Monday, October 23, 2006

Leaves From the Past...

I remember snapping this photo as if it were yesterday.

Whitney was six months old at the time and we had just sold our home in Mamaroneck, NY in exchange for a “second floor walk-up” in Hastings-On-Hudson. Something to do with money, I think... New York is beautiful in the fall… typically crisp and sunny. “Frisky weather” as my now long-time ex liked to call it. Very, unlike the damp and dreary days we've grown accustomed to in Michigan these past many years.

Anyway, we’d moved into this cozy little abode in “the town with the deceptively affluent sounding name” on my 29th birthday. I only remember this because after my husband at the time had left to take the U-Haul truck back en route to his job in “the city” where he was performing the lead in a current Broadway Show, I stood amongst the multitude of boxes and disarrayed furniture and sobbed. I’m still not sure what I was crying about the most… the fact that I now had to somehow deal with all this mess with a baby in my arms?.. or the fact that in all the fuss he’d forgotten to buy me a birthday card… Or, in retrospect, if perhaps that may have been the night when I realized I’d lost my wedding ring…

But for whatever reason I don’t believe at any time that evening did it ever occurred to me that there might come a day when I might look back on that time of our life and just smile, or wish that once again I could be standing in the middle of a room full of clutter with a baby in my arms. Babies grow up so quickly. They do! And we just don’t get a ton of chances to relive the present over again too often. We don't.

Meanwhile, and in keeping with the theme…

I threw this costume together in about 30 minutes… using a Glad garbage bag and some scraps from my sewing kit. This was prior to the day when I would have found myself stressed into ad nauseam over such a daunting task..

This one didn’t take so much effort…

.... which ended up being no big deal since she slept through most of it anyway.

In 1985 we dressed her up as Strawberry Shortcake and that was the first year she actually went “Trick-or-Treating.”

I will never forget her skipping down the sidewalk in Brooklyn (where we lived then), ringing doorbells and shouting “Trick-or-Treat!… and collecting candy through the wrought-iron gates of the brownstones. This was SO far from my memories of the tradition, but I’ll never forget her excitement. That is until she took a nose dive on the sidewalk and tore up her white tights… blood running down and mixing with the green horizontal stripes. Still, I think she continued collecting candy.

My “favorite” Halloween memory EVER though occurred in 1987 after staying up until 4:00 am one morning putting the finishing touches on the “Rainbow Bright” costume. (Please… never, ever attempt to do this at home!) I finished it and trudged off to bed, hanging it on the edge of the door frame and in the morning she said to me… “Mom, I really, really like it… a lot!.. but do you think I could go as Cinderella?”

She went as “Rainbow Bright.”

I'll let these next two Halloween memories speak for themselves…

I think these were probably the last Halloween costumes I made for her...

…and I know for a fact that this was the last October that I had her home.

Perhaps the reason I don't like the fall so much is on account of all the "leaves"...

But still... I wonder how many times I'll have to keep reminding myself over and over again about how quickly these seasons tend to change and how things just have a natural way of springing anew...

...in so many different ways...

:sighs again:

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I loved this entry! That Rainbow Bright costume rocks!

Dianne Barbee said...

Chardonnay,

I thoroughly enjoyed your walk down memory lane. I have posted similar blogs at the OFC about my daughter.

"W" is beautiful, and your "leaves from the past" are very special. I am sure a certain singer from my state would say, "Fah'n." *g*

Have a great week!

Caro