The Dogwood Pin.
October 28, 2011 § 11 Comments
Early memory, at least for me, is an archipelago.
Small islands of perfect memory rise out of the watery depths of time and forgetfulness as clear as this photo shot with my first camera (a Baby Brownie).
What follows is my memory of the first piece of jewelry I ever owned. It begins with me squatting in our gravel driveway holding the pin in my hand.
We lived in Pearl River New York at the time. I know that the pin came from my mother, something I found in her jewelry box and begged to keep.
The written memory takes the form of free verse but not because I was feeling poetic.
All I had to work with when I stumbled across the memory was a handful of vivid details. I remember distinctly the sensation of sharp-edged gravel beneath my bare feet, but little of the connective tissue that constitutes narrative.
I decided that rather than flesh it out I would list those details and leave it to you, the reader, to string them together.
White as the moon
in the Sunday sun
the gravel driveway
winks.
Wearing after-church shorts
(red baggy loose at the waist)
and a hand-me-down shirt
(plaid sleeveless strange pointed collar)
I squat on sharp stones my
summer tough bare feet oblivious.
In my hand is a pin
shaped like a dogwood flower
made in Germany.
Silver my mother says.
Sterling.
You’re a big girl now
don’t lose it.
My first piece of jewelry!
I lift a shirttail and rub it
and listen for the voices of
other turned-loose kids
some Catholic like us:
the Bullises and Pelicanos,
back from mass.
The Cioccos, Burnwhites, and Zawadas
back from synagogues
and white wood
churches less holy.
If I pin my flower on my shirt
who won’t see it shining?
I open the catch
Pinch the fabric over my heart
poke the pin through
close the clasp with a thumbnail.
My pin hangs down
dangling by a thread or two.
I pull my shoulders back
stick my chest out to
make the pin lie flat.
I smile.
Put on crooked maybe
hanging funny maybe
but still sterling
still valuable.
I walk from gravel to path
the silky dust cool between my toes
and cut through the gap
where Mrs. Bullis’s snowball bush
blooms by the fence.
The Bullises:
Mr. Mrs. Linda Johnny and Steven
go to the 11 o’clock
but it’s way past.
Peering through the screen,
smelling its dusty metal
I see kicked-off patent leather shoes
and on the table a lace veil with
a bobby pin stuck through,
a blue Baltimore catechism.
I knock for Linda to come see
and hold my shoulders back.
Note: The grandiose spaces between the lines are not mine. WordPress insisted. Please imagine the poem much smaller and less self-important.
(Why does wordpress do that?)
I love the picture you paint–the clothes, the people coming back from worship, and the freedom to just leave the house and go throughout the neighborhood, safely. I remember when girls ran free in shorts and bare feet. When did that become inappropriate and not proper?
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Neighbors I would like to have known. Precious images that shiver in the memory, almost slipping away as you recall them.
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The past can break your heart, can’t it?
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By chance, did the pin survive your childhood?
I have a small polished wooden elephant with a missing green jeweled eye that a neighbor child gave to me for my birthday one year. I remember my mother explaining that sometimes people don’t buy gifts, but give you the best that they have. And she thought the elephant had come from the grandparents’ travels. On a trip through the washer one time the beautiful green eye came out, and I still watch, hoping that someday I’ll find a small stone to take its place. Like many things, I’ve never been able to let go of it.
I worry that today’s children are missing the joy of “one”.
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Sadly, despite my mother’s warning I lost that pin–but I remember it vividly.
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A wonderfully drawn memory. Thanks for sharing!
MLS
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Thanks to your posted poem, the pin is forever, virtually. Memory never fails to stir, no matter whose it may be.
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So true. Is that because memory, like fiction, has been refined until all that is left is what is meaningful?
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my memories of those times in my childhood are so fragmentary…. and I know i can’t trust their accuracy. but i do have a few artifacts. a nail clipper that belonged to my father… who died when I was 11. It sits in my bathroom drawer, a physical bridge to the past. probably the oldest object from my childhood that i still have in my possession.
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I sometimes find it sad that the things we own outlast us–the persistence of the inanimate.
My parents’ hats, which hang on the wall always make my throat feel thick, but I still don’t take them down. The goodness of memory must outweigh the sorrow.
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I think I like the space between the lines. It makes the poem meander like the mind slowly taking in the neighbors, the pin, and the newly found pride.
Lovely in ways that can’t really be defined.
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