When I was a kid in the ’70s, you couldn’t escape Barbra Streisand’s “The Way We Were.”
It was everywhere, even in NFL Films highlights. It wasn’t my song, it was a mom song, the kind of tune ladies born in the 1930s carried like a locket. Still, I filed it away in the soundtrack of my life. I had a huge crush on Streisand, and maybe that’s why, whenever the song plays, my own life rolls back in slow motion like a highlight reel. I don’t know why I kept it, but it stuck.
The song is on the Chalkboard today because Robert Redford died. Redford was the crush for all the moms of that generation. Mine adored him in The Sting and Butch Cassidy. Thank goodness he wasn’t cast in Love Story, if he had ruined Ryan O’Neal’s role, it would have been criminal.
I will say this... I never forgave him for The Great Gatsby. That is my favorite book, and Redford hijacked Jay Gatsby. He was Hollywood’s Baskin-Robbins flavor of the month, and Fitzgerald had to have been turning in his grave watching Redford paste a golden-boy smile on the most tragic dreamer in American literature.
For me, that was unforgivable.
So why does his death even matter to me? Not because of Redford himself. What stings is that every time another one of those icons fades...
...another piece of my mom goes with them.
Her Hollywood crushes, her movies, her hug, her soundtrack, her era, her phone conversations on the kitchen telephone. They are stitched into my memories, same as mine are stitched into the Shepkids’.
Today's Grabber section has some Latin.
Explicare te ipsum.
Explain yourself.
Today we don’t do that. We are reduced to profiles, followers and highlight reels. Nobody takes the time to unfold who they really are. I don’t need another social media update.
Just tell me something new. Tell me what made you fart in the elevator.
Let me finish chalking.... a smile on the sun. An eighty-four on September 17th and an astonishing memory to make.
Memories... Light the corners of my mind. Misty watercolor memories. of the way we were.
