terrypetersen

A pleasure is not full grown until it is remembered. (C.S. Lewis)

I promised I would compile the photos from our Germany and Austria trip into a memory book, and I am. Finally. Our box of photos could give a hernia to a seasoned weight lifter. It’s possible that some of the pages devoted to Austria should really have been pasted into the Germany section—or the other way around. Don’t know. After almost a month, my memory cells have lost potency. Procrastination. Darn! The word fits. Sure I babysat a lot and didn’t have the blocks of time I wanted. But would it have been so awful if I had done this a little at a time and remembered which gold cathedral was in which city? Looks like I’m going to have a forty-nine-page book when I’m finished.

The carpet is scattered with pieces of colored paper. My fingers are glued together. Other obligations wait. I have two critiques to finish. Laundry waits to be folded, and my dust rag feels lonely. Can’t be helped. Once the stacks of pictures have been assembled they have to be tacked down. Otherwise they move. On their own. They need to be carefully monitored. I know darned well I had a stack of Salzburg pics on the right of the ones from Eagle’s Nest, or were they to the left of the Innsbruck pile? I couldn’t possibly have made a mistake. I mean, those upside-down pages turned when I got up to get the mail, didn’t they?

Getting up from the floor, now there’s another problem with long-term work of this nature. A table isn’t big enough. I like to spread out over a large space, but my knees and feet don’t always agree with the positions I give them. Such complainers! After a mere three hours they cramp and remind me that while I may play on the floor with my grandchildren, my stamina isn’t as keen as theirs is.

I have to admit, however, that the work isn’t a burden. As I work I remember following the Sound of Music tour in Salzburg, some behind-the-scenes unknown facts. It took two weeks for the producer of the movie to convince the mayor to allow a Nazi flag to be flown. The flag is illegal. Finally it was permitted only for the duration of the scene. During the opening of the musical, a helicopter filmed the scene where Maria sings, “The hills are alive with the sound of music.” They were alive all right. The whirling of the helicopter blades made it difficult for Julie Andrews to stand.

The ending of the story is complete fantasy. To walk from Salzburg to Switzerland would be like walking from Cincinnati to St. Louis. Moreover, if the family climbed the mountain in the film, which isn’t really feasible, they would have landed in an area now known as Eagle’s Nest, Hitler’s headquarters. Of course it is unlikely that Hitler himself would have been there. He didn’t like heights.

Perhaps some of the album I am putting together contains fiction, too. Well, perhaps it’s just a bit out of order here and there.

“Sweetheart,” I ask my husband. “Was this picture taken in Innsbruck or Munich?”

“Uhm, Salzburg,” he answers.

Oh well, at least I remember all the fun, and those moments are finding a place in time very well, thank you.