And a flood of fragmented memory jumbled with childhood dreams was not just sparked but ignited.
Is this a dream?
Or, if memory serves. . .
In giving a bit of “editing” eyes to what I’ve written so far…. I have to chuckle to myself.
No… my mother was not Tasha Tudor.
But, you see, that is where the dream vs. reality confuses my recollection. As most children do, I stepped right into the fantasy of Tasha Tudor’s books both story and illustrations. Where to draw the line of reality?
As a young child, I spent many years in a home on the west side of our beautiful Green Lake, a landmark in this fair city. As a growing girl into womanhood, I spent many years in a home on the east side of Green Lake. By sheer coincidence, the number address on both homes was 525. What are the odds? In the middle between the two street addresses and on the north side of Greenlake is a public library where I spent hours and hours as a child and young girl.
I still remember the many hours of story telling when Mom dropped me off to be entertained. As you climbed the library’s numerous stairs, the children’s room was to the left. I remember the excited anticipation of walking into a new world of fantasy and wonder. Would there be a castle? Will the ducklings make it safely across Beacon Street?
What is behind the hedge in that secret garden?
That was while living on the west side. After moving and growing up a bit, I would walk to the library myself and do homework and find research for the latest assignment. I’ll never forget when I got my first library card. She insisted that I fill out the name line with my first, last and middle name. Julie Beret Pearson. At the time, I hated that middle name and was almost ready to walk away rather than divulge it to a stranger and have it on a library card for the world to see. In the end, the longing for my very own library card won out over the embarrassment of my middle name.
Ah! What the memory doesn’t store away. I can still see the big, ornately carved mahogany desk in the middle of the library’s entryway where one checked out and returned books. I can still see the face of the rather stern librarian who wouldn’t let me get away with first and last name only. She wore a bun and had on a black dress with a white lace collar that flattered her grey hair. Wicked witch of the north comes to mind. Where’s a bucket of water?
That is all set in stone and was real reality to me.
Now for the dream part. Well maybe! Have you ever blurred the image of a photo that you’ve looked at and heard stories about over the years with the wondering of whether you really remember the incident or just the picture of the incident? Because you enter into them so intently and completely, books…..both in story and pictures, can fill me full of wondering about what was real and what was fiction.
While on the west side of the library, and in one of those story telling hours, I fell in love with a Tasha Tudor book… “Alexander The Gander.” Cute story about a goose and his love for heliotrope pansies and what troubles that brought him. We would check out that book numerous times and Mom read it over and over to me in the kitchen while making dinner, in the back yard while sitting on a picnic blanket, in my bed at night while tucking me in. I loved Alexander. I guess by today’s standards of children’s literature and their artful illustrations, this book is rather simple. But to my young imagination, Alexander’s appetite for heliotrope pansies was a “giggle.”
Mom, however, loved the hollyhocks that would pop up in so many of Tasha Tudor’s illustrations. You see… this wonderfully talented woman both wrote and illustrated her books with images from her own garden. So… hollyhocks were on the illustrated covers and pages of many of Tasha’s books. This is where, I think, my mother would blur the line of reality.
She wanted those pages to be her garden… one she could wander in and around and let time stand still for just a while. Mom would go on and on about the beauty, color, shape and tall dignity of a hollyhock blossom. She planted seeds along the fence at the west Green Lake home and waited patiently for them to bloom. You see…hollyhocks take at least two years from the planting to show off their beauty. Some might say they are shy to make an appearance but, once they do, are anything but shy.
Then there’s the east Green Lake home and another backyard with a fence.
Have you ever heard of Hollyhock dolls? Well… my childhood friend of many years, Mary Ann, taught me how to make a hollyhock doll. Mary Ann lived across the street from me at the east Green Lake home. But… were those flowers in her mother’s garden or mine? How can I remember so clearly those memories of early childhood and not remember whether Mom planted hollyhocks at the new home and did we make those dolls in Mary Ann’s backyard or mine? So be it! Alas… I do distinctly remember my very first bee sting with the plucking of blossoms from the tall stems of a hollyhock.
Big sigh! Thank goodness the memory and fun and sheer joy of doll making is still there, as well as the days of summer that Mary Ann and I spent having tea parties with those beautiful hollyhock dolls. Both she and I and the dolls all dressed up in colors galore ’cause all of us, including the hollyhocks, had closets of color from which to choose.
Each new doll was a creation of its own. Whoever planted those hollyhock seeds scattered them from many packages of different colors, making our doll possibilities imaginatively limitless. The dress could be one color and the head another and a bonnet yet another. Ah… maybe this is where my love of fashion began to “bloom.”
Does anyone grow hollyhocks these days? Maybe one needs to wander into an English country garden to find a hollyhock but the trip would be worth it and the resulting dolls exquisite.
Of course there’s a bit more to it than those simple directions. Instructions, even You Tube videos are everywhere if you are so inclined. Hollyhock dolls have been around for centuries.
So there you have it: Mom, memories (some still sharp and some more a blur) Tasha Tudor, Mary Ann, flower dolls, tea parties, backyards all muddled together in one post.
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