What About Me?

Session 1:  The Lemon Meringue Pie

"Then your first memory is of lemon pie?"

"Lemon meringue.  It was on my high chair.  My father had put it there.  He thought it was funny to see me playing in it.  My mother came in and was very angry.  You see, she'd just made it.… She left soon after that."

"And you think it was because of the lemon pie?"

"Lemon meringue.  No, her leaving is part of my second memory.  A bus came up, she got on it and left.  I was wearing jodhpurs."

"Jodhpurs?"

"You know, riding pants.  I had a vest that matched."

Strange, she considered, to think about so long ago and have it seem like a first time thing.  She'd heard that the mind shuts up images and memories that are too painful to remember, but lemon meringue pies and jodhpurs?  Why clutter the mind with such trivia? 

Still, she loved trivia.  Walt Whitman liked to wear red long johns.  That was her favorite, since it always conjured up a recollection of that English professor who had walked into class one day wearing a red Union suit and a flannel shirt, which then made her think of  the piano piece from John Thompson’s Piano Book I, Bill Grogan’s Goat was feeling fine.  Ate three…

Jessica Meredith Boland rushed through the side door of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, twenty minutes late.  She hated to be late.

"Sorry, my session ran a little over!"

"Catch your breath, Jessie. The traffic's so bad your group only just arrived too," Dora, her boss, advised.

"What's my schedule today?"

"You start with The Hunterton County Historical Society.  They want the American Wing, pre-twentieth."

"That eliminates Frank again," Jessie sighed.  "All those historical societies spurn the twentieth century."

"Maybe that's why they're called historical societies."

"I know, but it's the twenty-first now. Shouldn't that make the twentieth historical?  Besides, they should make an exception for the Frank Lloyd Wright room.  They don’t know what they're missing."

"If I know you, you'll educate them," laughed Dora.

"Moi?" Jessie responded with mock astonishment.  "Wait for me for lunch?"

"Okay, but not past one."

"I’ll be here, even if I have to skip Frank," Jessie promised as she hurried off to pick up her first tour.  She'd been lecturing at the museum for over six months now, and she loved every minute of it.  She had always loved museums, the past.  That's why she had majored in Art History before she'd majored in Douglas.  Then, she'd worked so hard to become the perfect Boland wife and mother that she had spent little time on her own favorite things.  Nagging thoughts like this had been cropping up in her head for several months now, moving her further and further away from her old world.  Was that good?

"You know, Jessie, you should drop this constant diet you're on.  You aren’t thin-thin, but you certainly aren’t overweight."

"Yes, but if I drop my constant diet, I will be.  What're you and Rufus up to this weekend?"

"Home and