Nostalgia Regained, Gillian

I have always thought myself blessed; I can live the time and place where my nostalgia takes me any time I want. There are countless books, and especially movies, about Britain during World War Two - the time and place of my early years. There are not as many of the later 1940's, or the '50's and '60's, but there are enough. If I want to return to my childhood amongst remote farms, I can watch and re-watch the old PBS/BBC series, All Creatures Great and Small, which feels to me to be an almost exact replica of my childhood environment.

If I want to feel that stirring patriotism of the war years, emotions which I think I recall but in fact was probably too young, I can watch the old black-and-white movies of the time, many of which are cloyingly sentimental, such as, In Which We Serve, The First of the Few, or the unabashed propaganda of Mrs. Miniver.

In the '50's and '60's came an era of more realistic movies dealing with the many issues remaining after the war: Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, Billy Liar, and Georgy Girl.

 

Or those films whose only purpose was to make us laugh, like the wonderful selection starring Alec Guinness.  

And then, along came The Beatles with It's a Hard Day's Night, which appeared in 1964, a year after I graduated from college. A nostalgic ride if ever there was one. 

In the year of my birth alone, 1942, Britain produced over 50 movies set in Britain. Yes, it is easy for me to take that trip down memory lane any time I feel so inclined; which I did quite frequently over the  years. Opportunities for nostalgic trips via the movies are even more plentiful, of course for Americans. But most other first-generation immigrants like me are not offered this escape; at least it is not immediately available from the local library, and probably not even these days from Netflix and the like. How many movies are there that would have you jump aboard and be immediately transported back in time to 1940's Latvia or 1950's Guatemala?

But in later years something seemed to go wrong. I no longer delighted in this armchair time-travel the way I used to. In fact, rather the opposite. Movies, either fiction or documentaries, depicting my time and place of nostalgia, whether made back then or current depictions of it, tended rather to depress and anger me. They make me cry. They are sexist, classist, xenophobic, homophobic; all the ists and ics you can think of. They are bigoted, 100% white and 100% heterosexual. They are all about the unthinking, unquestioning, superiority of men and equally unquestioningly subservient women. They made me question not only my memory but my very sanity. This is the piece of history upon which I gaze with such affection? It has been said that nostalgia is a longing for a time and place which never existed. I fear that must be what I suffered from for much of my life. Sadly, I began to see it more clearly for what really did exist, and did not particularly like it.

I rather blamed my efforts, over the last few years, to become a more spiritual person. This has, as indeed it is part of it's purpose, raised my consciousness; allowed me to see things more clearly, as they are, rather than as a blurred concoction of my own designing. But I hated that I was robbed of my nostalgia; my place of escape on a bad day.

More recently I have turned yet another corner. I can still take that magic carpet ride. I can still enjoy depictions of my past. It is simply that I have lost those tinted lenses through which I once gazed with love and longing.

I wouldn't go back there if you paid me!

In 1952, when Alan Turin was arrested for his homosexuality, I was an English schoolgirl of 12. What hope was there for me to deal with, or even acknowledge, my own homosexuality? Not that anyone knew anything of Turin at the time, all he had done for the Allied war effort was kept under the secure wraps of the Official Secrets Act for decades, but his terrible story is emblematic of the attitudes of the times.

So now I again enjoy movies and books portraying that life I once lived. They no longer make me angry. They simply offer pictures of a past which, thankfully, no longer exists. They remind me of the many ways in which we have moved forward, for all that at times it seems that we have not. I can recognize that past of which I was a part, with at least a modicum of objectivity. I neither hate it nor love it. It once was, and now it's gone. Those spiritual teachers/guides would be proud of me. I am truly, at least in this one instance, living in THE NOW!

© May 2016 

About the Author 

 I was born and raised in England. After graduation from college there, I moved to the U.S. and, having discovered Colorado, never left. I have lived in the Denver-Boulder area since 1965, working for 30-years at IBM. I married, raised four stepchildren, then got divorced after finally, in my forties, accepting myself as a lesbian. I have been with my wonderful partner Betsy for thirty-years. We have been married since 2013.

