Atonement

Atonement. I just saw the movie Atonement. I found it very well done. However, when I found out that the author was a man and not a woman I felt that he must hate women a lot to write something like this. At first I thought it was genuinely autobiographical of some English woman probably born in the 1920's sometime.

It took me back to my memories of the late 1940s and early 1950s. I can remember for example, my mother singing along with a record player and since she had an operatic quality voice it brought tears to my eyes when she sang along with Mario Lanza different operettas.

I can remember the velour covered seats of my fathers fancy 1941 Buick. It had been his brother's car when he died in 1942 so he had kept the car to remember his brother Tommy. I stood on the long old fashioned bench like rear seat and held onto the drivers seat back when my father drove. He didn't mind because if we stopped suddenly I would just be pushed into the seat back which was cushioned. If he went aroud a corner sometimes I would fall sideways but would soon get up. We would laugh together as he drove. I was 3 or 4 years old. In Seattle it was cloudy or raining most of the time my first 4 years of life and usually fairly cold. So I was used to the steam coming off my breath most days and nights outside there.

The traffic signals were mechanical then not just lights and there were just two mechanical arms on each traffic signal. One said "Stop" and the other said, "Go". So sometimes since there wasn't a yellow light in between people would crash into each other with their cars or trucks if they were impatient.

I remember exploring the forest and nature around Lake Forest Park, Washington with my male cousin who was 5 years older than I.I was then about 4 years old. He picked up a bunch of about a thousand frogs eggs from a pond or stream and showed me them. They were so beautiful and felt like jello or something like that and I could see a little fish like looking baby frog with its tail moving in each of the eggs in the cluster or globule of eggs. I have always imagined the galaxy like that ever since with different beings on each planet.

At age 4 I moved away from my grandfather's 2 1/2 acres of apple trees, black cherry trees, boysenberries, and raspberries to San Diego, California. My Mother, her mother and I went there by train. My father went a month earlier to get a house and a job there and to set things up for us. He met us at the train station in San Diego.