Transplanted to 1965

My parents gave me the gift of solitary downtime to daydream and recharge. Parents want to give their children the best of everything, but sometimes the best gift is the time to do nothing.

My parents were strict, thank heaven. They expected us to be out of our PJs and into clothes by noon on the weekend. Until noon we could stay under the covers reading about Laura and Mary Ingalls or Robin Hood, build with Tinker Toys in the living room, or play Barbies if we put on our bedroom slippers. We had some really keen gold space boot slippers. Funny, but the slippers didn't even have a Disney princess or registered trademark movie tie-in on them. We were free to imagine what they might be.... and they were magic.

We survived without adult-organized activites and sports for the most part. Some winter Saturdays I did ride the city bus downtown to my swim lesson at the YWCA, then bought a large Tootsie Roll for a nickel, and checked out some new biographies at the main Bennett Martin Library next door before catching a bus back home.

In the afternoons I could draw floorplans for fantasy homes on graph paper to the background sounds of Celtics/Lakers games with Bill Russell and Wilt Chamberlain in quite short shorts, or the heavy breathing of Kurt Goudy stalking the elusive trophy African velpdeeloop on "The American Sportsman". I could play quietly while my dad napped on the couch with the newspaper over his face. Often, I tore interesting photos out of old magazines to make into collages or just keep. I still have some of those clippings in my files.

The sounds of my napping dad's slow breathing, the dryer running in the basement, the rain, and maybe my mom's sewing machine gave an underpinning rhythm to my day. I didn't have to accomplish anything or be anywhere, except as I devised. As the afternoon ran out, a calm would settle in. All is well with the world. All is well with the world. The living room would become darker. I would lay on the carpet studying the pictures in books of architecture and art, or Herman Miller furniture catalogs. I could stack three LPs on the spindle of the hi-fi. "Rhapsody in Blue", Prokofiev's march from "Love for Three Oranges", Cole Porter or "Claire de Lune", Mary Martin in "Peter Pan", Ethel Merman in "Gypsy", Lena Horne or Petula Clark, Ray Walston singing either "Those Were the Good Old Days" from Damn Yankees or "There Is Nothin' Like A Dame" from South Pacific. When you're a Jet, you're a Jet all the way.

Accomplished incredible feats early today--bagged a pair of those elusive trophy perfect shoes, mailed packages to my dad and nephew, swam laps at the Aquatic Center, called a friend and laughed until my sides hurt. This afternoon has been for the rain and the dryer, sorting photos torn out of old magazines, quietly recharging.

In the mid-Seventies I participated in a group listening to classical music with Nelson Potter in UNL's Centennial College. I especially liked the clarinet music of Poulenc. Next winter the Fort Worth Opera will perform Poulenc's opera, "Dialogues des Carmelites". I sense that I'm supposed to attend, so I'm listening to this lovely music, and becoming curious about the French Revolution and religious orders. There's studying ahead!

I'm struck today that the very kind of afternoon that gave me great peaceful and creative energy forty years ago is still the most wonderful sort of Saturday afternoon.