"Intelligence is the wife, imagination is the mistress, memory is the servant." ~ Victor Hugo

I just don't know if I can depend on my memory sometimes.

If this seems to be becoming a recurrent theme, it is because I am experiencing a love affair with the past and all it has given me, but there are moments of crystal recall when no one else other than I am able to verify the memory. Both of my parents have passed, so I can't ask them, "Did this really happen?" Many of my contemporaries have failing memories, too, or didn't attach the importance to a person, place or object that I seem to have. As time passes, I find myself questioning whether my brain has simply implanted situations and images from dreams, books I've read or other people's stories in its convoluted recesses.

At this point there is nothing grave about any of that. I have what most people think is a phenomenal memory, and I am grateful that it has serve me so well for fifty-nine years. I know phone numbers from years ago, even if I haven't dialed them recently. I don't forget birthdays or anniversaries, passwords or codes. I can use King Philip Came Over For Good Soup to remember Linnaean taxonomy and the other tried and true mnemonics for planetary order in the solar system and colours of the spectrum. If you were one of the more than six thousand students I encountered over my thirty-two years of teaching high school, chances are if you give me your last name, I can retrieve your first from the depths.

I am six years old and holding a smooth wooden box with a tiny key on the bottom which when I wind it, sets a brass cylinder in motion. I can see the intricate works through the glass in the box. Tiny teeth on the cylinder pluck teeth on a single metal comb and produce tinkling sounds - a lively waltz. I can read the words on the paper label on the inside of the music box lid –– "Faust Waltz", Gounod. It is only years later when as a teen I am consumed with all things dark that I actually read Faust and understand his relinquishing of his soul to Mephistopheles for "unlimited knowledge and worldly pleasures" that I realize what a strange choice this bit of melody is for a child's music box.

And I know I stood transfixed on the stairs ascending to the second floor of the house where we now live when it was owned by the Healys, examining prints in miniature of 17th century princes and princesses, portraits by Diego Velasquez and his peers, of little children garbed as royal adults in velvets and satin brocades.

I was fascinated by these tiny replicas of queens and kings; babies in rich robes, the Infanta Margarita Teresa, daughter of Philip of Spain. I can see the pewter-coloured frames and the diagonal arrangement Mrs. Healy has made of them as the stairway turns and rises. 













This week, I asked Liz if she remembered what prints were on the stairway. "The Bartletts," she replied. Mind you, she is three years my junior, and may not remember the Velasquezes but it is the miniatures that are indelibly printed in my mind. Yes, the Bartletts came later, pastoral scenes from 1840's Europe and North America. Yes, indeed. I can picture them now that she has provided the information.
































Perhaps memory is not so very fickle as I fear, but rather simply selective. Why don't I just relax, then and let it serve . . .?

Time was all we had . . .

Summer nights are like indelible ink - black, deep blue, forever. I feel carried away by the deepening darkness to other times in my life, always achingly summer.  I can transport myself to places and times long past simply by opening my spirit to the night air, sky and shadows.

In the liquid evening, there are sounds of mothers calling children in from days of hard play, laughter and popsicles. Screen doors slam and it is 1959. My baby brother is four months old, Mark is four, I am going to be six in three weeks. We are plunked into the tub to soak away the sand and grit of beach or sandbox, dried off  and dressed in lightweight seersucker pyjamas and nightgown respectively. One red lifesaver each, a drink; I will my eyes to stay open until it's first star wish time. Rarely do they cooperate.

Lights of all colours, strung from tree to tree come on down the street and laughter rings out from the patio. It is 1965, my twelfth birthday, and all the kids from the block are at the Healy's house. We are all ages, from Robert's age of eighteen down, and there is a record player and 45s for us to dance to. I swear sometimes that Kim Mitchell's song was written about that night - the nervous boys and girls, lemonade or punch to drink, but it's the Righteous Brothers and Billy Joe Royal I remember more than Bobby Vinton's "Blue On Blue". Am I really dancing with a boy to "You've Lost That Lovin' Feelin'"? The night is so warm, my cotton sleeveless dress is damp from fast dances and I'm so self-conscious as Kenny pulls me a little closer and sings along. It's over before I can believe it, and he's off to ask someone else to dance, and I am more relieved than anything.


Tires give a little squeal on the loose gravel before gripping the scorching pavement. That sound lands me in 1970, the year before my grad year from high school. My mother is pregnant at age 38, and I in my teenage mind think she has done this deliberately so I'll have to babysit forever. But sweet freedom is mine for all the summer nights because I have the car and can cruise with friends, or alone which I sometimes prefer. The moon follows all of our roads, windows rolled all the way down, radio turned all the way up. We are all in the same garb, long, center-parted hair, blue jean bell bottoms, t-shirts and water buffalo leather sandals. Seventeen means there's beer at parties and everyone gets high. Almost.

After a brilliant aquapeachgoldpink sunset at the bay shore, the stars come out one by one until the velvet dark sky is studded with a bazillion diamonds. Is it 1988 already? I'm peaceful in my heart, and my five-year old snuggles against me on a blanket beside our car. We are trying to see the shapes of the constellations and this wondrous little person knows many names from books that we have read and charts that we have looked at. "Cassiopoeia, Mommy! And Orion's Belt." We are a pair now, just the two of us, and we're going to be just fine.

A fish jumps just to the right of the dock on a sultry, navy-blue night, and a gentle voice whispers words of love and intimacy beside my ear. In one another's embrace, wrapped in a thick down comforter against the chill of late August's rehearsal for autumn, we kiss, look into each other's eyes and make promises that neither of us is certain we can keep. Our intentions are pure, our passion unquestionable, and I feel safer than I recall feeling, ever, before or since. 

Summer nights feel like all these times rolled together into one beating, grateful heart. My heart.

I think this just might work . . .

I have to write things down. 

My very full, distractible (see last post) brain just cannot hold all the things I want to write about for longer than a goldfish's, and some of my best ideas come and go like the scarce rains of this summer. When did I get out of the habit of having a notebook with me everywhere I go? Or a least scraps of paper to jot down a snippet of overheard conversation or a scene that is story fodder?

Maybe I have become over-confident in my memory's ability to snag and hold ideas. I know sometimes when I am researching something on the web, I open a new tab to find a related post and forget almost at once what it was I came for, sort of like walking into a room in my house with great purpose until I stop and say, "Wait. What am I here for?" It's frustrating, but in conversations with others I find that I am far from the only one. 


It's useless for me to try to retrieve the neural signal by concentrating harder. The more I struggle, the more elusive the idea gets. I retrace. It was a quote I read that got me pondering the complexities of . . . what? Arrghhhh. I tell myself to relax, clear my mind and it will come back. Sometimes in the fullness of time, it does. Sometimes, nada.


Deep breath. OK. I am going to strategically place notebooks and pens wherever I spend time -- in my handbag, in the car, by my bed, in the kitchen and maybe even the bathroom. (I do some fine thinking in there by times.) When the thought or inspiration comes, it will have no chance of escaping into the fargone-osphere anymore! (credit to my former husband for that word; it's where every lost thing ever goes.)


Wish me luck.