When I remember events from my past, I do believe that I am accurately depicting what happened, but realistically, that couldn’t be true. What I am remembering are the parts of the past that remain, as the song “The Way We Were” goes, “watercolor memories,” parts that are, also as the song goes, “…too painful to remember, we simply chose to forget.”
But I lived these things. They are as much a part of me as are my eyes.
I can see my father walking down the street, coming home from work, expecting me to take the newspaper from under his arm. I see my mother helping me to write out my address 20 times. I remember being told to stand in the window and bang on the pots with the wooden spoon to celebrate the ending of the war.
I smile at the warmth of my high school memories, not all good by any means, but so many good things, so many wonderful moments.
I can bring my grandmother and mother to mind in a trice and set my thoughts to sweet moments of sharing, moments of teaching about how to be an adult, which I sought so diligently.
I the smile of my first-born, my colicky son, in the middle of the night.
And those that are painful … crying for days after my father died and even more when my mother died … wandering around her house, touching her clothing, the pieces of fabric that she had cut out to make Christmas gifts for us.
I can easily smile at the memory of my sister Joan and I trying to be some kind of circus act on the rug in our tiny living room, she balancing on the bottoms of my upstretched feet while my brother teased us.
I remember my little dog, my sweet little Chica girl, being carried away by Doc Nichols, her little face pleading … it breaks my heart as I type. And the gentle ministrations of Dr. Williams and Caitlin when they helped our Kiki cross the rainbow bridge…
I can easily open the memories of Christmas mornings and the joy of family, of reading Harry Potter to the children, complete with accents, as we drove to share that holiday with my mother and my siblings.
It was 1963 when I walked into the east entrance of what is now the middle school. Wearing my new R&K dress, absorbing the scents of the wood wainscot and the gymnasium, anxious, on my first day as a teacher.
And being on my honeymoon and more nauseated than anyone should be, trying to walk it off on the charcoal-smoked streets of Bogota, Colombia. I wonder why that one is so vivid?
And I remember the events that have changed all of our lives: I walked into the teacher’s room in what is now the middle school and saw Walter Cronkite tell us that President Kennedy was dead. Then, as now, it was an undoing of what I believed about our country and how it had matured.
I remember being home from work on that terrible Tuesday, watching the Today show as they announced that an airplane had crashed into one of the world Trade Center Towers
I spent a few hours yesterday at our cottage, gathering up the lessons I’ve learned about how to end the summer – what goes home with me, what stays and how to store up not only the things of summer, but also the memories. I know that this place is the epicenter of nostalgia for me because it carries the fantasies of remembering the sweetness of staying with my grandmother, the goodness of my sacrificing parents and the joy of being one of four siblings, the ability to share what these memories create for the new generation for whom this place will have other meanings.
These snippets of memory are my history, written not on paper but in my mind, overlaid with the everyday need to keep up and modified by all sorts of other memories. There is always, always the everyday stuff to do, to maintain my home, my responsibilities. The everyday stuff itself generating more memories for other days.
Today I experience the monotony of laundry and sorting out a badly organized storeroom. Maybe, while I navigate these chores, I’ll call up some memories of walking in the woods next to the brook that ran behind my grandmother’s house, where as a child I was sure I would discover gold, or spending hours reading books in the library on 53rd street in Brooklyn … another type of gold.
I am only one very small part of the passing of time and life on this planet; just another ephemera. The reality of this planet encompassing the passing of time and life, existing and then not existing, all ephemera, some strong enough to be chiseled in stone, something for posterity. The effects of their existence, their affect and effect keep tumbling forward into time, setting the stage for other happenings to procure other futures … on and on into history.
