for the library after an election to raise taxes was turned down by voters in July.

An article ran in the local weekly paper about her along with her photo and her parents spearheaded the efforts in support of their daughter’s wish to help the library. I came down on my coffee break during my shift today and the auditorium was buzzing with activity. I made a few purchases and was happy to buy a paperback edition of the complete poetry of Robert Frost, an American poet who I like very much. I know it probably sounds odd why someone who works in a library would buy a book but sometimes I do buy a few of the books that I read. Especially at bargain prices…

I won one of the raffle prizes for a gift certificate at the local wholesale odd lot store in the plaza next door and immediately went hunting for possible birthday prasad ideas to offer next week in anticipation of meditation activities close to home and in New York with Sri Chinmoy but came up short in that department.

I haven’t heard the results yet of this event to benefit the library but the young girl who felt compelled to contribute to our community is certainly rich with a wealth that money cannot buy. The staff at the library feels that her sentiment is replete with self-giving and enthusiasm and we sincerely thank her from the bottom of our hearts.