Memory – Snail Trek Blog

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I tried to be invisible as I scoped out the restaurant, a future rendezvous spot with our son’s family. But, as I scanned the menu and the ambiance, the six-foot three, early-30s host spotted me, blowing my cover.

“How many, please?”

“Uh, none. I’m just checking out your restaurant.”

The host’s grin commanded his entire face. I returned an uncomfortable smile.

“So, what do you do when you’re not here?” I vainly tried to normalize my peculiar behavior.

“I work a lot. Fifty hours a week or more.”

The sunlight illuminated his sturdy face, engaging countenance, and a brown mole on his right cheek. His slight accent suggested more of his story. I worked hard to pull it out of him.

Philip of Montenegro

Two years ago, he left his home in Montenegro, a thumbnail of a country carved from the former Yugoslavia. A lead for a restaurant job landed him here, on California’s central coast.

“Philip,” my restaurant host explained, “my name is Philip.”

“Oh, yes!” I exclaimed, concocting a vague geographic connection to his part of the world. “Like Philip of Macedonia, the father of Alexander the Great!”

“I don’t know about that,” he replied, evidently not an ardent fan of historical trivia. “I’m Philip of Montenegro, not Macedonia.”

Because Philip of Montenegro and his wife work hard to cover their nearly $3,000 monthly rent, they plan to migrate into the hotel industry and move to a less expensive area—Phoenix, perhaps. Within fifteen years, he plans to own his own home along with some investment property.

“And then I’ll retire,” he added confidently.

“Whoa!” I gasped, amazed at his tenacity and idealism. “To where?”

“Montenegro, my home!”

“And you know the language!” I gratuitously chimed in.

He grinned broadly.

What is Home?

When Philip of Montenegro eventually retreats to his homeland, he will surrender America and his green card. And leave this gorgeous place in California? I thought to myself.

Like homing pigeons, and like Philip of Montenegro, we can find our way home over vast distances. But when we return to a former home, we carry another sense—the memory of the way things used to be.

What exactly is what we call “home”?

Yes, home can be, usually is, a geographical location. But after returning, we note the growth of vegetation and the altered hues of paint. Despite those changes, is it really what it used to be? Yes, and no. What’s missing?

Forty years later, I returned to the home where I grew up. To my astonishment, the new owner recognized me staring from the street. He invited me inside, proud of the refinements he had made. Freshly installed wooden floors replaced the soft area rugs where we wrestled with Dad. A Pueblo-styled kiva fireplace replaced the cozy nook where I listened to children’s programs on the Grundig vacuum tube radio. The kitchen countertop where I kneaded Swedish rye bread with my mother had disappeared, leaving no hint of the baking bread’s aroma. Things that carried force were antiseptically cleaned away.

Why do we miss home?

What we call “home” is the people rather than the place. I don’t miss the Grundig radio, but I miss the radio stories as marinated in the aroma of Mother’s bread and the taste of her Swedish meatballs. I no longer recall the area rug’s pattern, but I miss Dad’s scratchy stubble and him pinching my belly as we brawled on that floor.

But, if home is the people rather than the place, what is left to us when those dear ones go away? What, then, will become of “home”?

We do not become homeless. Home is not a static place. We don’t return to a place on the map. Rather, our home is moveable. The players have moved on, but we now fill the roles. The same care and love that made home for us, we can now provide for others. Where we now welcome, where we now cook, where we now provide peace to a stranger—that is the place we now call home. We are the caretakers of the caring and cozy places where, years later, others will recall, “Remember who? Remember when?”

“Montenegro!” Philip declared, “is an absolutely beautiful place!”

I’m sure it is. And the comfort we give to those in our own homes also makes them beautiful places.