Raindrops, by Gillian

How can it be that any time I hear the word rain, I am immediately transported back to my youthful years in Britain    I must say, though, that in my memories of rain there and then, raindrops are not writ large. In my memories, rain does not arrive in gentle, single, drops.  It comes in more or less solid sheets which saw and slap disdainfully at any exposed skin and soak all clothing in mere seconds. But that is the essence of raindrops, is it not? Like oh so many things, they are relatively unnoticed in ones and twos but when they gather together - watch out!

Where I lived, at least, umbrellas were rarely seen. They serve little purpose against slashing, driving rain which comes from a different direction instantly and often. And anyway, in a farming community, who has hands free to handle flailing umbrellas? Might as well expect to see firemen and soldiers huddled beneath the things.

Much more practical to 'bundle up' against the weather the best you can; a rain hat of some variety, a completely waterproof plastic or oilskin coat over your other clothes providing layers for warmth as well as dryness, and a pair of sturdy rubber boots up to your knees. And all that might be effective against mere raindrops, but against those horizontal waves of water it stands no chance. A few moments of exposure and the water is pouring down inside collar and boots, the only difference being that your clothes are getting soaked from the inside out rather than from the outside in.

But, other than cricket and tennis, I rarely recall anything being cancelled because of rain. Well, you'd never get to do anything, would you? I remember county shows with apparently obliviously-contented sheep and cattle steaming in the pouring rain, while critical farmers proclaimed their opinions and puffed hopelessly on pipes which sizzled sullenly, all hint of flame long extinguished. Meanwhile we kids slipped and slid and frolicked and rolled in the wonderful sticky, stinky, mud, and would have felt quite cheated should the sun have had the temerity to drive away the rain.

It is a truly rare thing to hear a Brit complain about the rain.

'Grand drop of rain, this,' they'll say, appreciatively, and the completely serious response will be, 'Ay. Good for the garden.'

Has nobody noticed that it's been absolutely bucketing down for a week now and every garden is awash? I actually believe it's some kind of national collective denial over how bad the weather in Britain actually is. A wit once remarked that the difference between summer and winter there is that the rain isn't quite as cold in the summer. I truly do enjoy rain, but then I live in Colorado where a 'grand drop of rain' really can be a rare and beautiful thing.

I usually trawl the internet for quotes, when we have a topic such as this one. One of many rather gooey sickly-sweet ones I came across, was; life isn't about waiting for the storm to pass, it's about learning to dance in the rain. Which, I guess, makes the Brits the best dancers in the world.

  

© 16 Apr 2016 

About the Author 

  

 I was born and raised in England. After graduation from college there, I moved to the U.S. and, having discovered Colorado, never left. I have lived in the Denver-Boulder area since 1965, working for 30-years at IBM. I married, raised four stepchildren, then got divorced after finally, in my forties, accepting myself as a lesbian. I have been with my wonderful partner Betsy for thirty-years. We have been married since 2013.

Bricks, by Gillian

My mother, not someone I would identify as a religious person, used to read me stories from the Bible. She favored the New Testament, particularly the Parables. I think she believed, quite rightly in my opinion, that they would have a more positive influence on me than Fairy Tales, many of which seem to be about little girls coming to bad ends through little or no fault of their own.

Occasionally she chose readings from the Old Testament, and one of these was the tale of Making Bricks Without Straw. (This is how it is generally thought of, anyway, though to be accurate that is incorrect. Pharaoh did not tell the Israelites they had to make bricks without straw but rather that straw would no longer be provided for them; they would have to get it themselves.) I suspect that she liked the tale because, in this post-war time of severe rationing, she felt that she spent her life trying to create the necessities of life without the basic ingredients.

Be all of that as it may, it was my introduction to bricks.

The house I grew up in, like most homes in rural Britain, was made of local stone, not brick nor wood. Various ambitious British monarchs building various ambitious fleets of wooden ships had depleted British woodlands almost to the point of oblivion. Brick was expensive. Stone was frequently there for the taking. The problem is, rough-hewn stone such as that of my childhood home, is rather like a badly-cut jigsaw puzzle. The pieces don't fit together well, and require great amounts of mortar to keep things stable. The mortar requires constant repair, and even with that the incessant rain finds it's way into and through the walls. The house was always cold and damp.

