There were no cell phones. No super highways. No air-conditioned cars. We rode with the windows down and used paper maps. That summer we drove from Waukegan, Illinois to Cape Cod. My mother often sat with her feet up on the dashboard and her full skirt pulled way above her knees. She hated the heat. “We’re finally there,” my father said as he pulled off the road. I was in the back seat, playing with my Revlon doll. There were small cabins scattered around the driveway and you could barely see the ocean at the end of the dirt road. A man ambled over and my father asked “How much?” I don’t recall the amount or the cabin number we stayed in, but I do remember clearly what the man said next. “Eddie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds stayed here last night.”
sand dunes on Cape Cod
wind swept over many years
memories lost to time
Lady Nyo (Jane) hosts dVerse Haibun Monday and asks us to write about a memory from childhood. Given the recent deaths of Carrie Fisher and one day later, her mother Debbie Reynolds, it seems appropriate to write about this particular memory. In terms of a timeline, Revlon dolls were made by Ideal, beginning in 1955. Eddie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds were married from 1955 – 1959. Haibun: a paragraph or two of prose (not fiction) followed by a haiku. Photos: Cape Cod National Seashore near Provincetown. How serendipity that I now live in Boston and since 1998, have spent one or two weeks every year in Provincetown, Cape Cod.
lillian the home poet 