The List Makers

General George “Old Blood and Guts” Patton, the foulmouthed, super-egotistical, hyper-combustible hero of the Battle of the Bulge, had a problem. Yes, he had created the plan that could turn the battle, and ultimately World War II around in the Allies favor. But success depended on getting his Air Force off the ground. Day after day the weather had his planes socked in. At that moment, they weren’t going anywhere. But Patton had a secret weapon, which we now know as Patton’s Prayer, his wish list to the Almighty:

“All I’m asking for is four days of ‘clear weather.’ Consent to give me as Your gift four days of blue sky, so that my airplanes can take off, hunt, bomb, find their goals and annihilate them. Give me four days so that this mud can harden; allow my trucks to roll along and supply provisions and ammunition for my infantry which needs it urgently.”

As we now know, Patton’s wish list was fulfilled. The Battle of the Bulge was an Allied turning point in winning the war.

We are all list makers, though perhaps of a more modest nature than Patton’s ambitious, win-the-war prayer list. Who has not scribbled homework assignments or hastily jotted phone numbers on the back side of hands or along forearms, only to have that all-important number, the path to a possible love connection, dissolve beneath sweat and grime?

My seventh grade biology teacher began each class session slowly, thoughtfully, deliberately. His Louisiana drawl was so thick he chewed his words on their way out. He squeezed his words like the last thick goo from a rolled up toothpaste tube. “Oh, baah thu waay, did y’all remember to brang yur notebooooks?” Of course we all “brang” our notebooks. Since our teacher declined issuing textbooks for the entire year of biology class, we were obliged to take notes from his daily verbal recitations. Gradually, we filled our notebooks, our de facto textbooks, with these lessons. They contained the entire year’s syllabus, the interminable listing of phylum and sub-phylum, genus and species. Headings begat subheadings and sub-subheadings, tabulated lists and sublists of my seventh grade biology.

That was when I recognized that I suffered from LMD, “List Maker Disorder,” acquired while surviving my seventh grade biology class.

My friend has a severe case of LMD. He has a Rolodex, that ancient rotating index card holder that contains the names of people we should not forget. Unusually, my friend’s Rolodex is is not made of card stock. Instead, it is deep inside his head, tucked away in his brain’s memory. My friend performs hourlong daily prayer walks, during which he draws out from his Rolodex memory the list of those he intends to pray for. I’ve accompanied him on those walks; he never runs out of names.

Quite by accident, I recently tumbled across another kindred LMD spirit. A neighbor’s father had stopped by our house for a quick visit. Upon exiting, he spun around, and, quick as a wasp sting, he pulled a folded, creased paper from the satchel slung over his shoulder and presented it to me as a “thank you” gesture. Across the top, he had hand-scrawled “Luciano Pavarotti (1935-2007)”. Below, numbered and annotated, he had listed dozens of the titles of opera singer Pavarotti’s recordings, jamming the paper’s full width. When I spied “Nessus Dorma,” it triggered my mouth to snap open, a mouse trap triggered in reverse. With our next full breath, my visiting neighbor and I struck out boldly in unison, bellowing our own unrehearsed tenor-voiced version of the song. When we ran out of words, we continued, ad libbing our “la-la-la” arrangement. What had just happened? Two list-makers had discovered one another’s orbits.

Some lists reflect the view at 30,000 feet, ordering the world in widescreen gorgeous IMAX clarity. The valued lives of people, the things and activities of life claim their places within this world view, the kind of list with impressive perspective and purpose. Other lists are born in the sediment, the grime of the mundane, each element consisting of equal, uninspiring weight. They offer neither clarity, inspiration nor purpose. They are the most forgettable sorts of lists.

The lists we make reflect the values of those who create the list. Whether Patton’s request for battle victory, obligatory notes ordering facts and knowledge, prayer lists for beloved family and friends, or the splurge of capturing beauty for pure joy, we are all list makers. If well compiled, they can help to keep our heads on straight, our hearts aligned, and our walk upright.

Holding On to Memories

Holding on to Memories.

I don’t know what’s going on in grandson Linus’s head. The dump trucks, the jungle gym, the soft, cushiony wood chips all conspire to create a place in his Thought World that he might play back hundreds of times, spanning many decades. It could be the beginning of a warm, embracing memory.

Memories. Some are so powerful, others so fleeting.