When I rode the local bus to to the local town, with it's burgeoning suburbia, I looked upon the brick homes with envy. Perhaps they did, as my mother said with sniffing disdain, all look alike. But that look was warm, and snug, and cozy; none of which adjectives could be applied to our home. They were, perhaps, 150 years younger, but that failed to register. In the event, I moved from English fieldstone to American wood siding and never did live in a brick house until Betsy and I got together. Over the twenty-eight years we have been together we have had three houses, all brick, and all living up to my dreams of warm and cozy.

In the Britain of my childhood, I'm not sure about nowadays, we would call a certain type of person a brick. Ooh, you really are a brick! you'd say to the kind neighbor who, unasked, took your children to her house for a few days so that you could go to bed with that awful flu. He's such a brick, you'd say, about the friend who was always there to lend a practical hand in times of trouble. A brick is someone thoughtful, kind, reliable, generous. Betsy is a brick. It's a large part of why I love her so much.

Several years ago I signed up for a tour of Lakewood Brick Company. It was scheduled to start quite early in the morning, and we lived in Park Hill at that time, so I left home about 7.00 a.m.  There was surprisingly little traffic about. Was it some holiday I'd forgotten? Rather than wondering about it I gave thanks for quiet streets which gave me time to pop into the grocery store to get a snack for lunch. The store somehow had an odd feeling to it, rather the way the roads had. The few customers all seemed to be standing in little groups engaged in serious conversations rather than actually shopping. I was getting a cold feeling in the pit of my stomach.

'What's going on?' I asked two employees who stood muttering together.

'Oh! Haven't you heard?' They stumbled over each other to give me the news.

'A plane crashed into one of the New York sky-scrapers,' said one.  'Only, then there was another crash so they don't know what's happening,' added the other.

I forgot lunch and went back to the car to listen to the radio. Clearly what they had told me was what was being reported, but all in total confusion. The newscasters obviously had no clear picture of what exactly had happened and what continued to happen. The only certainty was; it was not good. It was serious. It was some kind of national emergency.

What to do? Should I go back home? To do what? Would they cancel the Brick Company tour?

Uncertainly I turned through the high fence gates and parked, to be joined in the next few minutes by a few other cars. The tour began as scheduled but with about a quarter of the number expected. Those of us who had turned up gave it our best but it was hopeless. The man leading the tour tried, but was clearly distracted. He wasn't concentrating on what he was saying and no-one was really listening. Cell Phones kept chiming and chirping. The recipient would listen, disconnect, and pass on the latest to the rest of us. Pretty soon, by some kind of unspoken but unanimous decision, we gave up and went home through streets that were, if anything, even more silent than before, to sit at home and stare in horrified disbelief at our televisions along with everyone else.

Where we live now is not very far from Lakewood Brick Company. We drive past it quite often.  But no matter how many times I pass it, it never fails to take me back to that terrible day which so changed this country, and indeed the world, forever.

Until I started to write this piece, I don't think I had ever realized that bricks actually loom quite large in my psyche, one way and another. Amazing what you discover about yourself writing these little Monday afternoon vignettes.

© 12 Oct 2015 

About the Author 

I was born and raised in England. After graduation from college there, I moved to the U.S. and, having discovered Colorado, never left. I have lived in the Denver-Boulder area since 1965, working for 30-years at IBM. I married, raised four stepchildren, then got divorced after finally, in my forties, accepting myself as a lesbian. I have been with my wonderful partner Betsy for thirty-years. We have been married since 2013.

Here and There, by Gillian

Here and There 

(Or, as my mum would have said, hither and thither!)


The American doughboys marched off cheerily to World War One singing, over there, over there, the Yanks are coming, the Yanks are coming, and we won't come back till it's over, over there.

By the time it was over over there, 120,000 of them could not come back. Before long the Yanks were coming once more, for the second Big One, and by the time that one was over over there, almost half a million Americans could not come back. Over there can be deadly.

