11x14 acrylic on canvas
If it wasn’t for the old, moldering photo albums and scrapbooks compiled by my dear mother, most memories of the first fifteen years of my life would be completely lost to the ether. And perhaps that would be okay, you know? There’s a lot of stuff I’d just as soon forget. Like my perpetual shyness, or when I ran away from kindergarten my first day of school, or that I used to enjoy (barf) the J. Geils Band.
And then there are other things, little still photographs of anonymous moments, five-second mini-movies, sounds and smells and emotions which I can’t seem to forget, but can’t really remember, either.
This parade, on Michigan Avenue in Chicago, is one of those amnesia clips tacked inside my grey matter. Why am I on this Filipino-themed float? Who are those other kids? What’s the occasion? Wazzup with the whole Filipino-nurse obsession? What year is this?
1981, I think.
For the life of me, I can’t zone in on too many other details.
Except one.
As we sputtered past the main grandstand, I looked up and saw Jane Byrne, Chicago’s first (and so far, only) female Mayor. She waved at me and smiled, and I waved back at her, and our Filipino-themed float kept sputtering past.
I’ve never forgotten that.
