Growing Up

September Sand

/ Pam Goode / 7 Comments

I wasn’t a huge September fan until I became a hardcore beach girl. As children, we always headed out smack in the middle of the heat and loved every minute. Of course now July summers are hotter than hades and a bit less attractive. I might still be willing to go … my mom did it … but I don’t. Instead I dig my toes into sweet September sand and let the softer sun have at me. She loves me, and boy do I love her.

And here’s a secret about September — the beach is almost completely empty. And that is surefire motivation.

The best fun is hanging out with our gaggle of girls, a stash of every kind of art supply, and burying ourselves in all-day creativity (and sometimes all night), conversation, and laughter each week.

And so we come, and we cook, and we eat, and we create, and we walk the empty beach and smile at the wiggly periwinkles trying to dig back into the sand after being disrupted by a wave, and ogle the starfish. But mostly, we laugh. Indeed laughter is so very good for the soul, but it’s also so much more than that — it’s healing and renewal.

Photo: My Mom and Dad on the beach when I was just a tiny thing.

Kodachrome: The Power of a Photograph

/ Pam Goode / 2 Comments

As a girl with a mirror, I never saw myself as ugly, despite my stubbornly cow-licked hair. I was short-ish and thin, with dark hair and darker eyes that could see to China and back. Out with my mother as a child or with friends in high school, I could feel eyes on me despite my shyness and disdain for beauty products. I had only a handful of photographs from those days, but it was enough. I knew my mirror well then, not because I was vain, but because I needed to see who was behind those eyes — where she came from, what she thought, where she would go. She didn’t spill any of the answers, but I had a passable understanding of her from year to year.

Coming to know who you are is a very personal journey. I’ve never been comfortable on the lens end of a camera, and early photos illustrate that all too well. So while I pulled at non-compliant hair and did my best to fit in, I was invariably the awkward girl in any photograph. And a photograph, no matter how random, how good, how bad, how bland or how earth shattering, changes the way you see yourself, does it not? Even if I could have convinced my brain that I don’t really look like that, or at  least not all the time, it’s quite clear that this is the face I show to the world more often than not. But we are never just an awkward face.

My mom hated having her picture taken, and solved the issue by grimacing garishly and sticking her tongue out for every click of the button. It was a pretty effective way to erase the possibility that maybe this was her real face, her real soul, being shown. And why? She was beautiful.

It made me sad.

Thirty years later, I received an unexpected package from a very-long-ago boyfriend that held a cd filled with images he had captured in college. Back in the 70’s when few of us had cameras and even fewer had good ones, he was rarely without his Ricoh. To this day, he remains the only person, outside of my children, who could capture an image that showed my soul, simply because somewhere among those 1,095 days we spent together, I finally relaxed in front of the ever-present lens and let it see me.

And in a flash I was given the ability to see the girl I was, the girl I am, rather than the girl I’d been carrying around for decades. It made me happy.

Imagination / Perception / Memory: They live on in us regardless of how closely they match the actuality, don’t they?

Those Days

/ Pam Goode / 5 Comments

I got a fast car.
You got a car with a little bit of rubber,
keeping us slow when the slow is good,
and we’re loving the life in between,
in between.

Dolled up right for yesterday
and hunting tomorrow
in a hungry way,
gotta go, gotta go, gotta
go again, cause that’s surely
most all that we know.

Oh that’s surely most all
That we know.

We know.

© Pam Goode

Short Skirt, No Jacket

/ Pam Goode / 2 Comments

On my last night alone before the house fills up again, it seems to be prom night. Or something like that. I only know this because on my late afternoon walk, I notice cars pulling up and parking everywhere near my house, which is an oddity. We live on a small cul-de-sac off of a dead end street street that has only recently made it onto google. So let’s just say that we don’t get many visitors, and those who do venture our way have puzzled expressions and wander off quickly.And suddenly tonight, someone’s having a party — cars literally everywhere — and I’m not invited. I’m slightly uncertain whether I’m sad or happy about that.

And then as I turn the corner and realize the size of the mounting car count, I see a young girl climb out from behind the driver’s seat. She has perfect blonde hair and a glittery dress, but it’s the length, or lack thereof, that tells me it must be homecoming, and that one of my neighbors is graciously hosting the pre-party so the girls aren’t left to their own devices. No jacket. The other three girls emerge a bit more slowly, carrying that little bubble of excitement/anxiety that changes your life.

I keep walking.

As I reach to the end of the street, I see another car, this one with a few boys tumbling out, trying to wrangle their fancy clothes onto their less adept bodies. They look way less confident than the glittery girl.

Homecoming, Sadie Hawkins, Prom Night — oh the memories, and none of them good. I missed my junior prom after my parents nixed the very nice guy I’d been dating. I made my senior prom, and it was … well let’s just say he was cute but psycho, and his allure was quickly axed. Then there was college in the seventies, and we were all way too cool for prom. But I’ve heard that some people like it.

Go forth. Grab the night. Be yourself.

23

/ Pam Goode / 14 Comments

Mosaic Portrait by Pamela GoodeHaving just finished a self portrait from a photograph taken when I was 23, I’m rather enamored. She’s hanging on the wall across from me and, flaws aside, I like her. I like who she was — timid, too quiet, gentle and reticent — and I like who she’s become — brash, passionate, level-hearted, and wild for life. I like looking at her and knowing that she’s okay now, and that I am too. I like considering the deepness of her eyes so young, and knowing that I made her, moment by moment, each of 21,020 days now, give or take a few leap years. I like looking at her as she is, unaware of the intervening decades, and as I am now, aware and more or less okay with them. And I wonder, if she had peeked out the window in 1978 and caught a glimpse of us at 57, what would she say to this older self?

Would she be surprised at the friends I still hold close? And those I’ve let go?

Would she be surprised that I still sew, that I still read Faulkner, Eliot, and Nabokov, that I still write, that I’m still slow to speak?

Would she wonder how I found the nerve to travel alone, to open a business, to finally crack in the face of inequities and speak out, make waves, lose friends?

How disappointed would she be over my first marriage? How angry that it took me so long to learn to speak? How devastated over the too-many-times that I kept my mouth shut?

How much in awe at knowing our children, so like her and yet so not?

How stunned to realize that they are both older now than she is?

Our mother died six years ago, and missing her has changed my view of aging — a bit. I used to surprise myself by seeing her in the mirror now and then, and finding her skin across my legs and arms. Sometimes I scan the road ahead of my car, and I know I’m looking through my mother’s eyes, seeing with her hazel irises and interpreting my view in that funny way she had. For so long, I didn’t like these intrusions of age, but now I welcome them as a little more time spent with the woman who gave me life and shared it with me longer than anyone I know.

And when I glance across the room to 23 now, I’ve got that motherly thing going on. I want to protect her, to encourage her, to give her a fear of not living, to make sure she wrings every drop of life out of her years. In a way, I’m re-mothering myself, and she’s re-childing me.

Here’s what I miss most about those early years: knowing what you love and believing you’ll never, ever let go of it, for any reason; the certainty that everything is possible; being an impetus for change rather than fearing it; sharing a comfortable relationship with time; believing you’ll always be beautiful.

So yeah, she’s staying on the wall right in front of me. I suggest you post an image of yourself on the wall too — it’s quite the kickstarter.