A couple of weeks ago, my therapist suggested that I write down some of my early memories, grouped chronologically. Maybe later we can discern some trends and common causes.
The task became easier when I reached the age of 14, when I began writing a daily diary, which I continue to this day. Still, I have memories from before that age ... many of which came back to me since I began assembling the list she suggested.
 |
| Source for portrait |
Judy is a volunteer at a charity shop in our neighborhood, and she primarily works with their used books. Coincidentally, the same day I accepted this memory-list assignment, Judy brought home a copy of Vladimir Nabokov's remembrances, Speak, Memory, which includes some of his earliest childhood memories.
Here's one of those memories:
Several times during a summer it might happen that in the middle of luncheon, in the bright, many-windowed, walnut-paneled dining room on the first floor of our Vyra manor, Aleksey, the butler, with an unhappy expression on his face, would bend over and inform my father in a low voice (especially low if we had company) that a group of villagers wanted to see the barin [that is, the master of the estate, Nabokov’s father] outside. Briskly my father would remove his napkin from his lap and ask my mother to excuse him. One of the windows at the west end of the dining room gave upon a portion of the drive near the main entrance. One could see the top of the honeysuckle bushes opposite the porch. From that direction the courteous buzz of a peasant welcome would reach us as the invisible group greeted my invisible father. The ensuing parley, conducted in ordinary tones, would not be heard, as the windows underneath which it took place were closed to keep out the heat. It presumably had to do with a plea for his mediation in some local feud, or with some special subsidy, or with the permission to harvest some bit of our land or cut down a coveted clump of our trees. If, as usually happened, the request was at once granted, there would be again that buzz, and then, in token of gratitude, the good barin would be put through the national ordeal of being rocked and tossed up and securely caught by a score or so of strong arms.
In the dining room, my brother and I would be told to go on with our food. My mother, a tidbit between finger and thumb, would glance under the table to see if her nervous and gruff dachshund was there. “Un jour ils vont le laisser tomber,” [“One day they’re going to abandon him,”] would come from Mlle Golay, a primly pessimistic old lady who had been my mother’s governess and still dwelt with us (on awful terms with our own governesses). From my place at table I would suddenly see through one of the west windows a marvelous case of levitation. There, for an instant, the figure of my father in his wind-rippled white summer suit would be displayed, gloriously sprawling in midair, his limbs in a curiously casual attitude, his handsome, imperturbable features turned to the sky, Thrice, to the mighty heave-ho of his invisible tossers, he would fly up in this fashion, and the second time he would go higher than the first and then there he would be, on his last and loftiest flight, reclining, as if for good, against the cobalt blue of the summer noon, like one of those paradisiac personages who comfortably soar, with such a wealth of folds in their garments, on the vaulted ceiling of a church while below, one by one, the wax tapers in mortal hands light up to make a swarm of minute flames in the mist of incense, and the priest chants of eternal repose, and funeral lilies conceal the face of whoever lies there, among the swimming lights, in the open coffin.
I love this piece of writing, which combines a child’s lack of full context with our childhood tendency to make fanciful associations, like the similarity between his levitating father in his wind-rippled white suit with the angels on cathedral ceilings, which he might have noticed during a funeral liturgy.
 |
| My home in grade school years. (Second floor, left.) Source: Google Maps, 2011. |
In my family, such memories would have been unlikely to occur. We lived in an apartment building, not an aristocratic estate, and levitations of any kind outside our second-story windows would have been very hazardous. Furthermore, any mention of religion was strictly forbidden in our home, as I mentioned in this post a couple of years ago, so I would not have made any connections with angels on a church ceiling.
As I recalled in that post, I have a vivid memory from grade school, when our teacher asked us why we should be afraid to talk about God. (This was before the prayer-in-school controversy that began in 1962.) I found myself sitting there, strangely tongue-tied, and thought then that I would never be able to use the word “God” out loud in public. Still, I was fascinated that people who appeared normal could have such a discussion at all. It was as if God had very temporarily levitated above the windowsill of our schoolroom, as Nabokov’s father had when his tenants had lofted him into the air.
Another time that God briefly hung in the air in my childhood was when I found a Gospel tract on the floor of our building’s lobby. The author described something resembling what I would now call a conversion experience. This new believer had so fallen in love with the Lord that, in his daily walks in the city, he would go out of his way to pass churches so that his hungry eyes would see the name “Christ” on the church buildings.
