Bottled Breath Breathes: One

My father had some truly endearing idiosyncrasies.

One of them was his propensity for writing notes and taping them all over the house. Tangible short-term memory, you know, the sort housed outside your brain and with no need of efficient neural firing. Growing up we had a cupboard by the kitchen door that looked ordinary from the outside. Crack it open, though, and you would find the inside of the door covered, layered decades deep in squares of paper, some of the writing faded, some of it fresh, but all of it an enlightening look into Dad's psyche.

These were not just any notes like your average person would write. Sometimes they were motivational ("Objective-->Plan-->Schedule-->Achieve"); sometimes they were lists. Sometimes they were quotes that were simply too good not to write on a little square of paper. Since retirement, he started writing them on the calendar in his and Mom's bedroom. It was a diary, of sorts, and a testament to the best of his quirks.

The notes were lovable for their content, yes, but also for their style. Dad was an avid user of underlining, asterisks, circling, dashes, quotation marks, parentheses, and highlighting. None of these things were used appropriately, not in the least. They all served one function in Dad's mind: emphasizing something important (and who cares what the marks might mean to the rest of the English-writing world).

My sister captured some of these notes in photograph.

One of the crown jewels of the note collection, though, was one I just discovered today.

Mom has been cleaning out our basement, and recently uncovered a box full of undeveloped film (much of which was from my babyhood and little girl days...here I thought I was unloved all these years...kids are old hat when you're the seventh one). Now that the film is developed and I'm home for Easter break, I spent a good hour today looking through it. There were a lot of treasures in there, early photos of the Johnson clan; two of my favorites, though, were the ones below.

It was my first birthday. Dad, perhaps having used all other free space in the house to attach notes to, resorted to taping them on my toddler self. A homemade birthday sandwich board. The writing is a bit hard to read, but the captions make it clear.

Front: