What a lovely idea this is. Alicia at TwilightCafe, dreamer and thinker, invited readers to leave a comment if they were interested in participating in a five-question interview. Here are her questions, and my answers:
1. What is your favorite childhood memory?
My favorite single memory from childhood is probably my very first memory. I don’t remember exactly how old I was, but I was small enough to still be sleeping in a crib. I’m thinking I was a year old, maybe younger. My mom and dad and I were living in my grandparents’ house in northeast Philadelphia, a house long since torn down. (The state of Pennsylvania decided to build an access road through our neighborhood, so a dozen houses, including ours, were torn down. The service road project ran out of money and the road was never built. I have no idea what is there now. I can’t bear to think of it.) My uncles, who were teenagers when I was little, shared a room. My parents had the room next door and my crib was in their room. I remember lying in the crib one night. Mom and Dad were both still awake, watching tv in the living room, so I was alone. The hall light was on and I remember looking at it. From my uncles’ room blared Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention singing “Brown Shoes Don’t Make It.” My grandmother tore into their room and yelled, loud, “TURN THAT MUSIC DOWN. YOU’LL WAKE UP THE BABY.” I remember thinking it was funny that Grandmom was being so noisy.
Although it’s not a single memory, I have lots of pleasant memories of falling asleep in the back of my parents’ car on the way home from going out for dinner. This was before my brother was born, so there were no car seats in the back seat, and I was allowed to unbuckle my seat belt and lie down in the back seat and sleep on the way home. I can think of very few things that made me feel as happy and safe as lying in the back seat, knowing that my parents were doing the hard work in bringing me home, and all I had to do was sleep.
2. What new thing would you like to learn to do?
This is so embarrassing, but I’d really like to learn how to throw and catch a baseball. I have terrible hand-eye coordination, except when it comes to cake decorating. Anything that’s not food-related, I’m completely hopeless. I have always envied people who could not only throw and catch beautifully, but could take such things for granted, who had so much confidence in the workings of their own bodies that they knew where the ball would go before it even left their hands. I have been told that it’s an easy thing to learn, throwing and catching a ball. I am trying to be hopeful, and not just assume that I’ll find a way to screw it up.
3. What would you do if you had the guts to try it?
I would travel alone to places where it might not be advisable for women to travel alone, such as Tunisia or Thailand or Goa. I would travel to jungles and rainforests. I would rent a trailer in the desert in Arizona and see how long I could be by myself without driving myself mad.
4. What is something most people don’t know about you?
I have never read Paradise Lost. This doesn’t come up in conversation too often, but people who know that I was an English major, particularly other English majors, automatically assume I know Milton inside out. Sometimes I fess up, but usually I try to play along vaguely, hoping that nobody notices I have no damn idea of what I’m talking about.
5. If you could go anywhere, where would you go?
Other than the places mentioned above, I would probably return to Amsterdam for a long-term stay. My husband and I spent two days in Amsterdam during our honeymoon, and we loved it so much that ever since, we have wondered to each other if we could make a go of living there. It is such a beautiful city, old and grand and happy. The other night I was watching VH1 Classic, which showed the video for the 70’s George McCrae song “Rock Your Baby.” I perked right up, because I loved this song when I was a kid (still do, really), but I almost cried when I realized that the streets and canals along which George McCrae walked as he sang looked very, very familiar indeed. “Is he in Amsterdam?” Lloyd asked. At that moment McCrae walked past the hotel where we stayed, our little love nest, and I cried for real.
If you would like to join the fun, here are the rules:
1 - Leave a comment, saying you want to be interviewed.
2 - I will respond; I’ll ask you five questions.
3 - You’ll update your journal with my five questions, and your five answers.
4 - You’ll include this explanation.
5 - You’ll ask other people five questions when they want to be interviewed.
What great answers!