Category Archives: nostalgia

Tip of the Iceberg Age.

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The Museum of Natural History in Cleveland was the first.

A wooly mammoth, life sized, in a room trimmed by taxidermy. Murals, glass encased, tracing the alleged history of its life on this planet. Something about a monster ice floe and fossilized bones of sufficiency to reconstruct the entire elephant. On a trip with the eighth grade science classes, I was disinterested. The Age of Aquarius was all the rage that year.

A month or two ago, I and my equally old boyfriend took a day trip back to Cleveland. Yep; right alongside the whole Paleolithic Age, that wooly mammoth was still there.

The pre-historic had a new meaning to us, now, as we mutely viewed primate skulls and their gradual similarity to our own. Two elderly lesbians, aged a good decade beyond us, eagerly soaked up the narratives in each chapter of the timeline, reading aloud to one another as if no one else were in either the room or the world, for that matter.

A few hundred miles south of the museum, President Trump was meeting with his military advisors. The Senate and Congress were addressing the trespasses of members of his campaign committee and cabinet. Televised pundits worked overtime to cover everything in a single news cycle. The stock market was ballooning.

Biblical prophets had foretold the Last Days. Gog and MaGog would be lining up, all the power centering in Israel, then Jesus would come in the clouds and all the born-again Christians would disappear into the air with Him along with the dead in Christ, which would have been summoned first from the grave. Somewhere in Africa, in the midst of all this, a family of chimpanzees was screaming in the trees.

Today, it was Christmas. A snow squall the size of the North Pole swirled around outside our window, holding all of us living hostage until at least 2:45 pm while the prime rib seasoned in the new, French doored fridge. Having a “White Christmas” around this Great Lake used to be typical, so being enveloped in drifting and blowing snow felt oddly comforting, as if we weren’t really living in the tip of the IceBerg Age. Maybe, for just one more night, the whole world would hold off melting with fervent heat before that great and terrible day of the Lord.

Twenty four hours hence, and a record breaking sixty three inches of pure as the driven. God only knows what our wooly mammoth would say about the whole thing.

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© 12/25/17  Ruth Ann Scanzillo         All rights those of the author, whose name appears above this line. Be a civilized person; there’s still time. Thanks.

littlebarefeetblog.com

 

 

 

Happy Anniversary.

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August 14.

It’s always somebody’s birthday.

And, I think I often forget that.

Today was also the wedding anniversary of R.A. and Paul. Paul was a really fun traveling companion, full of energy and optimistic anticipation. Loved birds, and trails, and fishing and hunting. Took this body all the way up Mt Washington, on foot, in spite of itself. Always eager to face a new day.

Poor thing got stuck married to the wrong woman. Yeah. It happens. People do things, especially when they crack 35 years old. He played the oboe like a pro, with no college degree in music; but, that still never meant that he should be with me.

So, this would have been our 25th anniversary. Maybe there would have been a couple kids. Hopefully, not unhappy, neurotic kids, but there might have been one or two. And, maybe we would have finally gone to Montreal, today, like we should have on our honeymoon. But, life has moved along and Montreal, last I checked, was still intact.

People say single women should just travel alone. There’s a whole world still waiting to be experienced from that singular point of view. And, according to a couple I know who have already been around the globe, there’s a cruise line they take that always has at least one of us on board. To the pure, all things are pure; not my place to question why.

Sigh. Maybe it’s time to plan a sea faring wardrobe. Today could be a really sad day. But, given the number of people who think I have it made, might be time to prove that to them. Or, to myself.

Happy Anniversary. Happy Birthday. Happy Day.

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© Ruth Ann Scanzillo  8/14/16   All rights those of the [single, female] author, whose story it is, and whose name appears above this line. Thank you for your deference.

littlebarefeetblog.com

One Dry Sabbath.

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Well, goodness.

How were we to know that being panned for an entire Saturday in late summer would render this self – involved blogger intensely concerned that she had offended, what, an entire following collective with just one, indirect reference to a specific national heritage*?

Having toyed with taking a more brazen stance, I’d opted instead for a sort of meandering through device and subtlety, just seeing where one word would direct the next. My intentions were almost too much, even for me to face; addressing the whole thing under veil of inference was somehow safer.

So much for safe. Haven’t we been preoccupied by safe, for the better part of the last fifteen years?

I mean, I could have done the simple thing. I could have said that I’d seen a boy again whom I’d adored from a distance at a tender phase of life, a boy who, in genuine appreciation for my having jumped to the Coda precisely when he did, went the extra step and had a bouquet of flowers delivered to his accompanist’s door.

But, that would have been just too naked.

I couldn’t expose a man who’d attended an Ivy league school, been married for years, sired three sons, established a successful professional practice, and then returned home to say goodbye to his father. Rather, waxing on and off and on again about his character, and how it was sourced, with bits about how much I honored him for everything his gesture represented at a time when I couldn’t have known how pivotal such an act would be to me in my own life? That seemed almost worthy.

So, yeah.

I saw a boy again. And, it was nice. And, I wanted it to mean something. But, of course, it could only mean what it was. Just a nice little chat, at his father’s wake. Not some treatise on the comparative theological value of Judaism. Not the apologist’s view of the Jewish character from a Gentile-based mentality. No study of social construct; no mask for ulterior motivation. Just a little visit, with the boy who played Sabre Dance on the xylophone in 1974.

Call me some kind of bigot; I really have no defense. I do not know the meaning of “Anti-Semitism.” If you think you do, then by all means, judge me and cast me off.

Otherwise, have a nice, dry Sabbath evening.

L’chaim.

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*Twelve Pink Carnations.

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© Ruth Ann Scanzillo  8/6/16  All rights those of the Gentile girl who wrote the piece, whose story it is, and whose name appears above this line.  Thank you for your mercy.

littlebarefeetblog.com