For several years after we moved to this house, a scene from my past would come to me every time I was getting ready to brush my teeth. I would see a couple that modeled for my life drawing class. he was white, short with longish, almost white, blond hair. She was black, brown skinned with an afro. We were at a small demonstration on campus. Their two daughters, in my memory they were about 8 and 6 with curly afros, coloring between their parents. The woman and I smile at each other. And then the scene is gone.
I love everything about this post, the story, the pictures…just how it all comes together.
Thank you Andrea. I wrote it after I realized it wasn’t happening any more.
Why that house? Why when you brushed your teeth? Why that couple, that family? So mysterious and intriguing.
I can’t figure it out. It’s been so long ago, over 46 years ago. There was also a memory that occurred in the kitchen of this same house, during the same time. It had nothing to do with the models. When I stood at the kitchen sink in this same house, a memory of the kitchen/living room of a friend of mine, her student apartment. with no people, appeared. Both memories stopped at the same time. Both happened after moving here and both happened when I was in front of a sink.
Where is the biblical Joseph when an interpretation of reoccurring visions is needed? Love the drawings.
How curious, Kristin! I wonder if the memory was a discrete one–or one particular day–or a bit of a composite of several meetings together? Did their children accompany them to the sittings or is that an invented memory? The way you and the woman would smile at each other suggests something other than a memory, but I don’t know what. I wonder also whether the first time it happened it was a memory, and the subsequent times it was the same memory again or a memory of that first re-memory? And how curious that both case the recurring memory is triggered at a sink. I wonder if it has to do with the running water; or with the fact that when brushing your teeth you’re forced to stand still and can more or less let your mind quiet down; or–to get totally sci-fi about it, with the drains being some kind of wormhole into another dimension? 😉
And, like Linda, I love your sketches. (You’ve kept them for 46 years! Now I don’t feel bad about having kept mine, though they’re nowhere near as accomplished!)
It was just a momentary mind picture of the demonstration. They never posed together and their children never posed with them. I only realized they were a family when I saw them at the demonstration (in real life). It was the same vague picture each time. I didn’t know them outside of drawing them and that one time at the demo. I don’t know why they would come to mind. Don’t know why the memories came to me at sinks. If there was a wormhole to another dimension or to time travel, it’s unfortunate I did not know how to use it to go back there to 1968. Maybe it was my chance and I didn’t get it so I stopped getting the chance. Or maybe it was a suggestion for that book about time travel I am going to write.
I’m glad you like my sketches. I should sketch again.
Oops, typo–in the first line, I meant to write “‘of’ one particular day—”
Funny Enough Kristin, Image& Memory are what I planned to talk about in my Sepia Post This Week (might write it tonight).Yes,Images from the past never leaves us…but why they choose to reappear (by random) is a bit of a mystery.You dont say………did you like these folks at the time?
Tony, I didn’t really know them. I saw them when they came to model. I didn’t even know they were a family until I saw them at the demonstration and we only exchanged smiles. The woman was a really good model to draw. The guy was kind of nondescript as a model. They seemed pleasant, calm, but I didn’t really know them.
That’s so interesting. The triggers that bring memories into our minds are so random (to coin a modern phrase). Why would brushing your teeth bring that to mind? Love your idea of a wormhole in the sink though 🙂