Monday, July 22, 2013

Benched #10: the memory box



If trees could laugh, this one would have an evil chuckle. 

Grace had pointed it out to me, overhanging the far side of the wide stream, festooned with bobbers.  “They look like Christmas ornaments,” she said.

The tree took me back to past scenes, like those dramatic camera swooshes on 30 Rock.  First, I could picture myself on the forward thwart of a small boat, embarrassed by my poor cast as my patient, silent father maneuvered us in close enough to disentangle my spinner from a similar tree.  Then, swoosh – I saw myself standing along the Schuylkill River, with my two young sons watching me mutter as yet another lure snagged or was lost.  As one heavy Red Devil disengaged from my poorly-tied knot in mid cast and sailed out to plop unhindered into the distant water, Nate said, “Dad, you’re not very good at this, are you?”

Back on the shore of today's stream, Nathan interrupted my mental swooshing by saying to his brothers, “It seems like much of our time fishing when we were young, Dad was getting our lures out of trees.”  The comment surprised me – simply because it was a completely different lens to a shared past.

Memories are like boxes of trinkets. They’re not all valuable.  They’re just all special.  But boxes not only keep things in, they leave things out. Our memories are but a very select picking of moments from our lives.  So much is lost.  And even what is kept is often changed in the process.

When we get together as a family, we spend a lot of time taking those trinkets out of our boxes and comparing them to how others have kept them.  Memories are revived, reconsidered, cross-referenced, and ultimately, celebrated.  That’s what family and old friends help to do: celebrate the key moments in life – not only in the creating of them but in reflecting on them throughout the following years.



Which brings me to the bench.  We had hiked to Jones Dam in Laurel Hill State Park and sat for a bit in the beauty of the woods and falling water.  I didn’t have time to linger on the bench.  The others were waiting.  Nathan, following his sister-in-law’s example, had crossed the rocks at the top of the dam.  I returned in time to get a snapshot of him as he caught his balance, mid-stream. Looking at the picture, he seemed to be blessing a waiting crowd as he walked, not in the water, but on it.

Nathan walking on the water. I think that’s how I’m going to remember this.

Until someone remembers it differently.

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