Earliest Memories – Hot Dogs and Marmalade

There once was a man in Ethiopia
(Where the roads resembled twisted rope-ia)
He drove a VW Bug
With family quite snug
[how would you finish my limerick?]

Our family that fit — albeit snugly — into the VW Bug

In an undated journal entry — sometime early January 1963 — my father wrote, “We’ve purchased a 1959 VW sedan with under 15,000 miles from L. N. for $800. This is an ideal car for this area.”

I remember riding in that car. I think there were times when we also had another adult in the car with us, a native Ethiopian woman who helped my mother with us — so 7 people in a VW on windy narrow roads! Crazy, right?

A few years ago I did the A-to-Z Challenge using collages I had made alongside unfinished limericks. I especially enjoyed the unfinished limerick part. It was very audience-participation-ish.

This year I thought I would try using old photographs and unfinished limericks. Can you finish this limerick?

You may have tangible wealth untold;
Caskets of jewels and coffers of gold.
Richer than I you can never be–
I had a Mother who read to me.

~~ Strickland Gillilan

My mother read to me.
She read and read and read.
She taught me to read, maybe so I would stop the pestering.
One memory, small but big, was a time I asked her to read One fish, two fish, red fish, blue fish
For the 729th time
And she sighed, like she didn’t really want to read it, but she did.
I loved this book.
It wasn’t the intricate plot.
It was rhyming words, silliness, and a mother who read it to me over and over.

One fish
Two fish
Red fish
Blue fish

Love to look (fish)
In a book (fish)

Love to read (fish)
“MORE!” I plead (fish)

Snuggle, snuggle next to Mom
Dr. Seuss? He is the BOMB!

Reading ’til my eyes grow bleary
Marguerite Henry, Beverly Cleary
Jim Kjelgaard, H. A. Rey
I think I could read books all day

Late at night, late at night
I get out my big flashlight
Hiding underneath bedsheets
I wander down literary streets

Mixed Up Files,
Desert isles,
Big Red, Misty
Bring me smiles

It all began with
One fish, two fish
My love for reading
Grew and grew (fish)

The W3 prompt this week is to base your piece, a mix of prose and poem, on a childhood memory. I remember my mom reading to me.

Category: Earliest Memories

E is for Ethiopia

One fish, two fish