I just had such a nice conversation with my brother. Well, most conversations with my brother are fun…he’s a funny guy and we get along really well. But this was one that made me hang up the phone wishing that Rachel weren’t an only child.
We started out talking about Christmas, because I asked him if my memory of his sneaking us down to the steps on Christmas Eve when I was 5 or so and showing me that Mommy and Lolly* were filling our stockings was a real memory or not. And he said that he really didn’t remember doing that (and he would have been 11 or 12) though he did allow as how it wouldn’t have been out of the question for him to do such a thing.
And then we segued into the Christmas presents we liked the best. Oddly enough, our separate choices occurred on the same Christmas…the Christmas we both got our second bikes. His was red, a three speed English bike (I think) and mine was blue…no training wheels. He remembers that he had been told, some time in advance of Christmas to stay out of the basement. He had, of course, immediately gone down there…but had somehow missed seeing the bike! So it was still a surprise to him on Christmas morning.
My bike had probably also been in hiding down there, but I think my parents knew there was little danger of my going to the basement. (It was kind of scary to me.) Christmas morning came and we opened presents and I remember my brother getting his bike and I remember getting an Etch-A-Sketch (which I think he might have broken that very day - I do know that he broke it at some point shortly after it was given to me and my mom got me a new one) and playing with stuff until my mom (and looking back from my own perspective as a parent, I am sure it must have been driving her crazy) asked me if I hadn’t noticed the blue bike. Apparently, I was convinced that the bike was for someone else…it never occurred to me that something so wonderful was mine.
Boy, new bikes. Remember that thrill of a new bike and how the spokes sparkled in the sun? Remember putting baseball cards on the wheels so they would go tickety-tickety as you rode? My brother remembers taking his bike out and doing lazy figure-eights in our street, just gliding along. I remember taking my old bike, the little red one with the training wheels and riding down the block to and along the little crab-apple tree lined cut-through to the street behind us, then riding up that street to Edmondson Avenue and back to our street, all by myself. I had to have been six at the most….can you imagine letting your six-year-old daughter do that now?
I also remember riding down the block to the Fitch's house to borrow Nancy Drew books from Nancy Fitch. The Fitches had a bulldog, named Brummel, who I think was probably a sweetie but who scared me to death. If I trundled down to the Fitch's, with my bike basket filled with mysteries, and Brummel was out on the front porch -- well, I just turned right around and pedalled back home.
From bikes, of course, in a logical segue, we moved on to skinned knees…and Mercurochrome**…and iodine. My brother remembers that we had a bottle of iodine…in fact, Lolly, being a chemist, might have mixed it up from scratch. He remembers that one of our parents had written “Iodine” on it and drawn a skull and cross-bones. I remember the Mercurochrome…the tiny brown glass bottle with the little glass rod applicator. It was a rather dreaded bottle. Though, my brother pointed out, it was sort of interesting to watch the substance change color as it dried…once you’d stopped crying.
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* Lolly is what I call my dad. Always have. And no one knows where it came from. For my first ten years or so I also called my mother Boppy. Again, no one knows why.
** Mercurochrome is no longer available...banned by the FDA. And yes, it did contain mercury. Hmmm....just what you want dabbed on open wounds. It was discovered by a physician at Johns Hopkins. I wonder if it sold in higher quantities in Baltimore than in other places?
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