The older I get, the truer Pavese's quote becomes, it seems.
Memory is a funny thing. Often selective and fickle.
Thankfully, re-trainable.
The evolutionary reasoning behind our ability to recall traumatic or bad events clearly is simple...a survival adaptation. From the days when a bad decision could well be the end of us. The whole fight or flight thing. Useful when avoiding Sabretooth Tigers...but not so much now.
Learning from our mistakes is wonderful.
Being paralyzed by them, reliving them. or regrets...not so much.
Replaying them endlessly must indeed be Dante's Hell.
A great deal of my childhood was "horror-show" but through the years I have learned how to sift through the memories.
Winnow out the bad and hold tightly to the good.
I apply this process to everything in life now and am healthier and happier for it.
My childhood "home" memories is where I keep my brother. Safe and preserved in amber. Walking along the rail-road tracks from Jamestown to Advance and the Dairy Bar. Our Holy Grail. Picking up pop bottles to return for nickels and dimes so we could buy comic books, candy, a soda or an ice cream sundae at the Hook's Drugstore in town. Biking to Eel River and spending the day playing beneath the bridge or climbing the trestle. Hopping slow moving freight cars by the lumber yard. Riding mini-bikes together or doing our early morning Star paper route together...and maybe a million others.
It is my Grandmother's Hands as she made egg noodles from scratch or sitting with her (on a good day) having buttered toast and Black Raspberry Jello.
It is my Grandfather in the front yard teaching me to use his fly rod. Or making and nailing a saddle and bridle-like combination to the lower y-branch of a maple tree in the backyard so he could boost me up and I could "ride" while he was mowing the yard. It is him teaching me pidgen German from his time in WWII.
It is my (then) neighborhood...where everyone knew everyone and as kids we all played in the fields, ditches and woods together.
It is swimming in the low front yard when it flooded, and ice skating in boots in the winter when it would freeze solid.
And so many more!
As a wife and mother it was being huge with my first son at Christmas...and him not arriving until January 8th...I was as big as the Christmas tree.
It was bringing him home, and a bassinet made out of a wicker laundry basket.
It was him teaching me as much or more than I taught him in that first year or two...and his ear pressed to my distended abdomen listening to his baby brother still on the inside. And how relieved it was that he was getting a brother and not a sister...lol!
It was meeting my Middle son for the first time with Bill...all red haired and bright blue mischievous eyes.
It was standing at the hospital window with snow falling in the middle of October and telling my youngest son...Welcome to the World.
And for all the boys it was love at first sight.
It was Bill and our lives together...him playing guitar in the living room of the Rose Cottage...and helping with my kitchen garden, or making beer while I made cheese, bread, and put up jam. It was moving into our new home and spending the first night there with nothing but a candle that smelled like Cinnamon Rolls...and a large sleeping bag and a couple of pillows. Just us. Making love right there in that empty room together in the candlelight.
It was having just 2 weeks together of the "Empty Nest" years...but how amazing those two weeks were.
It was the way our lives fit together like a well worn jigsaw puzzle.
And a million wonderful memories.
Now it is all of those memories, and all of the others made with people throughout my life...and the new memories made every day with my children, friends, lovers or grandchildren.
Like a scrap-quilt tightly wrapped around me...warm and full of love!
