Memories
the ocean and sharks...
i used to live in the Philippines until l i was about 4 years old...i remember the summers when my family and i would take trips to the beach...i loved to swim off as far as i could, and wouldn't stop to turn around until my mother was the size of an ant...i used looked forward to those days...my mother on the other hand was very concerned that one day i would drift off and be lost forever...so she made up this convincing story that sharks lived in that very spot of the ocean where i would swim too...terrified by the thought of sharks and being eaten, i developed a fear of the ocean and never swam past the waves again...THE END
Summers in Hollywood
Growing up in Florida, I used to spend about one month every summer in Hollywood with my Grandma Ellen. She was a large lady whose spirit was forceful and gritty, though she always followed up with a laugh. I don't remember exactly, but I must have been with her every summer from age 9 to 12 or 13.
Her house was just a mile or so from the coast, so we used to go to the beach often and lay on a blanket with that radio, soaking up the rays. I remember the weight of her body and how she would roll back and forth on her belly positioning her arms beneath so she could look around us. Grandpa Bob often took me to the beach also, usually in the mornings we'd park by the boardwalk and speedwalk to the rising sun with all the other plastic dignitaries. On the way home we would stop by the donut shop and pick up an assortment of day-olds for half-price. Once Grandpa told me we were lost, and he drove around and around their neighborhood for thirty minutes or so until he was bored enough to go home. Sometimes my cousin and I would hunt lizards with rubber-bands, which were strong enough to tear their skin and prove fatal when close enough. At night I'd fall asleep in the guest room, watching tv on the couch. The window unit ac was cranked up high so that the hum was pervasive and the air crisp like foil. I liked to have the fan on also, to feel the air move around my body wrapped in icy sheets. One night I saw a huge cockroach crawling on the ceiling and just as I became nervous so did he. His wings clapped and began to fly, though with a sharp knock the fan blades sent that roach to his death and a hard collision with the wall. Grandma Ellen died when I was 14 I think. She had an anuerism in her brain, brought on by a hasty switch of blood thinning meds; her head collided with the white porcelain of the bathroom toilet as she collapsed.
The Floating Restaurant, from the "Lost Memories" series
When I was 9 years old, my family traveled the world. While we were in Hong Kong we went to a floating restaurant for dinner. The restaurant was a giant floating barge three stories high. To get to it you had to take a small taxi boat. The boatman would row to the restaurant and then after eating, back to shore. I remember the ride, I even took a picture of my father with my Brownie 2X2 Camera. But the real memory of this event was when we arrived at the restaurant and were taken to a table. Soon a waiter came along and asked us if we would like fish? We all said yes and he asked us to come to a giant aquarium in the middle of the restaurant full of exotic fish. The waiter asked me which one I would like, and I saw a beautifully colored fish that I thought would be wonderful to take home. My Parents and Sister chose their fish as well and we all went back to our table. After a while, the fish arrived on a plate well cooked with greens, onions and lemon. I turned white when I realized I had chosen my dinner and not a pet! I suddenly did not feel like eating. On the way back to shore from the restaurant, my father photographed me and my mother. The moment of confronting the reality that the food on our plates was once alive was still lingering on my face.
This image is part of a series of water damaged slides from my childhood. These images along with my written memories accompanying each photo, make up the "Lost Memories" series.
Under the Sea
The summer I turned 8, I went swimming in my next-door neighbor's pool almost everyday. I would pretend that I was a mermaid and that the old, mechanical pool cleaner was actually a column of seaweed. I would swim around and around the cleaner down to the bottom and then back up again. I would lie down on the bottom of the shallow end of the pool and look up at the sky and the light streaming through the water. I stayed in that pool for hours.