Tale as old as time...

There's a scene in the animated movie "Beauty and the Beast" where the beast and Belle are dancing in the ballroom.  Angela Lansbury is singing "tale as old as time" and Belle is twirling on the dancefloor with the help of her partner - the Beast.  A commercial for the re-release of this Disney animated video came on TV the night before last and I "knew" it was on but wasn't really paying much attention to it...

Eddie said to me..."that was your favorite part."

Me:  "what?"

Eddie:  "of the movie - you always liked that part where Belle's dress twirls around."

Me:  (smiling) "yep"

How did Eddie remember this?  I had to think for a minute before remembering all this myself.  But he's right about it...there was always something about the animation and the way the gown flowed that I loved to watch.  And believe me, we watched that movie a lot!  It was a favorite of Anna Marie.  I just wonder what made him remember this particular little fact from the past. 

I have this black ballroom type gown that I've always loved.  I can't get into it right now!...but maybe again one day.  Anyway, it's one of those dresses that flows and when you dance it swirls and just makes you feel beautiful.  We went to the Heart Ball a while back at Vestavia Country Club and I got on the dance floor later in the evening and just twirled and twirled.  Sure, I'd had a little wine but felt perfectly fine.  Eddie kept telling me to stop twirling but I just couldn't...I was hooked on twirling that night!   And the way the dress shifted when I would suddently stop and start twirling the other direction.  Maybe he was remembering that night too when he saw the Beauty and the Beast commercial.  I don't know...

What makes us remember certain things about people, places and things?  That is always fascinating to me.  I mean, you have four sisters in a family experiencing the same thing and we all have different recollections of the same incident.  Everyone's focus is on something different, other details and what not.  I guess that's why it's good to pool your memories and share them with one another.

I remember after my dad died and me and two of my sisters were going through drawers in my parent's garage.  There were a number of things in one drawer that belonged to dad.  One item was a dark blue hankerchief with a few small white stripes.  I remember that hankerchief so well...  We were living in Puerto Rico at the time.  I had a cold and was sniffling in the car on our way to school.   Dad would drive us every day because there was no bus system there.  I must have been pretty miserable and dad handed me that hankerchief to take to school with me that day.  After that, whenever I needed a hankerchief, that was the one I would use.  I hadn't seen it in years when it turned up in that box in the garage with a bunch of others.  Now, it could have very easily been scooped up with other generic type items and shipped off to Goodwill.  But lucky for me, I saw it there...briefly shared the story with my sisters and then tucked it away in my purse to take home with me.  They had no idea...and even though they were happy to see items that belonged to my dad in that box, simply because they belonged to dad and they knew he had used them...I was fortunate enough to remember something specific about one of the items.

The hankerchief is in the family room cabinet with dad's rosary and next to a picture of him in his T-bird car.  The black ballroom gown is in the front closet in the foyer.  The memories are tucked away in my head and now written in this blog.  I want to get more of these memories down on paper.  I also want to know what memories are in Eddie's head...his memory is always so much better than mine too...