Prompt: Write a second theme that builds on the first. This time, find a frame for the memory you’ve chosen to work with, a context in which to place it. You might, for example, reflect, in framing paragraphs like those in Anne Fadiman’s “Under Water,” on the place of this memory in your life. How does it fit in with who you were and who you have become? Or, you might do some kind of research to fill out what was happening in that particular time and place: if you are writing about something that occurred in your family, you could ask family members about the memory or you could reflect on what was going on in their lives at the time; or you could go to news sources to learn about events that may well give you information about the period or place you are remembering, the world in which your memory is set. Check facts. Consider how the framing context that you choose confirms, challenges, deepens, or otherwise complicates your memory. This theme may incorporate the previous one, revised or not, into a single, longer theme; it may simply be a second theme, responding to the first.
When I was young, airplanes enchanted me. Whether flying in them or looking at them or pretending I was one of them, arms outstretched and puttering through the house, I could not get enough of airplanes.
This is not a story about airplanes.
When I was seven, my father decided to take us to the Chem Ed conference with him. Held in Minnesota that year, the gathering of high school chemistry teachers from around North America was famous for having the largest periodic table ice sculpture in the world.
This is not a story about the Chem Ed conference.
This is a story about my family’s journey by car through the plains of Ohio, the streets of Chicago, the fields of Wisconsin, making our pilgrimage from Buffalo to the Mecca of chemistry. I was delighted at the time that my older half-sisters were joining us – they had never accompanied us on a road trip before. Looking back, I feel sorry for them; I can see that travelling by car to a chemistry conference in Minneapolis with your father, your stepmother, and you two rascally brothers is possibly not the coolest thing that a high-schooler can do.
Around Toledo, Conor started to complain of itching under the cast covering his arm. Katie, always a gentle soul, offered to scratch it for him. She scratched it for all of Indiana. Finally, the red and gold Ford Windstar puttered into Chicago. Dad, frugal as ever, put us up in a ratty motor hotel on the edge of the city. Mom talked about crime and gangs as we drove through the wide boulevards by Lake Michigan. At Conor’s behest, “I Believe I Can Fly” had been playing on repeat for a few hours; Meghan was contemplating methods to destroy the tape.
I don’t remember what we did in Chicago that day. There’s a picture of us four siblings, looking miserable, standing in front of a statue of Michael Jordan. The hotel rooms were so disgusting that Mom forced us to leave the city early the next day. We forgot my favorite blanket under the bed in the hotel. We drove an hour further up to Rockford, Illinois and checked into a Holiday Inn. Conor and I were thrilled to at last find a hotel with a swimming pool. We spent hours there splashing each other while Dad fell asleep on the hotel bed watching basketball. I can still remember the dark wood ceiling of the pool and the musty smell that it brought to the space.
The next day seemed easier than the first long day of driving. It was seven hours through Wisconsin before we saw the glistening waters of the Mississippi from the bridge in Minneapolis. Conor’s arm still itched during the ride, but this time Katie joined Meghan alternating between sleeping in the back row and eating licorice rather than scratching. We went to a clinic in the city almost as an afterthought; turns out Conor had a pretty bad rash under the cast. He shrugged it off – after you trip over a bubble machine and break your arm, not much fazes you, I guess. But that’s a different story.
Thirty-two hours in a car with your family can get you in a bit of a sour mood. I think that when we got back to Buffalo we all gave each other a bit of a wide berth for a while – we were happy to have our space back. We were all a little winded by the trip, the Windstar included: it only lasted a year longer before it broke down for good. I still think that it was the dust from the fields in Indiana that did it in – the same dust that probably got in under Conor’s cast and made that rash. Now, when we take family trips, we usually fly. I just wish that I was still young enough to run up and down the aisles of the plane, making noises and acting crazy.
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