Donkey-Donkey

She picked up a book and brought it over to me, warning that there was a page in there she didn't like. I turned the pages slowly. "I know this one." I remembered that this was the same book that had a certain page I hadn't liked much either when I was her age. Her mother promised us we could skip that page.

"Your nostalgia is her present," Jim said. And I nearly died from the thought.

© Zan McQuade. All rights reserved.

Blinks: The "Everyone Is Suddenly Nostalgic For The Early 90s" Edition

It's absolute nostalgic explosion in my internet these days.

• The '90s vs. The '90s
  I think I have to go to this just to hear the panelists answer the question "Is 2009 1991?" (Possible answer: "Yes, but with fewer Hypercolor t-shirts.")


• Here is my synopsis of every Doug Coupland book, ever.
  I read Shampoo Planet in the summer of 1993 while working a night front desk job in the college dorms. Douglas Coupland will always and forever remind me of hockey players losing their keys, and dialing 1-800-I-FEEL-OK late at night just to hear another voice. Obviously, I would fit quite nicely inside any one of his novels. (via Bookslut)


• The Transient, Digital Fetish
  How many of us have hauled crates of mixtapes and records and high school paperbacks from apartment to apartment over the years because they mean that much to us? Does the same music in different format mean less to a younger generation? TMN, can we hold hands?


• This Mortal Coil, You and Your Sister
  Friends fail every day. I want to hear you say your love won't be leaving.

© Zan McQuade. All rights reserved.

It disappeared many years ago.

At one point in my early twenties I decided to write a novel. I had a title, Erosion, and a first chapter, an overly sentimental and barely fictionalized account of the narrator — me, roughly — sorting through her grandmother's silk scarves. It centered around the idea that as families grow older they learn things about each other that erode the facade of what the family once was, but in the process carve out new identities for themselves, the same way a river can erode the earth and create new shapes in the landscape.

I think this chapter disappeared in the Great Computer Crash of '97, if not before, but I think about this idea a lot. How easy it is to turn old truths into new fictions, and how crushing it is to discover that you've got it completely the wrong way around.

I grew up believing in unicorns and ghosts, in Superman and the tooth fairy*. I also grew up believing that a woman from our town named Lottie Moon was a Civil War hero, a woman who had helped slaves escape by housing them in her stately home on the underground railroad. It wasn't until recently that I discovered how very, very wrong I was. Lottie wasn't helping slaves escape; she was using her flirtatious nature to spy on Ambrose Burnside for the Confederacy.

Oh, Lottie.

There actually were underground railroad stations in my town, they were just elsewhere. I went looking in old county records for Alanson Roots, one of the real owners of a home that had served as a station on the underground railroad, and in the process discovered the written origins of my town.

During the Summer of 1810 the tall trees which then covered the site of the town began to be cut down, and a few cabins commenced. The first house erected in Oxford was built by Samuel MCCULLOUGH, on Lot No. 1, being the lot on which Captain Joel COLLIN's house stood in 1838. It was built of unhewed beech logs, and for several years was the only house of entertainment in the place. It disappeared many years ago. On the lot adjoining the public square was shortly afterward erected a hewed log house by William MCMAHAN, which was also removed many years since. According to the census of 1830, the population of the village amounted to 737 souls.

Even back then things were disappearing.

* * *

All of the houses in my hometown seem to have new stories now. The house I grew up in has a new name, pavement where the patio once was, a cardboard beer carton blowing around in the backyard. The stucco has become siding, and all that's left of the porch swing is a single link dangling from a hook in the ceiling. The garden has been stripped of its flowers; just a few tulips and a pear tree remain.

Visiting places that have such weight in your memory can be such a dangerous thing, especially if the truth as you knew it is no longer there.

* * *

"This is verbena," Mom said as we walked in between the red brick buildings. (She meant viburnum.)

I held the flower to my nose and sniffed. Immediately I shouted that this was a tree that once grew in our yard. "That's right," said Dad, proud that I remembered. Proud that our old garden was something important enough to remember.

We watched a group of schoolchildren jumping rope near the clump of viburnum bushes, and I wondered if that smell would infect their memories as deeply as it had mine. If they would smell a viburnum bush twenty years from now and be violently whipped back to that beautiful sunny day when they skipped rope with their classmates among the trees and red brick buildings. If their laughter would come rushing back too.

I can't see yet what new shapes are forming in my old landscape. I only know that each time I go home the river has cut deeper, and I'm dizzy from reminding myself that I've got it completely the wrong way around.

* While I was home I unearthed my first letter to the tooth fairy, in which I'd tried to extort her for two whole dollars. There are certain things I'm glad I no longer believe in.

© Zan McQuade. All rights reserved.

This Is How It Works

It starts with a hockey game.

The college from my hometown happens to be playing in the NCAA hockey finals, and in between shouting at the television and pacing the room like a madwoman (J: "I've never seen you get like this over sports...") I start to write things down.

While most kids in other towns were hanging out in parking lots drinking Bartles & Jaymes, we were inside the ice arena, banging on plexiglass. I had honestly forgotten how big a role hockey played in my upbringing, but then I started to count the memories again, and it was there. The smell of cold sweat. The feel of skates tied too tight. The first time I heard Queen. The first time I saw a naked man.

