The Things That Stick Just Do
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Mrs. Davis wore a key on a chain around her neck all day. That’s what my 31-year-old son remembers about September 11th of his 4th grade year. He and his classmates watched movies at school the entire afternoon--with intermittent indoor recess breaks--which he realized was a bit weird but way too good of a thing to question too intently at the time. He was nine. The novelty felt grand.
This was his teacher’s plan, of course. Denise Davis was a five-star, if teachers formally were ranked and heralded in such a way, and she had a job to do the day two planes flew into the World Trade Center and nobody knew yet, why. She is a woman who spoke softly, drew hard lines, and dressed intently for occasions, including ordinary days. My Granny used to say she looked “like she just stepped out of a bandbox” even on playground duty or at an early Saturday morning soccer game in the elements at Griffin Park. So it makes sense that Colton would notice and remember the way the key hung where her perfectly matched jewelry usually laid.
He can’t remember what movies they watched that day. Or who picked him up from school. Or when and how he discovered what had happened to our world that day while locked inside his school. But the key around his teacher’s neck is vivid in his mind.
It’s funny the things we can’t remember, and the things we can’t forget.
Several months ago, one of my dearest childhood friends lost her father. She asked me to speak at the service and in preparation for my remarks, I asked her what her home address was in Healdton, the town that we grew up in where so many memories had been made. I thought the detail would prove poignant in my speech. She had no idea. So she asked her siblings. Then her mother. And no one seemed to know.
“How can it be that none of us remember the address of the house we called our home?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” I said, as she pulled up 16 Ash street from the map on Google Earth.
Then she matter-of-factly responded, “I wish I could forget the way he looked when he was sick.”
The mind is a marvelous sorter full of boxes, files, and drawers. And we don’t get much of a say about what goes where. We get even less, it seems, about what we can find when we want it and about what fades away. The things that stick just do.
I can’t remember what my mom looked like when she held my first child on the day he was born. I have zero recollection despite my gritty attempts to pull it from the folders in my brain. Yet, I can see-- in living color--the giant Snicker bar my brother handed me when they wheeled me back into my room. It was as big around as my wrist, and though it took me a couple of days to do so, I remember eating every bite. That silly detail sits where I’d prefer my mother’s face be, but for whatever reason, I don’t get to make that call.
Frivolous bits of mica get entangled with the moments we’d really like to bronze and it’s pretty much a crap shoot which ones make it the long haul. I don’t remember what my daughter’s first words were—I thought I’d never forget at the time, so I didn’t write them down. But I can still hear the way she said “spasghetti” —the only word, I swear, she ever mispronounced. The highs and lows, the big deals and the not-so-much deals, float haphazardly together in the maze of my mind.
We just returned (as I mentioned in the last post) from an amazing trip to the Amalfi coast where our family did and saw things we’ll most likely never do or see again. I hope I don’t forget the color of the water. Or the way the buildings look, stacked imperfectly along the coastline, as if one thump might send the host of them tumbling into the sea. I would have liked to cement it all inside my mind for future frolicking, but that’s not how it works. Even though we returned with lots of pictures, the inside of the blue grotto is growing hazy in my memory, and I’ve already forgotten most of what I learned while at Pompeii.
It will be interesting to see what stands the test of time.
I know one thing, though, that I won’t forget. During our trip when it came time for bed, my two-year-old granddaughter would often want me to accompany her there. “GG take me,” she would say. (It was, of course, as if I’d won the lottery every time.) One particular night, however, after giving hugs and running through the obligatory goodnights, see you laters, and I love yous, she grabbed my finger and we headed toward the stairs.
Then, “Turn the lights off!” she added with authority and enthusiasm as we began our ascent.
It is burned into my brain.
It was just a sentence. But its randomness. Her inflection. The way she went from two to twenty as her grown-up recommendation wafted through the air. “Turn the lights off!” stuck in the middle of me. Like a key or a candy bar or word that’s mispronounced. It became an instant breadcrumb that marked a moment made to last. The things that stick just do.