Mary Louise Eklund

Tag: memories

  • The Characters I’ve been

    The Characters I’ve been

    BoneheadsI have found how to live more than one life in this life.  Really.  I’ve had many lives since I was born, even carrying into adulthood.  I’ll admit I enjoyed some more than others.  None do I want to do again.  That’s going backwards and as I like to say “Been there, done that, got (or didn’t want) a tee-shirt.”  Things that weren’t fun aren’t worth getting a tee-shirt to remember.

    I guess my first change in life was when I was in pre-school.  My parents moved from Chattanooga, Tennessee where I was born to Fort Lauderdale, Florida.  I LOVED it.  We lived in an apartment building which I thought it was constant vacation living like a hotel.  We had a winking burger sign out our kitchen window that lit up not only did he wink at night but he waved too!  Dad had a yellow car that belonged to his company it was neat looking but I didn’t get to ride in it.  We lived near where Flipper was filmed.  The beach was grand and there was lots of sun.  Once we found a police phone receiver in a parking lot.  We went trick or treating without leaving the apartment building.  I mean really how can you beat living in a place like that?  On a visit back to Granny’s (my paternal grandmother) I informed her “I am a FLORIDA girl now.”  Yes  I remember saying it and holding out my brown dress with big yellow sunflowers print to prove the veracity of my statement.  Little did I know I was on the odyssey of my second life in this one.

    Apparently a winking waving burger sign out the kitchen window at night wasn’t what Mom and Dad were looking for in a place to raise a their daughter.  We didn’t live there long before we moved back to Tennessee.  I didn’t know it but Florida would be home at least two more of my lives later down the road.

    I was a city kid that moved to the country.  Then I was the country kid that went to the big college.  I was a photographer in there for a bit. Then I was and still am a military wife. I worked for a nonprofit organizations as an office manager.  Then I was an administrative assistant for one of the first in-house HMOs in upstate New York.  Then I was a fine jewelry salesperson.  Then I was a submariner officer’s wife who was looking for work.  Then I was an insurance agent, followed by marketing researcher, followed by Health Club manager, followed by: a Weight Watcher’s lecturer,  grad student,  receptionist, office manager, real estate agent, temp worker, administrative assistant, Mary Kay Salesperson, Regulatory Compliance Specialist for management of hazardous and radioactive waste,  stay at home mom, and now a

    Those were just the job lives so far.   We all go through changes and honestly if the order was shifted a bit I’d be a different person today.  Each experience dovetailed into the previous and the next one to weave me.  I look back at myself at any of those stages and the me of today would have handled them differently.  That’s why they seem more like different lives than chapters of a life.

    I always remember when writing that characters that are well done grow over chapters and aren’t the same person at the end of the tale as they were in the beginning or middle.  That’s what makes a good story.  I like to think the same thing applies to life. At the end of each chapter I’m not the same. That means I’m living a good life.  I’m a great character because I change over the arc of my life story.  Okay I’m not a literary character in that my growth isn’t mostly internal like say my ancestor that lived in the same house all her life.  I’ve changed physically and moved to various settings.  So I’m a dynamic character formed not just by internal dialogue (though I do talk to myself ALL the time so much so that sometimes I wish I’d shut up in my head) but by external challenges too.

    In the end the thing that makes life interesting for me is trying new things.  I guess some would say I’m a jack of all trades master of none.  Maybe I am but at least I’m entertained by my life.  I’ve always got an interesting story to tell from all of it be it mine or a person I met along the way.  I guess that’s why I ended up a writer for now at least.

  • The Things I Don’t Miss About Christmas

    The Things I Don’t Miss About Christmas

    HO HO HO

    Many people paint a rosy picture of their childhood Christmases.  In hopes of being a bit more practical I will admit there are many things I don’t miss about my childhood Christmases.  Not that they weren’t great Christmases but there are some things I’m thankful I DON’T have to do any more.

    I don’t miss getting dressed up to sit around the house.  Yes, my Nanny (what I called my maternal grandmother)  required everyone to look like a Norman Rockwell painting but better dressed.  Didn’t work, I was uncomfortable in a dress or skirt and knee socks trying to play with my new toy.  Give me jeans any day and I’m a happy camper, better yet sweats to just wear about the house enjoying myself.

    I don’t miss having to make my bed and display my gifts.  Well I didn’t HAVE to but my Nanny liked it. It did make writing thank-you notes much easier. Besides it’s easier to play with Barbies on a bed when you are in a skirt than in the floor.

    I don’t miss the good china.  Yeah it’s nice and I carried that stupidity to a new level when I was a young married woman by having specific Christmas dishes (well we used them all winter because they were winter themed).  No really the meal tastes just as good on every day dishes and is much less stressful to do.

    I don’t miss all the stupid school stuff.  When I was in 5th and  6th grade our class went about singing to different places and putting on some odd variety show.  We wore orange-yellow shirts with our names on them in fuzzy purple letters (our school colors were purple and gold but gold was expensive so orange-yellow stood in).  I’d “blossomed” to a C cup by the 5th grade and they had to shorten my name to fit on the shirt.  It looked like one of the girls is named Mary and the other Lou. I don’t miss that.

    I don’t miss the oyster stuffing.  I like oysters steamed or smoked.  I don’t like them in stuffing.  Enough said.

    I don’t miss the cut up stuff in the gravy.  Why my grandmother insisted on chopped  boiled egg and chopped turkey giblets put in the gravy is beyond me.  I like my gravy plain like my coffee.  They’re both beverages right?

    Really, this time of the year many people wax nostalgic about their childhood Christmas.  However being the cynic with a good heart I don’t want to gloss over the stuff I didn’t like (besides Mary and Lou are still hanging around,  albeit a bit lower now). 

    Yes, there are things about my childhood Christmases I miss.  They can all be summed up by one miss—I miss the anticipation.  I miss the build up to Christmas.  The excitement was so much I felt was going to burst and squirmed with delight at that feeling. It built so much until on Christmas Eve night I couldn’t fall asleep and my parents would take me on car rides to get me to go to sleep .  I’d be in my pajamas with a blanket watching the dark sky and Christmas lights go by until I fell asleep. 

    No for me it’s gone.  I get glimmers here and there of the thrill.  The closest sustained anxious feeling like that is when I race from the car to the bathroom in Target wondering if I’ll make it in time. (Hey there’s anticipation and squirming involved with great joyous relief when I get there).  No the anticipation isn’t the same. 

    Still looking on the bright side, I get to wear sweats, not wear the girls names about in public, enjoy a plain gravy while eating off my every day dishes, and skip making my bed that day.  All in all life’s pretty good.