Moving the Cobwebs Around

how far back does my memory go?

At least two friends of mine are writing memoirs. I’ve tossed the idea of writing my life story around for a few years. There have been a couple of roadblocks along the way. One is that there are pretty large gaps in my early history/family history (that I don’t think my family would be especially forthcoming about) and another is that writing about my life experience is a bit of an emotional challenge that I’m not always in the best space to wrestle with.

I think I’ve had a unique life—I think everyone has a unique life, that’s what makes people interesting. That’s a big reason I do the pod. Put people in a place where they feel safe being honest and vulnerable and there will be things said that give you a better picture of them. I also learn things about myself when I talk to other people. Putting my life on paper—especially as I close in on 50, feels like a task I want to push through on. I just don’t know how to begin. So…I’m thinking of using this Substack as a place to workshop some ideas.

Anyway, here’s an idea I’ve had in my head for at least the last few days. Right now, it feels like themed word vomit. We’ll see how it all comes together. I’m also gonna try to be economical with my words so y’all aren’t reading War And Peace every time I post.

My First Memories:

Hospital

I was born three months premature, which in 1976 was a pretty big deal. As a result, I spent significant time in the NICU for the first two years of my life, roughly. The exact length of time isn’t known to me, but I’ve got no baby pictures. In the oldest photo of me I own, my mom is wearing an N95 mask. The earliest memories I can access involve white coats and sterile environments. I have no clue how my grandparents paid for this, but I’m grateful that they did.

JP

My very first friend was a kid named JP, who was also in the NICU. My firsthand memories of him are very, very hazy, but based on secondhand stories and photos, he seemed to be maybe a year older than me. At some point, we were both out of the hospital—there’s one picture I remember of him and his dad sitting with a my family and who I assume are a bunch of other neighborhood kids at my second birthday party. His dad, if memory serves, looked like KC of KC & the Sunshine Band (or maybe that was just the way white dudes looked in the mid ‘70s?). At any rate, I think JP at some point went back into the hospital and never came back out. It kind of sucks to have these early life stories be as incomplete as they are, especially since there are still people around who (I think) can fill in the blanks but don’t seem to want to.

Music

I don’t need too many blanks filled in, here. Music has been a part of my life since day one and my life soundtrack stretches back to songs I remember hearing in the hospital, like Glen Campbell’s “Rhinestone Cowboy”. My grandparents, aunts and uncles had stacks and stacks of records, and there are albums (and album covers) that immediately give me a sense of early-life nostalgia. So Full of Love by The O’Jays. Too Hot to Handle by Heatwave. Betty Wright Live (the memorable opening monologue of “Tonight is the Night” is a core childhood memory for me). I’ve been reading a book about (the band) Chic these last few days, and there’s a passage that goes into detail about the cover of C’est Chic, and I remember being fascinated with that album cover as a toddler.

Oh, I was also a bit of a fraidy cat, and certain album covers scared the shit out of me, like this piece from Melba Moore.

I could also name all four Sisters Sledge (Kim, Joni, Debbie, Kathy) and all five brothers Jackson (Michael, Marlon, Jackie, Tito and Randy…Jermaine didn’t count because he was out of the group at this point) before I was in kindergarten. My career path should have been fairly obvious at that point.

Jet Magazine

Probably one of the greatest contributors to my music-nerdery-in-training, Jet Magazine was a pocket-sized weekly that catered to the Black community. I knew how to read by the time I was 3, and one of my favorite things to do was skip to the back of an issue of Jet and read through their top 20 singles and album charts. By the time I was a toddler, I had something of a sense of Blackness (and its relation to Whiteness) and I can recall asking a relative why The Bee Gees were on the cover of Jet if they weren’t Black.

See, I’m not crazy!

Grandma

I was raised by my maternal grandparents, so most of my childhood memories involved either Grandpa (who passed away in 1992) or Grandma (who died in 2019) or both. My very first awards show memory is of watching the Doobie Brothers perform on the Grammys in 1980 and Grandma wondering out loud why that man looked like he was eating the microphone (the man in question? Michael McDonald, soon to become one of my first crushes). Another core memory is a bit fuzzier and might have occurred around the same time, early 1980 (which would’ve made me 3 going on 4). We had guests over, and I was irritable and grumpy, probably because I was tired (I vaguely remember the theme from Dallas coming on, which means it was probably past my bedtime, but not as late as it was when I’d hear the theme from M*A*S*H coming on). I crawled into Grandma’s lap and fell asleep with my head on her chest. I don’t know if I’ve ever felt so warm and loved in a moment since. Last week I had some friends over for my birthday. My buddy Scott, who’s currently living in Connecticut while he waits for his (now ex) wife to move out of their Brooklyn apartment, spent the night. As the night wore on and the drinks wore on, I ultimately fell asleep with my head on his chest. It was an interesting flashback/memory recognition moment. And as someone who absolutely loves physical touch (and the feeling of being loved that comes with it), this is an essential memory. Especially since my relatives grew more emotionally distant (and certainly physically distant) with time.

It Was Obvious Even Then

Rip Taylor. Richard Simmons. Paul Lynde. Even as a little kid, I found myself amused by very gay dudes on TV. I’m not sure what my brain was thinking—I mean, I certainly had no clue what gayness was or even what sexuality was. There was a theatricality and a sort of manic personality trait all three men had in common, they all kinda seemed like cartoon characters (and in Lynde’s case, he voiced a few classic animated characters, so…). Anyway, as someone who falls somewhere under the LGBTQIA+ umbrella now, the fact that I thought these guys were super cool and super funny at such a young age makes me wonder if there was some kind of internal picking up on signals thing happening even back then.

The Bathroom Story

One thing that’s come up on the podcast quite a bit recently is the idea of community, and how Black and Brown folks of a certain age have very clear memories of everyone in your family’s immediate circle being a part of raising you. When my grandparents, mom, aunts and uncles came to America in the early Seventies, they had a ready-made extended family of cousins and old-country friends that were a regular part of my early life. We seemed to always be going to this person’s house or that person’s. Having spent my earliest years in a fairly sterile hospital environment (shout out Bellevue), I was a bit of a clean freak as a little kid. We were at some extended family member’s home, and I had to use the bathroom before we left to go home. Upon entering the bathroom, I noticed that the toilet was…not up to my clean-freak specifications, and immediately pitched a fit. The hosts were embarrassed, my grandmother was annoyed but also amused (she told that story to others well into my adulthood). She probably also spent a lot of time wondering where that personality quirk went left, as I am not (much of) a neat freak these days. Although I do clean the bathroom before guests come over.

Being an Inquisitive Little Fucker

Most kids have a bit of a tough time discerning reality from fiction, and one morning I asked my Grandpa if other people could see us the way we see people on TV. I don’t remember the exact answer, but the implication was that God watched us the way I watched The Great Space Coaster or The Little Rascals. The thought of White Hippie Jesus standing in front of a bank of television sets deciding which “channel” to turn to makes me giggle today, but kinda scared me when I was a kid. I certainly had no clue that, in forty years time, we’d have easy windows into the lives of others via the internet.

Does any of this resonate with you? What are some of your childhood memories?