Time Travel Choices

 My head is sort of swirling with things to write about today, but I decided to go with a prompt from the book "642 Things to Write About," the kids' edition. My prompt is:

"You have the opportunity to get into a time machine and travel back to any time. The catch is that you have to stay wherever you end up and must pick a time before you were born. What year do you pick? Describe your new life."

I'm ignoring the part about having to stay in the past. 

My parents have both passed away, my dad in 1998 and my mom most recently, in 2019. Lately I've been thinking about the things I don't know that only one or the other of my parents can answer. I do know that they met when my dad was 9 and my mom was 6, when both their families moved to the very small town of Hawley, Minnesota, near Fargo. They were both the first in their families to go to college, my mom because her mother wanted a better life for her, my dad because he wanted something different that he couldn't get without more education. 

Since both of them have left us, I find myself with questions that only one of them can answer. Sometimes I even catch myself thinking, "Oh, I'll ask mom." Then realize I can't. My mother was very into genealogy, though, and I have all of her research. I know that they each had to write an autobiography in college - I should find those and read them again. My mother was also a wonderful storyteller (though she would deny that) so I have those memories that she passed on to me.

What kind of questions do I have? Nothing life-changing. Questions about why they chose their paths in life. What was difficult, what was wonderful. 

So, no time travel for me, but maybe a dive into the documents they left behind. That is a type of time travel, after all.

The mysterious tinnitus

 I have blogged about hearing before (https://sherlockesque.blogspot.com/2024/03/music-noise-and-hearing.html). I have a new hearing issue and apparently it's quite rare. Lucky me!

I started getting a pulsing in my ears - not all the time, but sometimes. It's like a drum slowly beating. I brought it up to two of my doctors and neither had an answer. My ENT sent me for scans of my head, which showed that I'm normal, or at least my brain is. Yay! [Cue "Young Frankenstein" and Abby Normal.]

So I googled my symptoms, not something my doctors would endorse, I think. But I found my answer. I have pulsative tinnitus, a rare form of tinnitus. I am hopeful that when I tell my doctors they will take me seriously and not be offended that I self-diagnosed with Google. 

I play in three music groups, a band, an orchestra, and a (French) horn choir. The pulsing is worse after a particularly loud rehearsal or concert. I will experiment to see what might help - I really don't want to quit playing. 

On the other hand, I am grateful that I am generally very healthy. I am able to do pretty much everything that I want to do - travel, babysit the grandson, go to concerts, visit friends. And my husband and I will continue to do those things and more!

The Past, My Past

 I was stuck for what to write (again) so I turned to one of my idea books, 642 Things to Write About. I picked "Write a letter to your grandchild about the world you grew up in." I could go on at great length about that world, but I'll keep it shorter for today.

I was born in 1953. I am a baby boomer - it's not my fault.  I think there were about 40 kids in my kindergarten class. I feel sorry in retrospect for the teacher.

I grew up with television, black and white in my house until I was about 16 - we didn't rush to get new technology in my family. The Mickey Mouse Club, Lassie, RinTinTin - I could list a lot more. 

When I was 6, we moved from Seattle to Neenah, Wisconsin, a small paper mill town on the shores of Lake Winnebago (which means "dirty water"). I walked to school. Girls were required to wear dresses to school. (Public school!) 

My dad worked for the Marathon Paper Company, which made Northern tissues and other products. My parents carefully taught my brother, sister and I to stop using the word kleenex, which was made by the competitor in town. We had framed prints of the Northern girls, what we would call today a branding identification, on our bedroom walls. 

I had no clue as a kid, but it was both an idyllic place to grow up and a suffocating atmosphere. We ran free in the neighborhood, rode our bikes everywhere, and stayed out until our mothers called us in for dinner by yelling from the front door. There were lots of kids to play with. There was also no diversity except protestant and Catholic.

When I was turning 12, Marathon Paper was purchased by American Can Company, and we moved to Connecticut. My dad commuted into NYC. It was a different world, a very exciting world. It changed all of us, for the better, I think.