This would take too much explaining. Something about the swinging door of a locker room. I'll leave it at that. These are simply the things I remember. Things I am trying to remember.

We had stacks of caught pucks in the basement, sticks scavenged from players after the game, their handles wrapped in tattered tape. Signed programs. We sponsored players until I was in 8th grade, three different guys hailing from Canada who really did say "eh." Shawn had a mustache. Mark was the cute one and dated our babysitter. Ron was quiet and lanky.

I check Wikipedia for the names of penalties to add to my notes: cross-checking, high-sticking, holding, holding the stick, hooking, interference, roughing, slashing, delaying the game, tripping, spearing, fighting, butt-ending, charging, and boarding.

I found a cassette tape recently with Ron's voice on it. Mom and I couldn't figure out how it ended up in our collection.

I start to wonder where this is headed. Hockey? I'm writing about hockey now? I try to remind myself why I do this. I compulsively document memories. I write things down so I don't lose them. God forbid the internet dies some horrible death and all of this is gone.

What, you don't keep this stuff somewhere safe?

Not really.

You mean everything I'm coming up with could disappear, just like that?

I have faith in back-up servers.

Well, since we're already in the process of remembering, do you remember having to write your social studies essay on Thomas Jefferson eleven times because the family Macintosh Plus kept crashing?

Oh god.

Or all of the stories and pieces of stories you lost when your college computer died?

See, now you're just remembering the things I don't want to remember.

This is what we do. We remember.

Do we also have conversations with our memory in public forums?

Now that's just plain crazy.

© Zan McQuade. All rights reserved.

My Apologies To Helen Buckman

Martha Plimpton has opened up a wormhole in my universe.

Shortly after I spotted her the other night, I noticed that Parenthood was playing repeatedly on HBO. I had forgotten how much I love that film. Last Friday, J came home to find me sobbing, clutching tissues and reciting lines to the ending of a film I hadn't seen in over a decade. I obviously never realized how much it affected me. Last night as we were getting ready for bed, J noticed something taping on the DVR and brought up the menu.

"You're taping Parenthood AGAIN?"

"Oh yeah! I forgot. Let's put it on." I batted my lashes. "Just the beginning."

We watched for half an hour, finally turning it off because J couldn't stand to watch the lost retainer scene. And then I happened to mention online that I once scared the crap out of Dianne Wiest.

I should know by now that you can't allude to something online without being prepared to tell the full story. I was asked to elaborate, and I only wish it had been as exciting as I made it sound. I did not jump out at Dianne Wiest from behind a rock. I did not put snakes in Dianne Wiest's luggage. If anything, I may have made Dianne Wiest feel a little bit uncomfortable. The truth, apparently, doesn't sound as good on Twitter. So forgive me if this story goes nowhere. (Last Sunday I learned that if you're telling a story that's going nowhere, you should end it with "And then I found five dollars." Apparently, the worse the story is going, the lower the value you tack on to the end of the story. This could come in handy.)

In the summer of 1990, a film crew rolled into our sleepy town to film scenes from Jodie Foster's directorial debut, Little Man Tate. They held casting calls for extras and stand-ins*, roped off streets, and raised lighting rigs to light up various buildings around town. I'm sure the local paper ran a headline along the lines of "Hollywood Comes To Southwestern Ohio." On hot days when there was nothing better to do, we townfolk milled curiously around the perimeters of the set, hoping to catch a glimpse of Harry Connick Jr. changing his t-shirt.

One day I was loitering with the rest of the town, navigating a maze of duct taped cables and catering tents, waiting for someone to shout "action!" Dianne Wiest was nearby, playing with her daughter during a pause in filming. This was before I knew much about Dianne Wiest, Academy Award Winning Actress, Star Of Woody Allen Films. But I knew she was a star, and I was in awe of being in proximity to a star. I had, after all, seen Parenthood.

She handed the girl to a sitter and sat down in a director's chair to review her script. I was trying to build the nerve to ask for her autograph; the mother of a friend of mine innocently suggested I use a conversation starter, such as asking her what her daughter's name was. And so I walked up to her.

"Um, what's your daughter's name?"

"[Daughter's Name I Can't Remember.] Why do you ask?" She was on guard, but politely signed my stray piece of paper. Apparently fourteen seemed like an odd age at which to be naturally curious about the name of another child.

I pointed. "That lady over there told me to ask you."

When I looked in the direction of my friend's mother, however, she wasn't waving cutely like a curious and empathetic mom, but leering expectantly at the two of us. The expression on her face made her look as if she could be anticipating either a celebrity's acknowledgment of her question, or the fingerbone of a small child to help her build her house in the woods. She might as well have been dangling a poison apple. She noticed us looking in her direction and tried to slip behind a nearby tree. Poor Dianne Wiest smiled nervously at me and I walked away.

I doubt her daughter came to the set much after that.

And then I found a nickel.

(*Look carefully for the boy running pigeon-toed away from the camera in one of the scenes with the group of genius kids. That would be my brother, aged ten.)

© Zan McQuade. All rights reserved.