My earliest memory is sitting at a stainless steel dinette set in our kitchen. It was lunch time, and my high chair seat was pulled close. As she navigated the spoon toward my closed mouth, my mother teased me to open up.

“Here comes a car. Open the garage door! Here come the cows! Open the barn door! Come on! Here comes a plane, coming in for a landing!”

I remember that. The chrome chair legs, the red vinyl cushions, the white plastic table top with abstract grey squiggles. Like yesterday.

But ask me what I did last weekend. I’m clueless.

Memories are weird that way.

One time I caught myself in the garage, in my underwear, carrying a flyswatter. And I asked myself, “What am I supposed to be doing in the garage in my underwear with a flyswatter?’ Never came up with the answer.

Don’t tell me it’s never happened to you. I won’t believe you.

This week I heard a riveting news story. Researchers are discovering that as we age, two particular brain waves get out of synchronization when we sleep. Not by much. By milliseconds. But those milliseconds are critical to long term memory. Without this highly coordinated fleeting brain wave dance, the memories get lost. Short term memories never have a chance to be converted into long term memory.

They will not make the trip from short-term ephemeral experience into permanent, vivid long-term permanence. Access to that memory fades away.

I wish I could remember everything I once knew. I wish I could recall everything that I once experienced. I’d be the most brilliant and interesting person on the block.

But it sounds like that’s not going to happen.

That’s why we need photographs and journals to help remind us of the short-term stuff that lost its way.

More than that, that’s why we need our friends, so we can re-live the good times together.

Window Dust Memories

It’s Sunday, and the sun’s rays heap onto the coffee table. There would have been more rays, but the grit from the long-procrastinated window washing routine blocks them. In their place, the desert dust captures recent history, plastered to the glass and screen. The dust grasps tight the Yule days packed with expectation and the celebrated joy with family. It holds savored evening chats around the table. It’s soaked with laughter, forming a joyous rivulet streaking down the glass. The dust settles quietly, gathering peacefully, day after day. Soon I’ll clean the glass, making way for new layers of dust, and new dust, like new Sunday mornings, will return.

A House in Underwear

The gigantic lettering on the white background should say Hanes instead of Lowe’s. The house has been caught in its underwear. But a house is neither a plumber, stooped to do his job while displaying three inches of peek-a-boo underwear, nor is it the slouched and sloppy wannabe gang banger with his barely-hanging-on undies. Typically, one doesn’t see what’s beneath a house’s siding, its protective exterior veneer.

In this case, a contractor has surgically removed the house’s damaged skin. Over time, it succumbed to dry rot, which gradually ate away the wood siding like a cancer. The disclosed vulnerability invited the appetites of hyena-like termite invaders, patiently awaiting their opportunistic feast.

The house, which we entrust to shelter us, is now in its most vulnerable state. Without outside protection, the Lowes underwear merely hides its shame against total indignity.

In a few short weeks, the house will again be fully clothed in new, high-tech siding, boasting new energy-efficient rebate-worthy windows throughout and upgraded air conditioners surgically implanted into the walls instead of crazily hanging onto window frames. The foliage, trimmed back to the extreme for this reconstructive surgery, will recover and bloom, calling home the temporarily displaced honeybees and hummingbirds. Soon, it will stand out as the most gleaming house on the street.

And I will be proud because this house belongs to me.

One day, inevitably, I will move on to my Permanent Home, and this house will no longer belong to me. The new owners will have no memory of its kindly, welcoming days of service, providing lodging for my guests. Nor will they recall the rowdy noise of laughter, the boisterous joy of holidays, and even the occasional weeping, all of which left their indelible marks within its walls. They will know nothing of the hospitality of its front yard—the children’s Slip ‘n’ Slide gatherings, and later, for those same children, the wedding receptions.

The blueprints will tell the new owners it is the same house, but it really won’t quite be the same house for them.

They will have missed this parental-like connection; they will not have seen the house at its most vulnerable, standing in its Lowes underwear, with the labels showing. They will not know of our efforts to save her from decay.

For each of us, the place we call home harbors significant events and memories of our lives, secreting them from others, selfishly enshrining them as our own private treasures.