Word magic

No grammatical form is as wondrous as the modal of past habits.

I would sit for hours and look at the Christmas tree.


We would have to wait until Dad set up the lights for home movies before we could run down the stairs Christmas morning.


Mom would make pancakes after all the presents had been opened.


Whenever I use that structure, I am transported.  In the simple word "would" is the sense that these moments formed a tradition, repeated with all the joy of a fulfilling ritual.  That those who participated engaged in a tacit agreement about the meaning and significance of these simple actions.  That even at the time, we knew these shared behaviors were special.

And when we talk about them now, our reminiscences are tinged with the golden glow of memory.  Somewhere within this humble bit of grammar is a time machine.  It only goes to the moments no one else knows are the best of your life.

Winter wonderland

With all the ice and snow in the forecast this week, I've been reminiscing about how winter weather used to affect my family when I was growing up. We lived on some rural acreage, at the top of a hill with a poured asphalt driveway going up at about a 30-40 percent slope. It's not just my hyperbolic memory talking, folks -- this was one steep driveway. (Sprinting up to the top constituted the final highlight of any bike excursion.)

Whenever frozen precipitation threatened, we'd leave a vehicle at the bottom of the driveway overnight. Coming down that narrow passage would be suicide in slippery conditions -- a rocky bank going up to the left, brush leading straight down to our pond on the right, and a 90-degree turn at the bottom which, if not negotiated, would lead to a plunge off the earthen dam that kept the pond filled. So on mornings when snow or ice had covered the driveway, we all had to tramp carefully down to the car at the bottom in order to go anywhere.

For a winter event of any duration, Dad attached a scraper blade to his little Kubota tractor and plowed the driveway. The deep treads of the tractor tires made distinctive and wonderful tracks in the snow. Once the driveway was scraped, it was a lot easier to walk down to the car at the driveway's end -- but no less dangerous to drive up and down.

If the power went out -- as it sometimes did for many days at a time -- we ended up huddled in the living room by our wood stove. Closing off the rest of the house, that room stayed fairly cozy as the stove pumped out the heat. You could even heat up food on it, after a fashion. When it came time for bed, we hurried from the warm living area to our frigid, abandoned bedrooms with candles lighting our way.

Any significant snow was greeted by Dad taking the camera out to capture some pristine photos before we kids messed it up. The best place to enjoy disturbing the virgin snow was our tennis court, with its smooth, even surface. Walking, running, and building snowmen there satisfied the irresistible siren song of snow -- to make one's mark where no one else has trod.

Here at our house, it looks as if we've dodged the worst ice accumulations, the prospect of which had me stockpiling candles and matches last night. Tomorrow the kids might wake up to a little snow and no school, and then on Thursday the forecast high is nearly 50 degrees -- it will all be over. I hope I never have to rough it as much with my kids as we used to back when I was a teenager, but those winter storms have left me with nothing but good memories.

My uncle Dave

This is my uncle Dave. It's 1978, and he's at my grandparents' house on Lake Chickamauga opening Christmas presents.

I can hear him right now, as he rips open the paper. "Oh," he might say in his soft, expressive voice. "What's this? Oh my! Well, thankyouverymuch!" Uncle Dave was always understated. He had a low, ready laugh. He talked quickly, and usually quietly.

Every Christmas I looked forward to my present from Uncle Dave. He always got something unusual -- something a little exotic, usually with no practical purpose. I could never predict his presents. They were always a total surprise. I treasured them for their complete lack of utility.

Uncle Dave was my father's younger brother, the second of three boys. He studied music and became a renowned and accomplished pipe organist. He was the first in my father's family to get a Ph.D.

Uncle Dave was gay. Nobody in the family talked about it. I don't know anything about his relationships. I have vague memories of hearing my parents talk about his roommate. Of course I didn't understand anything about it until I was well into adulthood.

My uncle Dave died on Saturday, of complications brought on after a fall. I hadn't seen him in many, many years. I hope that for all those years of our separation he lived as I remember him: a world traveler, an effortless artist, a keeper of rare and unusual gifts.

Reunited ...

... and it feels so gooooood ...

The seventies station to which I often listen while driving around town alone played that Peaches & Herb song today. (Fun fact: There have been five different Peaches, while Herb has remained constant. The third Peaches, Linda Greene, is the one featured on the group's biggest hits, "Reunited" and "Shake Your Groove Thing.") I was pulling out of a parking lot at the time, and as always happens when I hear that intro, I remembered a church trip to Six Flags Over Georgia when I was fourteen years old.

I wonder if the best friend who belted out the song with me on that bus remembers the moment like I do. We were inseparable for four years of elementary school. She lived at the bottom of the hill; I lived at the top. On summer days I'd follow the narrow trail through the undergrowth that separated her street from time and visit the little house where she lived with her mother. We'd listen to the music and watch the television shows that weren't entirely welcome at my house. Her life as the only child of a single mother was surely far from perfect, but from my privileged yet culturally restricted standpoint, her home was a paradise.

Although we went to different high schools, we spent time together at church. Something about our senses of humor clicked, and side by side we nourished mutual obsessions with the Beatles and the original cast of Saturday Night Live. That 1979 early morning pulling out of the church parking lot with the rest of the youth group, when "Reunited" came on the radio, it was like there was no one in the world but us. We put our arms around each other's shoulders and sang our hearts out.

This week in Popless Noel is writing about "Naive Melody (This Must Be The Place)," which is "our song"; it was playing when Noel proposed in 1995. Most of us probably have songs like that in our lives. But I'm intrigued by the songs that define moments meaningful to us and possibly no one else. What songs never fail to bring back memories for you?