Good memories are like a bountiful harvest preserved for the winter. They are stored away, to draw on during the lean times – those periods of our lives when there is more darkness than light, and when pain seems to make joy impossible. Their existence reminds us, simply, that life is often good.
My childhood bedroom was the site of good memories. Even though I still occasionally have nightmares of my messy closet and of frantically sorting clothes in time to catch our rural school bus, that bedroom, and myself as I was in that room, are a permanent retreat. Part of me still remains in that place of the past, so it’s easy to return when I feel the urge. My guess is that most of us have just such a place, where we still need to visit occasionally.
If, in my mind, I wander back to that room on a spring day, I can be nine years old again. Sheer white window curtains rise and sway as the breeze dons a chiffon skirt and performs a ballet for an audience of one. I sit below that window and write my first short story about a pony I name "Wild Eye." It is a story about people sharing and being kind to each other, which is a still a pure concept, at that stage in my life.
This place of mine is safe, mostly because, when I’m there, I am still innocent and optimistic, if not always well behaved. My sister and I once led her pony into my bedroom, just to see if we could, and my cousins and I broke the bed when we pretended we were trapeze artists and somersaulted from the headboard.
That room is the place where my mother soothed me after nightmares and it was where I holed-up, sobbing, after the death of a precious pet. As I grew a little older I huddled under the covers at night, listening to Stan’s Private Line on the radio and daily kept an eye on the full-length mirror that steadfastly refused to give me a glimpse of the woman I might become.
Besides my family, my room was the heart of the home I left behind when I went to college at seventeen. Each time I visited, it seemed somewhat different, probably because I was the one changing. When my parents sold the farm during a particularly painful time in our lives, my room became someone else’s space and was, literally and finally, different. In my memory, however, it would always be mine and would never change. I needed that just then.
Life isn’t always what we want, or what we planned. In the bad times we’re disappointed, we’re let down, we even fail. For most of us, though, our recall can remind us of the times we succeeded and the times we laughed, and they can again become a conscious part of who we are and a foundation for the future. Good memories are ours for keeps. They can make up the difference and even bridge a gap.
I don’t live in the past, but I do want it to enhance the present. Sometimes just remembering a place, a special person or a satisfying moment fills a present void and recalls something good about where I’ve been and who I am.
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