UNFORGETTABLE

I have a half-dozen moments in my memory that are enormous– unforgettable. They’re the kind that come as a surprise and make you remember exactly where you were and what you were doing.

The first one is the murder of President Kennedy. My soldier husband was stationed at Ft. Riley. We were living in a small, basement apartment in Manhattan, Kansas. There was only one TV station, and unless I was reading, I usually had it turned on.

On November 22, 1963, Walter Cronkite interrupted a soap opera to announce that President Kennedy had been shot.

I was washing dishes. For a moment, I stood there with my hands in the hot, soapy water and tried to process what I’d heard.

I was about halfway through reading Carl Sandburg’s spectacular, definitive biography of Lincoln–six huge volumes, two million words, hundreds of pictures. Only halfway, but I knew how it ended.  In spite of that, I didn’t think that sort of thing happened in America—at least, not in the twentieth century.

Not much later, Cronkite came back on the air and tearfully announced that Kennedy had died. I watched it all on Manhattan’s one channel– the trip back to Washington, the swearing in of Lyndon Johnson, and the funeral.

I wasn’t a huge fan of Kennedy, but I cried when the riderless horse passed by. I cried when John, Jr. gave a two-year-old salute to his father’s casket.

That was sixty years ago. I remember it all as if it were yesterday.

The next thing that comes to mind is August 16, 1977. My sister Nancy called to say she’d heard on TV that Elvis had died. He was forty-two years old. I couldn’t believe it. I turned on my set and found it was true.

Elvis’s debut album was the first record I ever owned. I was around twelve. My dad had bought me a little record player in a box, and he knew what I wanted to hear.

Two of my friends went downtown to the Fox Theatre with me to see “Love Me Tender,” his first movie. The huge movie house was sold out. I loved it. I loved everything Elvis. It was an infatuation that didn’t fade with time.

I passed my passion on to my daughter. She will even watch his later movies, the ones Elvis himself didn’t like. I still have CDs that I play in my car. My favorite song was “Kentucky Rain.” I think it shows how Elvis grew as a musician.

On a personal, and more positive level, hearing my first child’s ear-splitting cry before she was even born all the way was a high. The doctor said, “It must be a girl, she’s already complaining.” We all had a good laugh.

When my second child was born, he didn’t cry at all. That was a scary moment, but the nurse said the amniotic sac was over his head.

She pulled the sac away, and he let go with a scream that was reassuring, but those few moments until I heard the cry are etched in my memory.

That’s known as a caul birth. Cultures all around the world believe it to be good luck, and that the child will have supernatural powers. As an adult now, he’s quite handsome and has many talents, but nothing I would call supernatural.

The last unforgettable memory was when I opened the Wall Street Journal and saw my book Maude and my name on the best-seller list. It stayed there for sixteen weeks in a row, traveling up and down the top ten before it faded away. One of those weeks, Maude outsold both President Bush and Bill O’Reilly.

I hope my future great memories, and yours, are on the positive side.