Family Memories

Just a few family memories....

At the end of the memoir, Karr talks about fireflies and brought about this memory when I was seven years old in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Our family moved to Pittsburgh from California and the first thing that was totally different was that we saw this little lights near dusk and didn't know what they were. My father explained to my three brothers and I about lightning bugs and we were totally amazed by them we had fun catching them out in the small backyard and I could remember how I was so scared to catch one because once clasped into both hands, you could feel the lightning bug flutter around, trying to get out; their wings would tickle inside my hands. We decided to keep a few in the jar with pieces of grass in it (I'm not sure why we put grass in there, perhaps we thought it would make them happy somewhow). That was one of the cool things about moving to Pittsburgh.

What also was a good memory was our first snow. We, obviously, never seen snow before so the winter in Pittsburgh was a delight. You could watch the snow fall, although it was just a few inches, and play in it. The snow was so cold as we were all bundled up into winter coats as we tried catching the cold snow in our mouths; after hitting my hand, I would watch the snowflake slowly melt away into very cold water. My dad taught us how to make snow angels and we made a little snowman with twigs for arms, a little hat that was my little brother's, Danny's, and with a little carrot for a nose and pepperoni for eyes. It was the funnest time, especially after the snowball fight around the house and our tradition of playing football in the snow.

I remember a family trip that we decided to take at the end of my junior year of high school to Niagara Falls. We drove up north through New York, with its beautiful flower smell with vineyards all around, along with Buffalo's awkward smell of some sort of gross food kind of smell (fastfood, more specifically) and once we finally got there, it seemed surreal. We go to the hotel, as in my parents, my brother, and Lisa --our foreign exchange student and my brother's girlfriend (I know! Weird right?)--and the hotel is located right next to the Canadian Falls and could see it just outside our window. It was so beautiful at night when they had a lighting display showing several different colors through the falls with fireworks going off around it. The different shades of blue, yellow, orange, pink, into purple and red, it was kind of like a northern lights effect through the water. And we all stood around the window while my mother took pictures from her new camera that she was just so excited about. I just remember the beautiful display and just through our hotel window was so unbelievable.