THE ISOLATION JOURNALS - DAY EIGHT - THE LONG WINTER
Today’s prompt:
Pick five time periods, ages, or moments from your life—they can be spread out or all clustered together. Don't think too hard about your choices, just write down the first one that comes to mind and move to the next.
Example:
1. First grade.
2. Jr. high.
3. Sleeping in a Buick (age 17).
4. Stripping in Texas (age 20).
5. Getting sober (age 25).
With me so far? Feeling admiration for my life choices? Great!
Next pick a song to pair with each moment. Again, try not to think too hard. Let it be a gut thing. Example: Jr. High—"Mother" by Danzig.
Now write a quick and dirty paragraph about each one. Then take the one that feels most interesting to you and expand it.
Quick and Dirty Haikus
Kindergarten: London Bridge is Falling Down (traditional)
Lorain, Ohio
Milk bottles sound like wind chimes
Playing with new friends
Elementary school: Nights on Broadway (Bee Gees)
Pink gingham bedroom
Bee Gees on the radio
Reading through the night
Middle school: Venus and Mars are Alright Tonight (Paul McCartney and Wings)
Passing notes at school
No one else likes this album
Just me and Julie
High school: Super Freak (Rick James)
White dress, feathered hair
That band really rocked the prom
Must have sucked for them
College: Beats and Rhymes (UTFO)
Hip-hop goes old school
Not what you’d expect of me
Full of surprises
The Long Winter
We saw it in the JC Penney’s showroom: the princess bedroom. Plywood furniture painted in Marie Antoinette white and gold. Canopy bed with pink gingham bedspread and eyelet trim. Locked pleather diary and fuchsia feather-plumed pen. I wanted the whole package, but my parents could only afford a few pieces. We improvised the rest.
In fourth grade, my parents bought me Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House series. Nine paperback books in pale yellow covers. I liked reading Judy Blume and Beverly Cleary and Roald Dahl. Funny books with funny characters. The Little House books seemed boring, but they looked pretty lined up on my bookshelf next to my Holly Hobbie figurine.
Winters in Buffalo are cold. And dark. And long. The winter of 1975 was all of these. A full year had passed since my parents bought me the Little House books, and I still hadn’t touched a single volume. But school was cancelled…again. I was desperate for some distraction.
As snow swirled all around my house, Ma taught me how to make headcheese and roast a pig’s tail. As icicles formed outside my bedroom window, Almanzo taught me how to grow a milk-fed pumpkin. And as the temperature slowly rose from below-zero to almost-thawing, Laura taught me how to behave with handsome suitors who come to call.
That winter, I read the entire Little House series in bed while listening to WKBW on my transistor radio. Most people wouldn’t associate the Bee Gees with calico bonnets, plagues of locusts, or evening buggy rides with a beau. But to this day, whenever I hear those crazy falsetto voices celebrating the Nights on Broadway, I’m transported back to that pink gingham bedroom, those pale yellow volumes, and the pioneer girl who taught me what it meant to be American.
(Note: Yes, I know: Nights on Broadway is not on the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack, but I couldn’t resist the juxtaposition of the two images. Besides, I don’t own the Bee Gees’ Main Course album.)