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.

Seashore Seasons of Life

The choices we make influence so much of our lives, choices like the places we choose to be and live. Living by the sea on an island was one of those choices that created so much of that influence for me. When I look back on my life, I can't help but compare it to the seasons of the seashore.


In the spring of my life, the seashore served as a backdrop for my yearnings, especially my dreams of romantic love. In that time, there were so many false starts - kisses without substance on a moonlit beach - made all the more lonely because the nights were so beautiful. Then the promises of the sea became mine. I met my soul mate and the promises whispered by the waves became a reality.

That was the spring of my life.


Summer came with a bright and blazing intensity - my childbearing years. Days replaced starlit nights in importance. And sunny days were filled with sand buckets, snacks, and suntan lotion to protect tender skin. Vigilance was the keyword during the summer season of my life as I watched the little ones skitter on the beach, much like little sandpipers. Later, bobbing in the surf. Then later, I played the watchful waiting game while they visited places with names like the Tide, the Ketch, the Shell - places with sea-like names, but completely alien from my beloved sea.

That was the summer of my life.


Now I'm in the autumn of my ocean watching. This season is calm, still warm kissed by the remembered intensity of the summer sun. Relaxed now, I watch my grands hurl themselves toward the incoming tide, calm because I know the children of my summer are in their summers - secure in their own lives and loves. I am tranquil and filled with peace in the fall season as I clasp the hand of my spring season lover, my companion in three seashore seasons.



I find I want to hold this season more than I have ever wanted to hold any other season in my life. This September song grows more poignant, more precious than any other, for the sun-warmed sea still holds a strong whisper of summer, and the remembrance of the everlasting promise of spring.

This is the autumn of my life.



I do not know what lies ahead of me as I push away the thought of the approaching winter of my life. I do know God has been good to me through these three seasons. Perhaps the best has been saved for last. I will find out if I get to spend my winter by the sea. In any case, I realize life has its cycle, and whatever comes, life will continue, and future generations will carry at least a small piece of me through their seashore seasons.