Weather Report with Shopping Memory


Dear Elizabeth,

Weather report.

It just hailed.  The sound of little ticking on the windows grew louder, and then the wind kicked in, and the sheets of rain went diagonal.  Yesterday the wind blew so hard, I passed a blown down awning on Christopher St. and at the corner of Varick and Franklin was a tipped over tree in its gigantic concrete planter. 

They say the gusts were up to 40 miles per hour.  Went shopping anyway.  Impossible to think of shopping without thinking of you.  Harry’s Shoes now has a whole store just for children.  You were patient  trying on different styles and  sizes of shoes while the many older people competed for the attention of Harry’s sales men waiting on you. 

When we shopped in the old Burlington Coat Factory on Park Place—you would hide under the clothes racks, slip between the hanging coats and dresses, play hide and seek there.  


Now the Burlington Coat Factory is a mosque.  And small children wear Uggs.  


3 comments:

  1. Patty,
    The memories you share are painted so beautifully with a mixture of color and sadness. Your canvas, your words....your art. They reflect her beauty, and how a childs soul grows within us even when there is no sun or rain. Your entries are beyond moving to me.
    With much love,
    Susan

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  2. How great to hear from you, Susan. Thank you for your kind words. Love, Patty

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  3. Dear Patty,
    This morning on my way to work, one month after you posted this, I heard a piece on NPR about that very Burlington Coat Factory. It made me think of you, and Elizabeth, and then after Elizabeth, of course you again.
    Sending my hopes for peace for you and her dad,
    Claire

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How Dina Aunty relished her memories. Mummy and Daddy were the same, talking about their yesterdays and smiling in that sad-happy way while selecting each picture, each frame from the past, examining it lovingly before it vanished again in the mist. But nobody ever forgot anything, not really, though sometimes they pretended, when it suited them. Memories were permanent. Sorrowful ones remained sad even with the passing of time, yet happy ones could never be re-created—not with the same joy. Remembering bred its own peculiar sorrow. It seemed so unfair: that time should render both sadness and happiness into a source of pain.

> From A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry