2026 Life Logs, Day 266: Childhood Memories
Date: Wednesday, September 23, 2026
Weather: Partly Sunny, Windy; High Temp 63, Low 52 degrees F
Location: At Home with My Shadow, Falmouth, MA
My sister Patsy was almost 14 years old when I was born and my first memory of her was when I was somewhere between 3 and 5 years old. Our older brother Bennie must have been home on leave from his 6-year stint in the US Navy. But in this memory, he was not in uniform. He and Patsy were doing the jitterbug. Of course, I didn’t know the name of the dance, I just knew they were having a great time. Bennie would ‘roll’ Patsy over his back and then slide her through his legs and out the other side. I remember them both laughing and laughing and then dancing some more. And then I don’t remember ever seeing either one of them dancing again.
This afternoon, family members were invited to Bridges to a jazz concert. It was supposed to be outside in the Courtyard, but it was just too windy. So, it was inside. Patsy is now confined to a wheelchair as she is just too unsteady on her feet, so I didn’t expect any dancing this afternoon. But I was amazed to see how deeply she felt the music. The Bart Weisman trio is known for their klezmer swing music and during almost every song in the hour and a half concert, Patsy would close her eyes and do dance steps with her feet while keeping time with her whole body. For the few songs that were smooth jazz, she just sat and listened. But as soon as they started to ‘swing’, she went into her ’dancing’ mode. There were at least 50 people in the room, and she was only one of about three people that I could see who were visibly enjoying the music. I truly don’t remember Patsy ever enjoying music or dancing other than my one distant memory, but she sure enjoyed it today. She was so into the music that afterwards she asked me where I sat during the concert. I had been right beside her the whole time, but she had no memory of that.
I spent my morning and early afternoon attending an Indivisible Steering Committee planning meeting for NO KINGS day on October 17 and then volunteering at the Falmouth Dems headquarters for three hours. After the concert, I picked Ollie up from his after-school golf practice before heading to East Falmouth to deliver some ‘vote early’ flyers to a League of Women Voters sponsored postcarding event. Tomorrow my schedule is not quite so jam-packed, so maybe I’ll get back to that ‘to do’ list.
