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Mother and Me, Age 6 — October Memoir Challenge — 13 Comments

  1. What a great post. I love the photos of you and your family. While I do remember my early childhood I cannot say I remember much about my 6th year-except I had two full piece leotards, bodice and leotard I would wear with a skirt. I loved them in the winter because it was one piece-and so cozy-but it must have been cold at bathroom time.

  2. I love how your details place the reader in time. Children today would be bored silly making paper chains, yet I remember as a girl that it was fun to see how long we could make them using the white stick paste that you had to hold the link a bit until it was partially dry. The photos remind me how much we can use pictures to recollect for memoir: the narrow light colored bricks, the hearth, the stack of ashtrays. Interesting to juxtapose your sixth year with your mother’s.

  3. I loved reading this, Joy. We have pictures of Tonnie, Mom and I riding on that same lift probably with you because I look about the same age… I plan to find those pictures and make copies on CD. (Now that I’ve said it— I have to do it.)
    We visited your family about once a year and I remember one particular visit, (about 4th grade perhaps) I was bored and Aunt Sara encouraged me to read a book. At first, I was not happy about it but later she had to make me put the book down. I don’t remember the book but I think it was a biography of Abe Lincoln possibly. I became a reader. To this day I am an avid reader and point to that single experience as the very beginning of my favorite “hobby”.

    • That’s really cool! I remember that you came to school with me one day in the 4th grade. I’m not sure why you visited during a school session — maybe you got spring break and we didn’t. My classmates remembered and asked about you for years after.

  4. What a lovely post. what a huge move that was. I’m not sure about my mom at that age. At that age I was dealing with the fallout from a nasty divorce between my parents.

  5. I know so little of my mother’s life, her childhood especially. I recently learned that my Aunt Frances had polio as a child and spent much of her childhood in a hospital. I remember my mother telling me that her father (my grandfather, obviously) once pushed Frances down the stairs “after she came home from the hospital” and I grew up thinking the scar on her leg was due to the fall. Now I know it probably had more to do with the treatment she received for polio, such as it was at the time.

    I love how you juxtapose yourself and your mother at the same age. What a wonderful idea.

  6. I love paper chains! I like the idea of comparing the two lives at the same age. I had to move when I was in elementary school. Your approach was better than mine- I iced out my parents and announced to my new class that my dad was going to buy me a puppy.

  7. Pingback:Mother and Me, Age 23 — October Memoir Challenge | Joy's Book Blog

  8. Age 6 was grade 1 and I adored going to school. I remember learning how to print with my big red primary school pencil in the lined paper notebooks and practicing the letter shapes. Our teacher was Miss Peignin (sp?) a white blonde Finnish lady who was young and vibrant. Being 6 was pretty sweet I think!
    I have zero idea what age 6 was like for my mother. My aunt was always in charge of her siblings, and she hated that. I suspect they spent a lot of time together then–my aunt being about 12 when my mom was 6. My grandmother being 6 is even more of mystery, though she did say her mother tried to teach her how to cook and clean but in the end she worked in the family vineyards, not spending much time indoors at all.
    Wish I had pictures of those days…

  9. Pingback:Mother and Me, Age 48 — October Memoir Challenge | Joy's Book Blog

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