my hair - the "flip" - was the height of fashion! my dress was red velvet.

I adore Mad Men – love it love it love it. I love the stories, the secrets, the every little detail. The most recent episode, the one with the office Christmas party, was so incredibly familiar it made my teeth ache. The very specific reds and greens, the music, the decorations, every. tiny. little. detail. So familiar. I breathed the air around those decorations, even if my father wasn’t working on Madison Ave.

The other day I was reading a review of this past episode and realized that I would’ve been the same age as Bobby, in the series. It took place December 1964, and I would’ve just turned 6. I can feel the construction paper between my fingers, making chains of rings for the Christmas tree. I can smell the paste, sticking a little red puff onto Rudolph’s nose, I can feel the bits of glitter stuck to my fingertips.

Childhood is such an evocative time; the saying is ‘youth is wasted on the young’ but I think it’s true that nothing is wasted on the young. The tiniest details become so firmly woven into our psychological fabric that they revisit us – with happiness, and with haunting – as long as we live. The photo above was taken in 1969, so I was 10 or 11, depending on when it was taken. Just over 40 years ago, and I can feel the table I was sitting on when the picture was taken; I can feel the wrong side of the polyester velvet of my dress, made by my mother; I can smell the Aqua-Net, sprayed from a tall blue aerosol can, that covered my hair in a misguided effort to make it hold that shape. I can quite literally feel the day in my muscles, and written into my bones.

Memory is really an incredible gift of human-ness, even if they’re not always pleasant. The way a passing smell can bring back other people, other times. The way an old song can fill you with an entirely different feeling than you felt moments before. I just love this part of being alive, don’t you?

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