There was a saying in Britain at the end of World War Two. The only problem with the Yanks is, they're over sexed, over paid, and over here. That seems almost incredibly unappreciative of men who, almost certainly, saved Britain from being invaded by Hitler and his Nazi thugs. It is understandable, though, that returning British men felt considerable resentment. Many returned to wives raising G.I. babies, or wives wanting a divorce because this poor embattled war weary Brit. could never measure up to that beautiful boy from Biloxi with his easy charm and an apparently endless supply of chocolate, American cigarets, and ready cash. They returned to girlfriends and fiancées who had their bags packed ready for an immediate escape to join that friendly fruit farmer in Florida, or some rugged Wyoming cowboy. There and here is not always an easy mix.

I, born in Britain in 1942, sometimes have to wonder what my life would have been, had the U.S. not joined the Allies in World War Two: different, for sure. Much shorter, perhaps. Having said that, it's difficult for me to take the stand of an isolationist. But let's face it, since World War Two, our military forays in foreign fields have not .... well, let's be kind and simply say, not been all that we'd hoped for. Though exactly what we had hoped for, from Viet Nam to Iraq and Afghanistan, seems pitifully unclear. Over there can be confusing.

The United States, being an immigrant country, is peopled by those who, themselves or their not too distant ancestors, came from there to here - 'there' being just about anywhere in the world.

Some, tragically, came involuntarily, and experienced nothing good here. But for most of us who chose to come from over there to over here, it was a good move and we found the good life here, the life we wanted. People occasionally ask me if I would ever want to move back to England, and I surprise myself by thinking, not unless I can go back to the time of my youth there. I know that's not an honest response, even silently in my own head. That was, after all, the Britain that I chose not to remain in. Nostalgia has been so aptly described as the longing for a place and time that never was. In my heart I know that if some magical time travel were possible, and I could return to the Britain of my youth, I would return happily to the here and now, saying, with that smugness we sometimes feel on returning home from vacation,

"Great place to visit, but I wouldn't want to live there!"

No, my life is here and now. I'm here to stay.

© May 2015

About the Author

I was born and raised in England. After graduation from college there, I moved to the U.S. and, having discovered Colorado, never left. I have lived in the Denver-Boulder area since 1965, working for 30 years at IBM. I married, raised four stepchildren, then got divorced after finally, in my forties, accepting myself as a lesbian. I have now been with my wonderful partner Betsy for 25 years.

Road Trip by Gillian

I came honestly by my addiction to road trips. I was introduced to them by my mum and dad. In Britain during, and for years after, World War Two, private cars were relatively rare; gas was severely rationed. But as we staggered into the fifties, our world became a little brighter and Dad took his old car down off the blocks where it had rested for a decade. He worked lovingly on it for some time, then lo and behold suddenly one Sunday afternoon we were off to the Welsh mountains. Before long the afternoon jaunts graduated to day excursions and thence to a week in Cornwall and two weeks in Scotland. There was never any discussion of camping, not a very attractive prospect in the wet cold British weather, but we were on a low budget and stayed in small back-street B & B’s. These were nothing like their upscale modern U.S. namesakes, but simply a spare room in a very modest house, usually sharing the bathroom and breakfast with the owners. In this style we went to many different parts of the country and met many interesting people.

Perhaps, had I not been an only child, I would have hated these vacations and even the day trips the way many modern kids hate spending hours in the car. But I had the luxury of the back seat to myself, without noisy squabbling siblings to dig elbows in my ribs or squash me against the door handle and demand the windows be open; or closed. I never once recall asking, even silently in my own head, “Are we there yet?” I think it was a safe and warm haven to me, shut away in this metal box, just the three of us.

But it was my mother who turned it from an OK activity to something I truly loved. Mum kept up something of a running commentary as we passed through the farms and towns. She loved history and regaled Dad and me, though he never responded except occasionally to glance back at me in the rear-view mirror and wink, with fascinating tidbits about different places; not boring things like dates but little anecdotes. At the time I believed it all to be true, though looking back I’m not completely convinced, though she certainly was a very knowledgeable woman. Apart from history, she would make up silly stories about a farm we just passed, or the vicar of a village church, or the family in a car we met going the other way. There were still not many cars on the roads then, so seeing one was just an invitation to Mom’s imagination. Most of all, she loved to laugh, and if there was nothing too immediately amusing in the vicinity, she would create something. She made herself giggle with some of her imagined stories, and she paid great attention to license plates, making them into acronyms or rhymes.

