Hobbies and Imagination ...

I had a zest for art, colors, and music for as long as I can remember.   I have already mentioned many things I loved to do, but as I write this blog more memories pop up that I want to record here.  

I remember when we used to get the JC Penney Christmas Catalog and even Sears and Montgomery Ward catalogs.  When I was a kid I would go through them and write down what I wanted Santa to bring me for Christmas.  There always was a Crayola art set on my list, sometimes a doll, but mostly art and science stuff.  

When I got older and didn't really have a mile long list of of things I wanted, I got a little more adventurous and used my imagination.  I would pretend that I had $1 Million dollars and I wanted to fill my dream home with things.  I would go through the catalogs, not the Christmas ones, but just the regular ones and write down things I would like to furnish my home with or things I would like to have....in my closets and just every room of the house.  I'd write the article and price and how many of each...even colors if I wanted various colors of the same thing.  It was a fascinating way for me to use my imagination, and THINK of what things I wanted that would actually fit my taste and the size of home I would have.  I never finished the list....I knew that my wish list was just a dream, but in the beginning it was fun to go through the catalogs and dream...

When I was in High School I often got books on handwriting analysis, personality analysis, and all kinds of things on arts and crafts.  I taught myself calligraphy and always had the pens to do that sort of thing.  While working at the library, I would check out books on all sorts of things.  I learned to macrame hanging basket holders...made a few for my Mom.  I read many different fictional books, mostly stuff from Judy Blume and V.C. Andrews.  Sometimes I read about psychology and sometimes I got books on poetry. 

I used to write poetry a lot.  I know I have most of it in storage but I don't ever get it out anymore to read what was in all those poems.  I loved poems to rhyme.  I tried writing limericks, they'd get silly.   I tried writing haiku's, but they don't necessarily rhyme, and they are so blasted short for my taste.  I read Edgar Allen Poe's poetry, and my sister and I spent time together one season memorizing his poem "Annabel Lee,"  It was easy to learn because of the rhyme and meter to it.  I have no idea why we both thought that was a cool poem to memorize.  I tried to remember the stanzas of "The Raven" but that one was a little too long for me.   Dad liked that poem.  I believe I kept the book on Edgar Allen Poe's works, it reminds me of Dad, and one good memory of my Sister, and his stories, though creepy, were interesting to me. 

I got a Kodak Disc camera when I was in high school, and took pictures all the time.  I loved going to the park and taking sunset pictures.  I would mail my pictures off to York Color Labs and pay a lot less than at the stores that did the same thing.   It would take longer to get them back, but I loved doing it nonetheless.   That little camera was my closest friend and took 15 pictures on the round disc it used for film.   I never did learn how to use a 35mm camera, the ones with the bells and whistles and different telephoto lenses and all that.  But it was always on my catalog wish list.  LOL

Think of a gizmo that kids played with, and I probably played with it.  My all time favorite gizmo was the Rubik's Cube.  I got really really good at that thing.  I still have one somewhere, but I would have to read the directions again to memorize the different moves to get a piece in a position to the side I wanted it to be.  It can be complicated at first, I got so good with it, I liked to show people, if they had the time and patience to watch me do it.  My friends Shan and Tricia, their Aunt's Sara and Theresa, would love to watch me do that thing.  I have a Christmas card from them in the past 10 years where they mention that too.  So funny that they remembered that one thing from my past.  Good memories those two!

And when my stuff was boring to play with, I would go tinker with my brothers stuff.  He had an Erector Set and I loved to help build stuff with that.  Heck I loved playing with Lego's, Lincoln Logs, and even now mentioned recently to my husband about finding some Lego kits and building stuff with them like I used to do.  He always looks at me funny when I mention playing with TOYS, but I just shrug him off.  I think toys are fun no matter what your age.  The building sets are good for manual dexterity, 3d imaginings and they do have all those lovely bright COLORS!

.....when you have nothing else to do, you can always use your imagination and play, and be a kid for a day!   Parents and adults sometimes forget that all this play and dreaming is calming on the nerves and serves a body well....and keeps you young.  My life needed more of this fun .... but it would be a while before I got back to it.  

Dad...

