Roses of Winter


God gave us memories that we might have roses in December.  ~J.M. Barrie, Courage, 1922

The day before Thanksgiving, our neighbor, Harry, knocked on my door with an armful of roses from his still flowering garden. "Hard to believe they're still growing," he said.

"Yes," I answered, "But wonderful, too." I clipped the stems and placed the bouquet in a green vase on my dining room table. In the next few weeks, I passed by the roses often. Each time I did, I thought how comforting it was to see them bloom into December.


Harry's lovely bouquet brought to mind Barrie's quote and my thoughts turned to how increasingly important the role memory takes as we get older—not that I'm done making memories—not by a long shot, I hope! After all, I'm only seventy now.

I like to think my "winter" is still far away, but based on how rapidly the years have gone gone thus far, it's much closer than I want to believe. Sometimes, I wonder about what it will be like once I reach what I've always viewed as a barren season.


I visit a senior center once a month to do a program entitled, "Remember When." These seniors, older than I am, of course, are firmly entrenched in their "winters." They prefer sharing memories evoked by old movies, historical events, and songs of their "summers." For them, it seems, memory making is, like their memories, a thing of the past.


Here's a few nonscientific things I've come to believe about memory:

Memory is fluid and dynamic. Each recollection takes on a different hue, tone, and meaning when we view it from a distance created by time.


Memory is a way of holding onto the things we love. It tells us who we are, and is tied to things we never want to lose. As a result, it's only natural that it holds such a larger part in our lives as we age.

Memory smoothes out the edges of the life we've lived. It is the book we write in the silence of our hearts. And like writers, we can discover the freedom to alter our history and tell it a little more like we wanted it to be.

Memories require memory keepers. And as we get older, we may become the only one left, the master memory keeper of our family. An awesome, sad and yet joyful thing to contemplate!

Memory is randomly selective. As Austin O'Malley notes, "Memory is a crazy woman that hoards colored rags and throws away food." Nora Ephron speaks of this in her new book, "I Remember Nothing." I have a vivid memory of my third daughter, Christina. I had her sitting up on the kitchen counter and was kissing the back of her neck where a curly tendril of hair always nestled. Yet when she asks me about her birthday parties, I remember nothing. Cesare Pavese (The Burning Brand) says it so well, "We do not remember days; we remember moments."

Memory of our childhood remains imprinted in our memory bank for all of our lives. Sometimes, I ask myself: why can I remember all the details of my elementary school yet scarcely remember the hallways of the college I attended when I was forty years old?

Recently, after arriving home after doing a Christmas program for the seniors, the first thing I saw when I came in were Harry's roses, bathed in the winter sun. I thought again about the seniors and remembered their joy in their recollections, their "roses in December."


Whether you're at the same point in your memory timeline as I am or at another, enjoy and savor your memories this season. And as Christmas draws ever closer, my wish for you is that your memories continue to keep you warm through future Decembers and that you enjoy making new and happy ones in 2011.

 

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!