Mother of Confusion: Going forward, looking back

Posted in Mom Stuff
by Lorain County Moms

Nostalgia. Growing up I didn’t understand the hurtful twinge, wistfulness and soft yearning for time gone by — or the need to connect with someone who could relate.

More so, I was irritated with my mom’s frequent attempts to share her memories of Fresno. Because, gawh, how many times did I need to hear that Fulton Mall was ‘the place to be’ before Fashion Fair? Or that’s where Harpain’s Dairy used to be?

And she’d already mentioned, like every time we were on it, that the drive from Fresno to Clovis on Herndon was all orchards. That it felt like forever to get from one city to the next.

Of course, I couldn’t imagine it being that way. By the time I knew Herndon, it was a six-lane speedway and I was an eyeball-rolling, sarcastic tween.

When my husband, kids and I moved back from Modesto after living there five years I excitedly pointed out to my tween the house I lived in on Ashlan street when I was six.

It was there I first felt the pain of loss. Our cocker spaniel, named Freckles, escaped the yard and was hit by a car. My mother found him on the street divider wrapped in a blood-splattered white cotton t-shirt.

That was also the home I told my first big whopping lie. (Mom and Dad, there never was an escaped prisoner wearing a black and white outfit, with a ball and chain on his foot that followed me. I broke the ‘stranger’s house’ rule because that nice neighbor lady gave me a cookie. Not because I was afraid of being kidnapped.)

Not only that — I learned to ride a bike there, felt an earthquake, discovered Daddy Long Legs and roly polys, wanted to be a ballerina, developed a passion for the piano and got a pea stuck in my nose.

I also explained to my son, the place we fondly call Tar-ghetto, on First and Shields, used to be a Gemco. My parents didn’t have a Gemco card, so I only got in as far as the optometrist’s office.

Of course, he did the same kind of eye rolling I had done and said, “Mom, how many times are you going to tell me this?”

Hmmm … why was I telling him this? It wasn’t until I felt the shock of seeing a gaping dirt lot where Walgreen’s, on First and Ashlan, used to be that I understood.

That squatty building, with its wide overhang, wood shingled roof, green vegetation and trees was quintessential Fresno. At least the Fresno I grew up in.

Now it was being replaced with a building that looked like every other new one being constructed: Tan stucco, cheaply built and box-shaped minus shady entrance that should be a requirement for this summer-sizzling town.

My son is going to grow up with a different flavor of Fresno. He’s going to think that north of Alluvial is the good part of town, instead of north of Shaw. He’ll ask for a ride to River Park to watch movies with his friends at Edwards and never experience “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” at Tower Theater before the re-vamp. (Not that I ever did, but I soooo wanted to.) He won’t know the agonizing wait for Valentino’s to get in a new shipment of Doc Marten’s with the only alternative being to drive to San Francisco to get them sooner.

He might remember being dressed up as a puppy on Halloween when he was four, hanging out with his dad and I at Java Cafe — but then again, when he thinks coffee he probably only thinks of Starbucks.

I know as time ticks on, things change. It’s inevitable. However, that doesn’t stop me from looking for my great-grandma — who never learned how to drive — pushing a shopping cart to Country Boy on Willow, near Shaw, even though neither has been a fixture in Clovis for many years.

Really, just because it’s gone doesn’t mean we should forget. The memories of Fresno should be shared. It matters, because we were here and it shaped our lives.

And hey, son — Fashion Fair was ‘the place to be’ before River Park.

—By Genevieve Hinson, MotherOfConfusion.com

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Genevieve Hinson is a writer, wife and mom to two boys. More of her adventures can be found at MotherOfConfusion.com

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