My Dad by all accounts was a very eccentric fellow.  Very very intelligent...like Mensa smart!!!  I really liked this about him.  Unless we played Trivial Pursuit with him.  Then you were hosed.  Partly cause he was read more, but also cause he was off the charts smart.

My parents bought the family home from a doctor surgeon who had the home customized for his needs.  The living room was originally designed as a formal living room and a dining room on the other end, but I don't believe there was a wall separating the two.  We had kept the chandelier hanging where the dining space was for many of the early years, but instead of dining room furniture, we had our family TV and chairs at that end.  

My favorite memory of the early years was when Dad would play with us kids.  He'd prop us on his shoulders, hold our hands and walk quickly through out the living run, end to end.  It was was fun and garnered a lot of laughs, except the one day that he forgot where the chandelier was and I was pulled head first right into that thing.  I don't remember being angry at Dad for that, just upset it hurt so bad. 

Dad played board games with us when we got a little older.  Sometimes we'd play as a family, all five of us together, sometimes it was just Dad and us kids.  We'd play Parcheesi, Sorry, and Monopoly.  I don't remember if he played card games with us, that was more Mom's type of games to play.  

Dad suffered a nervous breakdown in 1979 after I graduated from the 6th grade.  He had to stop working for a long time.  Those were some of the roughest years I ever remember our entire family going through.  Mom had to deal with the brunt of things, as she had to deal with the doctors, the ambulance workers, the psychiatrists, and all the bills that were piling up from his care.  Since we kids were 12 and under, we weren't burdened with all the medical bill details.  We just knew our Dad wasn't right and he was getting help, away from the home.   

He was never the same personality when he finally got home.  He was more guarded, avoided hanging with us kids, and stayed more to himself in his own room.  Mom and him had moved to separate rooms before his breakdown, but now he was not able to function as he once did.  It would be several years, throughout all my junior and senior high school years, that he'd be walled away in the house before getting more relational with others.  

When he first got sick I used to worry about him a lot and sat with him when he came out of his room to put a record on the player.  Normally he play some classical music.  I learned to appreciate many of the great pieces of classical music because of this time with him.  I didn't know how to knit or crochet, but I did know a simple knotting sequence with yarn, and I made him colorful bookmarks with this technique out of yarn.  He seemed to like them and use them.   This is when I know he became an avid bookworm.   

I don't know what my siblings thought about my Dad and is Bipolar disease.  He frightened all of us a few times when I was in high school.  Hallucinating and seeing animals talking to him, and seeing me in a room when I wasn't really there.   I didn't want friends over at the house when all this started happening.  I became afraid of him and avoided interacting with him at this time.  He would get angry at the slightest noise, didn't want any talking going on when he was watching Jeopardy on TV and just became a person I didn't know how to be around.   I am ashamed that I didn't get to know him better then, and fight through my fear and see if I could find the man I knew and loved as a small child.  

Somewhere during the first couple years after he got sick, he lost over 100 lbs, and quit smoking his pipe AND joined the Catholic Church.  All the reading he did to prepare added to the scary moments when you could tell he was about to have an episode and need his meds fixed.  He'd sit us kids down and wouldn't allow us to do anything unless we answered his faith questions.  One time he scared me because none of us kids really knew what the 7 virtues and vices were and we had to sit at the kitchen table until Mom got home from work.  She had to deal with Dad's mental problem on her own and really didn't explain to us that I recall what was truly going on. 

Finally when I was out of high school, he started working.   He worked at McDonald's as a biscuit maker.  Far removed from his bookkeeping talents.  He just wasn't comfortable getting into the numbers and messing up the books.  But his boss loved him.  He was a good and dependable worker.   After some time though some things started bothering him with that job and he quit, He went to go work for their competition, and again everyone there loved him.   But one day I think the story goes he came in and saw someone doing his station work and he got pissed and quit.   He then went on to work at the grocery store next to the McDonald's he used to work at.  I work for this grocery chain and was actually proud he belonged to the same company.  He was in the union, I was not.  EVERYONE loved my dad there.   

                        ..... when life takes a sudden turn to the unknown and the frightful side of    
                              things, we can become confused and disorented and lose our way.  
                             Stay tuned for more on this saga. 

  

Our Family Photo circa 1972

 

 

Mom and Dad