Flowers of Winter

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

 

Every December, as Christmas approaches and the end of the year draws near, for me, is a time of reflection, a looking back. Generally, this contemplative time begins after the shopping and mailing of packages is completed. But this year, my annual life review threatened to sabotage the necessary tasks that come with the holiday.  Daydreaming replaced concentrated, organized gift selection!

I blame the change on my neighbor, Harry, a consummate gardener whose talents we enjoy all summer from our front deck. The day before Thanksgiving, he brought over brought over an armful of roses from his still flowering garden. We were enjoying a wonderfully warm fall, even eating lunch in the sunny protected corner of our porch. "Hard to believe they're still growing," he said.

"Yes," I answered. "Hard to believe, 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 a lot. Each time I did, I thought how comforting it was to see them bloom this time of year.

As the temperature dipped and we moved further into December, Harry's bouquet brought to mind Barrie's wonderful 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 still cling to the autumn years of my life, with their wonderful lingering warmth from my summer season.

I like to think the winter of my life is still far from away, but based on how rapidly my life has gone thus far, I know the approaching winter of my life is much closer than I want to believe. Sometimes, I wonder about what it will be like once my winter fully arrives.

We 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 definitely in the winter of their lives. They prefer sharing their memories, memories evoked by old the movies, events, and songs of their summer years, mostly the forties and fifties, rather than their later years. I learn from them that the days ahead can also be filled with joy and laughter, but most of all, bolstered by the memories that keep us warm.

Here's a few nonscientific things I've come to believe about how memory works as we get older:

• Memory is fluid and dynamic, ever changing. Each memory 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 in our innermost self, and is tied to things we never want to lose. As a result, it only a natural evolution that we find it holds so much a larger part in our lives as we age.
• Memory 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. Have you ever noticed how the fish in any fisherman's tale gets larger with each telling?
• Memories, like the proverbial fine wine, improve with age. And as we get older, we gradually may become the only one who is the memory keeper of our family. An awesome, but joyful thing to contemplate!
• Memory is 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." Have you ever searched your mind for details of some neamingul event in your life and come up blank, yet you can remember an incident that would appear to have no significance whatsoever in the broad schematic of life?
• Memory, like the sea glass we find on the beach, holds fragments that we treasure without reason. Or as Cesare Pavese (The Burning Brand) says 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 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?
• Memory of bad moments come mostly in the middle of the night. Have you had any of those moments when what you failed to do or did haunt you?

Bob Hope always finished his performances with a song called, "Thanks for the memories." Yet, memories are the flowers of our winter and it would be a very cold time without them. And like the roses of winter, they keep us warm. They're what we're made of and what we're left with.

Strawberry Moments Forever

"… the smell and taste of things remain poised a long time, like souls· bearing resiliently, on tiny and almost impalpable drops of their essence, the immense edifice of memory" -Marcel Proust,  "The Remembrance of Things Past"

Do you have a smell that reminds you of special memories? Perhaps the redolent smell of your childhood Sunday dinners? Or popcorn at Saturday matinees? Does a particular aroma take you back where you can see the scene as vividly as if you were right there now?

Proust's words speak volumes to me because throughout my life, the distinctive perfume of fresh strawberries has prevailed as my memory prompter. Perhaps it can even serve as a metaphor for much of my life. This love affair began in my childhood and I write about this in one of my past blog entries, "A World Without Childhood?"

Since that early experience, strawberries have continued as the framework of my most treasured moments.

Consider our honeymoon, for example. The year was 1962 and segregation was still an issue. Neither Will nor I had ever seen signs "for whites only" before, and the sight of so many appalled us. A truck loaded with cartons of berries pulled in behind us on a Chesapeake Bay ferry boat. Two black men got out of the truck and stood in the hot May sunshine. They couldn't go inside where it was cool since the boat wasn't large enough to have an extra space for what then was referred to as "for coloreds only." I spoke to them and said, "It must be nice to drive a truck with such a lovely cargo." They smiled back and tipped their hats.

When we returned to our car, one of the men handed us two quarts of berries. We thanked them profusely and thought about them as we continued on our way. That night, in a modest motel, I poured the lush, red fruit into the tiny sink to wash them and we ate our fill in bed before turning out the light. So, forever they will represent passion and love, along with a little sadness, too, at how badly people can treat other people by considering them as less worthy.

The following years went quickly for us—perhaps because our four daughters were born within the first five years of our marriage. When our youngest was four, we began taking them to a nearby farm to pick strawberries every June. My mother-in-law, Lib, would often join us and then come home to help clean and hull the berries.

After I washed the scarlet stains off the kids' faces and fingers and tucked them into bed, I'd come back to the kitchen to make pie crusts, usually twelve in all. As I kneaded and rolled, I could hear Will and his mother on our jalousie porch, a soft, gentle sound while I reveled in my solitude and the tactile feel of the dough.

Years later, in California, I picked huge, almost meatball size fruit on a California hill with my second daughter, Cindy, and three granddaughters. And as Yogi Berra says, it was "déjà vu all over again." That evening, however, I was the person hulling the berries while Cindy scrubbed away the ruby hue of the fruit that just couldn't wait another day to be eaten.

Now our family is grown and scattered from the East to the West Coast, but this succulent fruit continues to bring additional memories. Last week, we escorted our youngest daughter down a sandy beach on her wedding day in Santa Cruz, California. A joyous week for all of us with, you guessed it, more strawberries. As I hulled them, I inhaled deeply, drinking in one more strawberry moment while I listened to the chatter of gathered family. And as I did so, I thought how blessed I am to have this thread through my life and look forward to seeing what else this succulent fruit will bring in the future.

So, tell me, do you also have a special scent that takes you back in time? If so, drink it in and find yourself right there in that special place, that special moment. If not, consider creating memory markers by using your sense of smell during future happy moments—perhaps the smell of perfume you put on or notice on a loved one some New Year's Eve, or the sweet distinctive fragrance of the ocean after a storm.