My mother leaps up in my memory quite often, and usually it’s when something comes up that I know would have made her giggle. During football games, for instance, not that I can imagine Mum ever enjoying football, but how she would giggle at some of the commentary, when they say things like, “He wasn’t doing much when he was an Eagle, but as a Panther he’s really come into his own.” When she stopped her giggles she would then, I know, weave some wonderful fairy story around this failed eagle which somehow morphed into a more successful big cat.

Anyway, having made a short story long, that was my introduction to road trips; followed, inevitable by a hiatus of decades given over to work and family. Then, in celebration of a new millennium, Betsy and I bought our VW camper van and embarked on our own series of road trips. I haven’t had time to count them up, but they must number around twenty-five for a total time of maybe a year, though we rarely are away for more than three or four weeks at a time.

We have been many places from the Mexican border to, and into, Canada; and from coast to coast. We have visited every one of the lower forty-eight states, and camped in most of them.

We have seen sights we had always wanted to see but not had the chance, and chanced upon things we had no idea of. Unlike taking a plane, when the best you can possibly hope for is a journey that is uneventful, road trips are never uneventful; nor do you want them to be, though it’s good when the wonderful surprises well outnumber the bad ones. We have of course had our share of those less positive - flat tires both on the road and in campgrounds, loading up in the morning all ready to go and the van won’t start; freeway accidents only narrowly averted and near misses with tornadoes, hail storms, and forest fires.

I understand that one day in the not too distant future one of us is going to reach the age where camping road trips are not such an attractive option. It’s unclear at this time which of us will reach that stage first, Betsy or me or Brunhilda as we call the van, mostly though not always, with great affection. That will be a sad day, whatever the reason. But one of the blessings of aging seems to be the ability to accept with relative ease that the good times of the moment will inevitably come to an end, but only to be replaced by other, different, good times. We can love taking out our favorite memories and dusting them off for further enjoyment, but at the same time always creating new ones while continuing, with luck, to live without regrets. And I suspect that my most frequently re-visited memories, as long as I’m privileged to have memories, will be of oh those many road trips.

© 15 August 2014 

About the Author 

I was born and raised in England. After graduation from college there, I moved to the U.S. and, having discovered Colorado, never left. I have lived in the Denver-Boulder area since 1965, working for 30 years at IBM. I married, raised four stepchildren, then got divorced after finally, in my forties, accepting myself as a lesbian. I have now been with my wonderful partner Betsy for 25 years.

Mushrooms by Gillian

I thought of writing about mushrooms the other week when our topic was “Magic” but that led too inevitably to the psychedelic connection, which is far from the kind of magic I personally attach to mushrooms. They bring, for me, a nostalgia for the magic of innocent childhood days.

One of my very favorite things was when my mum and dad and I would go off together into the fields and woodlands to pick mushrooms. My vision of it is my mother with the basket on one arm and me swinging from the free hand between her and my dad. Perhaps this happened for just one instant, once, but you know how it goes. These things from the distant past expand themselves until they occupy vast stretches of time, and in my memory every time we went what we called “mushrooming,” I clasped each of them by the hand and swung my feet off the ground between them. We were not a touchy-feely kind of family and holding both their hands is a thing I cannot remember doing at other times or in other circumstances. It was just part of the magic of mushrooms.

Mostly we went in autumn, early in the morning, though I think occasionally we went at other times of the day and year. I associate mist with these morning jaunts, though again this might, in reality, have been just once. We looked for the mushrooms in open grassy meadows among sleepily grazing cows and sheep, and in glades of old oak trees where they grew happily on old rotting stumps. I have no idea what kind they were, though the ones from the fields were different from those in the trees. We worried little about accidentally picking poisonous ones, but I have no idea whether we were simply lucky or whether my parents had some learned or inherited knowledge about such things. Even I knew that you never picked toadstools, but they were easy to tell apart from mushrooms. Every child knew that fairies only live in toadstools; never in mushrooms! Though mushrooms do form what we always called “fairy rings,” growing in clear circles on the grass. Even when the mushrooms were not there, the rings still were visible as mounds or depressions in the grass, and as the mushrooms tended to grow again in that same ring, it was always a good place to look. These circles were sometimes just a yard or so across, but some were huge, ten to twenty feet in diameter. No-one knew why they grew in these circles so of course who else was to be held responsible but the little people? Stones the size of a pinkie or a fist or occasionally a football were also sometimes arranged in circles, always called “fairy rings” for the same reason. I loved to imagine these little creatures busily pushing and tugging at the rocks to get them arranged correctly, but was never too sure how they got the mushrooms to grow that way. Perhaps, I thought, they planted the wee seeds in a circular trench, the way my dad planted the potatoes in a straight trench.

