Welcome Today’s Guest Blogger – Nancy S. Kyme

I’m Nancy S. Kyme, the author of “Memory Lake, the Forever Friendships of Summer” a 2012 Next Generation Award Winning memoir. It’s a fun and inspirational novel told in flashbacks as I drive to a camp reunion with my teenage daughter and her two best friends. Facing my mom’s recent passing, camp memories unfoldalong the way as I recall another time in my life when I was learning to live without her.

Some memories teach lessons. Some have universal meaning. Some are just fun. My earliest memory is tied to laughter. It was 1961, I was two, we lived in a new house, in a new neighborhood, and a new young president ran the country. My mom sat on the herringbone sofa, propped her loafers on the low blond coffee table, and placed two hard squares of Bazooka bubblegum in her mouth. She rarely relaxed, so my older sister and I immediately gathered beside her. Her first few bubbles grew to the size of quarters, popped quickly, and only stuck briefly to her lips. Now we had the idea and smiled as the next one popped near her nose. She slowly and methodically peeled the gum away and returned it to her mouth. She chewed with her lips together and expertly maneuvered her hidden tongue to attain the gum’s proper shape. We fiendishly anticipated the pink bubble’s tiny emergence from her bright red lipstick mouth. We barely breathed as it grew. We began to giggle as it increasingly thinned. We screamed when it popped. Each bubble grew larger than the last and each grew dangerously close to her black horn-rimmed glasses. Would she let the pink, sticky gum plaster itself across the glasses she always wore, so desperately needed, and never allowed us to touch? Then one of them grew bigger than her head. When it popped, a pink mass of stickiness covered her cheeks, forehead, and the glasses. She barely cracked a smile. I giggled until my sides hurt. I curled into a ball next to her, hugged my stomach, alternately laughed then returned my disbelieving eyes to her mess. She simply peeled the strings of gum away without removing her glasses, which made me laugh all the more. Afterward, we tried to blow bubbles like her, but the gum just flew from our mouths in a stream of spit.