When I was a child I remember my Gamusa having current collections of notebooks that she would work on when she wasn't otherwise tending to me and my siblings.
These were just old notebooks and such . She would sit down to the kitchen table with her scissors and used magazines and she would cut and paste these pictures and words into those notebooks and then sometimes she would just bring them out and look over those photographs and just smile.
She never explained the significance of making her books to me.She never had to.
I thought of them as her wish books.
Her things the universe should provide for her.
Books her desires expressed for whomever to drop by and fulfill her needs and if any of wishes came to fruition it was between her and her providers to talk about.
As for me it was exciting to watch and learn the process.
Sometimes her notebooks wouldn't have pictures in them for months on end as we didn't have any magazine subscriptionto fill them . I do know that in the afternoons when I came home from school my grand mother would have one of those books on the kitchen table working on it and sometimes she would let me look.
Sometimes I contributed.
Not so much as helping her, but inadvertently as probably was most of her collection of magazines and pictures ,as a series of cast offs from those that thought their old magazines use was over.
Sometimes I would go upstairs to Mrs.Whites apartment and in doing so I would add to my grandmothers collection by giving her my discards.
I lived in a house that was owned by my mother Altamese Marion.
We were sandwiched in on the second floor apartment.
The first floor apartment was occupied by the Jones.I may talk about them some other time but right now I want to go upstairs and revisit Mrs.White.
Her husband was a Pullman porter who worked a lot of strange hours,meaning most times he slept during the day and took his sleep seriously. When he wasn't around I would visit Mrs.White who had two things that made her irresistable to me.
A piano and McCall magazines.
She would play 'Satin Doll' every time my visit was to end and that would be my unspoken signal that my visits were over and I was to leave.
I never asked how she got that piano up three flights of stairs but maybe that was her reward for staying at home and not working outside of their home all those years caring for Mr.White and her two boys long after the trio stopped needing her.
I don't know.
I just knew she would save those McCall magazines and I could have the cut up doll and her glorious outfits all to myself.
Mrs.White wasn't a 'cutter'.
She always left the magazines whole like they were delivered through the mail.All the time Mrs.White would have those gifts on the piano bench while she played and when our closing song would come, I would gather up my treasures and go downstairs to my apartment and set at the kitchen table just looking at my new collection of clothes.
Then reverently I would cut out each piece just so.Never ruining my doll or my new clothes .Never wasteing the pictures Gamusa may have wanted on the back side.
I'd hand her my magazine and she would smile and put it with her stack to work on some other time.
My grandmother could do delayed gratification.
Even as a adult I have never mastered that.
I want what I want, when I want it...and damn it that won't ever be next week.
Sorry,know I wasn't talking about that right now either.
Sometimes when my grandmother had finished one of her notebooks she would let me see wishes she had for my future in years to come.
Or so I wanted it to be me...maybe it was for my sister.
Her pages never had titles.I suppose she felt G_d and the universe knew her story and the desires of her heart as she paste them to the paper and no one else needed to be privy to assist those things coming into fruition but her and them two.
I'm just glad I got to see the process and the sum of her desires.
I haven't started my notebooks just yet...but I know how.
Thanks Gamusa.
I love you...now and forever... your pictures remain in my heart.
Peace
2 comments:
Hello again Pisces. As always, your words have taken me to another mindset, another place in the world. I so hope you find other ways to take your wordsmithing to others so that they might have the opportunity to feel all of that as well. Keep it up, your work and wisdom. You flow so well!
and life rolls on and flows on and the tributaries touch places the main vein doesn't imagine and things grow there.
thought i'd stop by this morning (finally) before i went off to work/sing. after reading sundays entry :( i saw "grandma's hands" and i got very excited 'cause my friends here in philly turned me on to this song that had made me think of gamusa, of couse, even though i was only a toddler when she died. then i read about the notebooks and i thought of the cards i would make for folks that often included cut outs from magazines that had been been discarded by others and THEN onto the descripition of the notebooks as wish lists, an idea i "invented" a few years back. someone wanted to know what i wanted for...(insert present receiving day here) and ofcourse i couldn't think of a thing but knew i had known and wouldn't it be a novel idea (apparently not) if i had a piece of paper entitled "a jim wish list" and on that paper i would write my desires when they occurred to me, then if someone asked, there would be a list. This list, i was always clear, would include things i might never get, it was a list put out to the universe, they were simply my wishes at the moment. the sky was the limit. when instructing friends to make their own wish lists i told them to put things they might never expect to receive, cause, ya never know....
i love that in a place called ridgewood avenue in a time before time (for me) the river's water that would be part of my story in philadelphia was flowing, and touching other stuff and growing.
peacelovejoy
os
Post a Comment