I hang out occasionally on CounterSocial (CoraxCelticus, of course). A few days ago, someone in the community firehose posted a video of MIT students squaredancing. It instantly took me back to when I was six or so, to a high school gym in the Houston, Texas area. My little sister and I with coloring books, my baby brother in a playpen. My mom and Grammie are dressed in brightly colored dresses with petticoats poofing the skirts out to there. They'd sown them and the matching western shirts my dad and Papa were wearing themselves, down to the petticoats.

I shared this memory with my mom, and she came back with "That's an amazingly accurate memory. 🥰" She and my dad square danced with his parents from before they were married until I was at least six or seven. The memory is juxtaposed with another, of a picture of me at around that age, in a dress very similar to the ones Mom and Grammie were wearing, possibly matching one or the other or even both. Mom tells me Grammie sewed me a petticoat as soon as I could walk.

These memories also bring back the dolls Grammie made for me. Griselda and Ginger. Griselda had orange hair and Ginger was blonde. I think I might even still have them in a box somewhere. She also crocheted ladybug pillows for that same sister and I. One was pink and the other green, I think. I ended up with the pink one, though I also remember intense arguments over which ladybug belonged to which of us sisters. That sister also got semi-matching dolls that she named Sarah and Sally, I think. Both of them had dark yarn hair.

It's these kinds of memories I want to preserve in this blog. Little vignettes that tell the small stories of my life and the lives of the ones I remember.