For me, mushrooms were all about the gathering. I rather lost interest in them when we got the overflowing basket home, though I enjoyed eating them well enough. Had they been readily available in stores via mushroom farms as they are now, I probably would not have liked them, as many children do not, but back then they were rare enough to be attractive.

These days, sadly, in my opinion, picking mushrooms has, like so many things, lost its simplicity and become hugely complex. For one thing, of course, you can no longer wander freely over your neighbors’ fields and woods and help yourself to anything growing there. For another, mushrooms have fallen victim to TMI. We have way Too Much Information about them, as about most things. Did you know that there are an estimated 10,000 different species of mushrooms in North America; that a mushroom specialist is called a mycologist? Do you care?

On Google Earth, I find, you can see mushrooms from space, honest! Well, not the mushrooms themselves, but the tell-tale fairy rings left by some species. These rings are clearly visible satellite images, so you can select likely fields to visit whilst sitting at your computer. Talk about taking all the fun out of things! How can that possibly compare with tucking cold hands into Mom and Dad’s warm ones, watching the frost turn your breath to fog? How can finding something on the internet bring you memories to last a lifetime? And the rings themselves have some completely scientific explanation to do with fungus, and have lost all their magic. Worse than that, they sometimes appear on a pristine lawn and no amount of digging will destroy them so the Web recommends destroying them with chemicals. The poor old fairies are in big trouble in the modern world. And their fairy stone rings, apparently, are causes by the continuous winter freeze/thaw cycle pushing the rocks, not the little people at all, at all.

In Britain, where of course my childhood memories originate, mushrooms have become big business; not only via mushroom farms where they are cultivated en masse but also the picking of wild ones. Far from the “mushrooming” of my youth, it has now gone upscale and is invariably termed mushroom “foraging.” It seems that in order to partake of this, what at least used to be, simple pleasure one first needs to buy some expensive basket via one of many international online boutique such as fungi.com, (yes, there really is such a place!) along with an equally costly knife, the purpose of which escapes me as we always pulled them up and they exited the wet ground with a wonderfully pleasing plop. One then arms oneself with a variety of books and maps and charts so as to identify what one is searching for, and to identify the best place and time to search for it, so as not to waste valuable time and to avoid the hazard of poisoning oneself, even though only about one percent of all mushrooms can be lethal. And after all that, of course, you’ve run out of time and simply hire a “Mushroom Foraging Guide,” to lead you by the hand, instead. (Yes, there really are such people!)

Just reading about it all on WildMushroomsOnline.co.uk wore me out.

And d’you know what upset me most; the worst thing I discovered in my researches way down in the TMI depths? There is actually no scientific basis for differentiating so-called toadstools from mushrooms. They are just variations of the same thing. Oh no! Haven’t those poor fairies suffered enough? How are they to know where to live? I tell you one thing, if I ever suffered from little people envy, I’m cured. The last place I want to live in these challenging times is down at the bottom of the garden with the fairies!

And so the magic goes; the magic fantasies of fairies and the magic moments of mushrooming. It’s partly my age, of course, and partly the age. The world has changed so very much in the time that I have inhabited it, and I would be the last one to claim that it is all for the worse. Those days gone by were not necessarily better, but there’s no denying they were simpler. I have to wonder where the children of this fast-paced electronic era will find the magic, but I try to keep the faith that they will, and fortunately I shall never know.

© December 2013

About the Author  

I was born and raised in England. After graduation from college there, I moved to the U.S. and, having discovered Colorado, never left. I have lived in the Denver-Boulder area since 1965, working for 30 years at IBM. I married, raised four stepchildren, then got divorced after finally, in my forties, accepting myself as a lesbian. I have now been with my wonderful partner Betsy for 25 years.