A little later, but long before my personal conversion, I used to listen to a Sunday night church service on my favorite top-40 rock station, WCFL, the voice of the Chicago Federation of Labor. Normally, I would be listening to that station to hear Sam the Sham and the Pharaohs sing “Wooly Bully” or “The Hair on my Chinny Chin Chin,” or Herman’s Hermits sing “There’s a Kind of a Hush All Over the World Tonight,” or Tommy James and the Shondells’ unforgettable classic “My Baby Does the Hanky Panky,” or Wilson Pickett’s oh-so-suggestive “In the Midnight Hour.” Among my favorite memories of sheer escapism was the sublime chaos of Ron Britain's unique style of DJ'ing. I still remember this particular broadcast.
I also relied on WCFL for broadcasts of Chicago White Sox baseball games, via the voices of announcers Bob Elson and Red Rush. I dutifully recorded results in my diary, and was especially happy when my favorite relief pitcher, Hoyt Wilhelm, got credited with a save.
 |
| Source. |
But Sundays at 11 p.m., something different was on the air. It was the weekly service of the First Church of Deliverance, with the warm, magnetic personality of the Rev. Clarence H. Cobbs leading the service. Years later, Rev. Jesse Jackson called Clarence Cobbs his “spiritual father.”
Obviously, I kept my being part of Rev. Cobbs’ radio congregation a secret from my family. I attended the First Church of Deliverance while in bed, listening with my little single earphone, with my head under the blanket. I loved the church's theme hymn, “Jesus Is the Light of the World,” which was my first exposure to Black Gospel music. I also remember "Jesus Is a Healer," "How I Got Over," "I'm going to Make It," and "Let Us Sing 'til the Power."
What really intrigued me was the pastoral prayer for “the sick, the shut-ins, the bereaved, the incarcerated, and all those who love the Lord.” Although I did not know intellectually whether I was included in those last words, they always gave me a distinct tingle.
My oldest memory of this kind was from sometime between the ages of two and four, during the years I lived with my mother’s parents in Stuttgart, Germany, before my parents came to claim me and take me to my new home in Chicago. I was sitting in my grandmother’s lap in our home at Robert Bosch Str. 104, and she was teaching me how to tie my shoes. And while she was doing that, she was talking to me about the Good Shepherd. I clearly remember that this was how she talked about Jesus. I like to think that these experiences of God rising into my field of vision for just a short time despite the obstacles, formed a golden thread that usually ran below the surface of my life until the day I came to know that I could trust that very same Good Shepherd, and eventually led to my being willing, even invited, to write and talk about God in public.
 |
| Source. |
I used some of this essay in a sermon at Spokane Friends Meeting last Sunday. One of the slides I used that morning during the sermon was this painting by Willem Drost, sometimes interpreted as being a portrait of Timothy (recipient of New Testament letters from his mentor, the apostle Paul) and his grandmother Lois. I can't help associating it with my own grandmother, thanks to whom I caught one of my first glimpses of God.
Related posts:
"The devil doesn't like it but it's down in my heart."
Out of the many books on aging, Nancy Thomas has a specific recommendation.
(I continue to recommend John Yungblut's On Hallowing One's Diminishments for the specific aspects of aging he deals with. I wrote about that pamphlet here.)
Comments on the fourth anniversary of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine ... from Heather Cox Richardson, and from Jeremy Morris. The latter writes about the typical errors of commentators on Russia and Ukraine, and summarizes what he himself got right and got wrong over the past few years. As usual, his dense prose rewards careful reading.
Meanwhile, Timothy Snyder says that Donald Trump is "failing at fascism."
Collaborate or collapse: Matt Hisrich points to a possible new path forward in an era of shrinking markets and closures in higher education.
 |
| Top three Winter Olympic teams judging by medals, snipped from this page. |
This past weekend the 2026 Winter Olympics in Italy came to a close. Team Norway, as usual, did their (my) homeland proud. Among the other statistics describing the Norwegian triumph, I noticed something nobody seemed to comment on: Norway got 41 medals with a team of 80 athletes, while the USA got 33 medals with a team almost three times as large, 232 athletes. Here's The Guardian's rather routine analysis of Norwegian Olympic success. Timothy Snyder writes about watching the Olympic Games in Ukraine.
Now that I've got Norway's triumphs commented on, I can return to my usual conceit of being a citizen of the whole planet.
First Church of Deliverance is on the air! This recording takes me back to my teenage memories of listening secretly to these broadcasts. "Lift up your heads! Don't be afraid!"
