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The Thumb's Christmas

  Our daughter, Anne, was a prolific artist when she was young. Our refrigerator door was full of her drawings, paintings, and school artwork. She liked to create little books, too, as she was also a natural storyteller. One Christmas when she was about eight years old, Anne wrote and illustrated a Christmas story for her little brother, James. If memory serves, she drew her inspiration from a book she had recently gotten from the library by illustrator Ed Emberley. He wrote and illustrated The Great Thumbprint Drawing Book . In it, Emberley showed how to make a variety of animals and people using a thumbprint as a starting point. The creations are simple and charming. It's amazing what you can do with a blog of ink and a few black lines. It's art that's accessible to anyone. Anne's story is called "The Thumb's Christmas," and is based on our family. There is a thumb with glasses (Anne), a thumb with little hair (toddler James), a thumb with a mustache (Ji...
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Memorable Vacation

 

While I'm on vacation this week, I'm borrowing some writing I've done of my memories for our son. He gifted me with the book Questions You'll Wish You Asked: A Time Capsule for Mothers and Sons,* by Melissa Pennel, for Mother's Day a few years ago. It's filled with prompts to encourage the recipient to write about their own life experiences. I have been chipping away at the various topics little by little, and think of it as "future family history." Rather than write my responses in the book itself, I've begun a separate, private blog just for him, and I share the post links with him whenever I complete a new post. He also wants a printed version, so at some point I will copy them over into a Publisher document to print. 

Here's this week's prompt: Was there a vacation you took that stood out to you as a child? Why?


As a family, there is only one real vacation I can recall taking with all my siblings and both my parents. We didn't have a lot of money for any kind of big trips back then. Any outing we took usually was just a day trip here or there.

Our destination this time? Niagara Falls! I was probably about eight or nine years old, as I do recall my sister Sharon was with us, and I was 6 years older than her. 

I remember it was during the summer, but by the falls it was still cool. The falls were immense, especially to my child's eyes. Their sound and the spray all made an impression for sure. And it was really beautiful to see, of course. I also remember being pretty cautious by the guardrail overlook. I didn't want to fall over! I know someone has photos of us there, because I remember seeing them. 

We were able to see the Maid of the Mist tour boats which go right up to the falls. Everyone was outfitted with raincoats and rain hats, because everyone gets wet from the spray. We didn't do that excursion but it was fun to watch others do it.

In addition to seeing the falls we also went to two other attractions that also were memorable. One was the Madame Tussaud's Wax Museum, where they had lifelike wax figures of various historical people like kings, queens, celebrities, presidents, etc. I wish I remembered more about who exactly was represented, but it was over 50 years ago!

We also went to the Ripley's Believe it or Not Museum. That was cool! In particular I remember a life-size sculpture of an Asian man, and the story was that he sculpted it himself by looking in a mirror. It doesn't sound quite as impressive now as it did then! 

Postcard of the sculpture!

 

But wait, I just went online to look him up. It is ever cooler and weirder than I remembered! The sculpture is made of 20,000 pieces of wood, and the artist even used his own hair, nails, and teeth in it! He wanted to look as lifelike as possible as a remembrance for his girlfriend after he passed away. Yikes!

Here's a video on the piece: https://www.ripleys.com/weird-news/hananuma-masakichi-sculpture/

I know we only stayed in Niagara Falls for the day, driving to and from Cleveland the same day. It's only about a three hour drive give or take from where we lived. Though only a day, it was the closest thing we had to a "vacation" - we may have even crossed over to the Canadian side! 

 

Until next time... 

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© Nancy Gilbride Casey, 2024. All rights reserved.

* I am not endorsing purchasing the book on Amazon; it was just the first link that came up.




 

 


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