Tag: memories

My First Computer

Daily writing prompt
Name the most expensive personal item you’ve ever purchased (not your home or car).
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This question is altogether too easy for anyone who has bought a laptop or a smartphone in their lives. Other than a house or a car, these are likely to be the most major expenses, at least in the US.

I was relatively late to computer ownership, having gotten my first computer as I was finishing graduate school. As a grad student in the late 80s — early 90s, it was not assumed we would have our own computers. There were computer labs all over campus, and I availed myself of those when typing up my dissertation. Knowing that computer labs would not be part of my future as a professional, I bought my first computer, a Macintosh IIvx. In 1993 the computer cost me $2500, which is almost $5k in today’s dollars. I bought it with part of the proceeds from getting hit by a car, otherwise graduate student me would not have been able to afford it.

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Technology has gotten more powerful and less expensive. I could buy a Mac Mini today for $500, and this little puck of a computer is much more powerful than the IIvx I bought in 1993. The only reason I haven’t bought it is because the form factor isn’t convenient, and I already have a powerful laptop that cost me $1300.

Even today, my computers are the most expensive purchases I make outside of a car or house, even though they have gone down in price. But their utility makes them worth the price.

The Rabbit Hole of Research

I’m writing a short story based on the Hidden in Plain Sight books, about some characters I spend less time with. It takes place in Chicago, and I’m racking my brain to remember Chicago, which I remember as a disconnected series of commercial and residential areas.

I try to jog my memories (as inadequate as they are) by looking at maps — a Google map and a Chicago neighborhood map. I just reemerged from a two-hour reverie of putting names and places to various places I remember from over thirty years ago. The No Exit was in Rogers Park, which is almost Evanston. My boyfriend’s mother lived in North Austin, and his grandparents lived in Hermosa. I spent a spring break at a storefront loft in “unredeemed Bucktown”, as a friend of mine from (I believe) Lakeview. I remember a great Korean restaurant in Lincoln Square and had one of the most frightening experiences of my life in Lincoln Park.

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Two hours later, I have gotten no closer to writing the story. I don’t even know where I’m going with the story. But I have sorted out a series of mental Polaroids that represent my memories. As these memories are thirty years old, I had buried those Polaroids in a closet I seldom go into.

Mine to Remember

That which is mine to remember, I cling to on grey days like this…

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Venturing into the attic as my father worked to restore it. The entire neighborhood late for school because my cat is having kittens. A gully washer sending rain cascading down the steps across the street. The hospital with its old wood panels and cordovan leather. The evening when I played in the street with my neighbor and my sister. Fishing in the park with my father, the first time I threaded a worm on a hook. When I finally got a boyfriend.

Going off to college unprepared and coming home again. Going back and staying there even through summers and Thanksgiving breaks. Growing microbes in Petri dishes and cooking pound cake in the food lab. Classes I skipped to sit on the Quad and watch people. 

Walking to my graduate classes barefoot and scandalizing my professor. Skinny dipping at the St. Joseph’s Sportsman’s Club on a skinny September night. Watching Star Trek with my friends. Losing Thanksgiving Break to a class project. Walking across the stage to get my PhD.

Exploring my new home across the country, walking everywhere. Being betrayed by a husband and breaking up. Spending a week in an inpatient facility that saved my life. Falling in hopeless, chaste love with a rock band. Moments I felt like the sky was falling down, but I persevered. Driving to the Adirondacks to camp by myself and feeling freedom.

Moving back to the Midwest to be with someone I thought was the one — he wasn’t. Buying a house as an act of solidarity with single professional women. Learning how important laughter was to a relationship. Driving for miles and miles before getting to the next town. Watching coffee shops pop in and out of existence. Finding the right man and marrying on St. Patrick’s Day. Watching my mother die nine months after our wedding. 

Appearing in a dunk tank for charity. Traveling to visit interns across Missouri and across state lines. Getting diagnosed with bipolar disorder and spending a few days at the hospital. Recuperating. Being moved into a bigger house. Spending a pleasant day with my father while he was in hospice.

And now I sit in the greying afternoon, having reviewed almost sixty years of life. All these memories are mine. I cling onto them as the things that define me.

Looking Toward Sixty

Nothing to see here, move along

I don’t know if I have anything new to say. I’m teaching classes and they’re going pretty well. I’m avoiding my next novel in favor of some advertising stuff I need to do. I’m hopefully losing weight (SLOWLY). I turn 58 in two weeks —

That’s it, isn’t it? A year closer to sixty.

Close to Sixty

Do I feel close to 60?

My body — well, that feels old. I’m out of shape and my right knee is oh, so messed up.

My mind? I feel 40, only with a lot more memories than I should have. In fact, it’s only when I think of my memories that I feel old in my mind. Like when I think of old technologies — dial phones, vinyl records, 8-track tapes. Or when I think of pasting Plaid Stamps from the A&P into a booklet to redeem, or going to a real ice cream parlor at the little pharmacy right in town. Was it a better time? No, it definitely wasn’t. It was a time of enforced conformity, one I didn’t fit into. I guess I’m not so old that I see my childhood in sweet sepia tones.

What about myself as a sexual being? That’s not a problem, except that I still find myself attracted to younger men (about 30 years old at this point) and any fantasies in that direction seem ludicrous.

From the outside

I get mixed information from the outside, somewhere between “You’re not almost sixty!” and “When are you going to retire?” The latter comes from my colleagues, because the MOSERS retirement plan I’m in would pay for retirement already. (The reason I don’t is because the University no longer funds health insurance for retirees during the medicare gap.)

Retirement dreams

I know what I’d do if I retired now — I’d go full-steam into my retirement career. And nap a lot. I’d sit in the coffeehouse and write. I’d relax. I wouldn’t miss work at all. If I could retire now, I would, and it wouldn’t make me feel any older.

But for now, I’ll work, and remember what it was like to be younger, and make little fuss about the passage of time.

Memory full of people



More than anything, my memory is full of people.

It’s to be expected — I am, after all, 57 years old. But all the best memories I have involve people. It’s as if the memories I have of work, of time spent alone, have faded away, and what is left are the stories of people I have known. The gatherings to watch Star Trek and the flirtations that ensued, the time I ate popovers with a gathering of neighbors, getting stuck in the elevator with my wedding party. All of these are years past, sometimes many years past.

Even random encounters with people stay in my mind longer than solitude. The guys in the supermarket who said “Pizza is serious business, ma’am” thirty-some years ago. The autumn day when a young man got on the bus, bedraggled by rain, dazzling in his long-haired beauty. 

I have been alone more often than not lately, in part due to COVID. At work, we stay in our offices unless we teach. I have done little more than wave at people in the hallways. I only sometimes go to my neighborhood cafe, and there are no football games or campus gatherings this semester. So I have been building fewer important memories.

I talked to a friend yesterday over the phone, and some of those old memories started replaying. I believe we’ve known each other for 30 years at this point; it doesn’t feel that long ago. 

I don’t feel so old that I must rely on memory to sustain me. I need to make more memories in this place that I am now. By that, I don’t mean Maryville, MO, but this particular point in time, at this particular age, when I have grown up enough not to be trapped by dizzying crushes. What moments will I make now that I will carry into the future?