Memory is the treasure house of the mind

A mild form of insanity took over yesterday making us decide to drive into town to visit Costco. Imagine… 3 days before Christmas and every single person that has taken time off work was cramming their way through the gaping doors. We stuck close together as we never would have found each other among the hordes of cranky shoppers. The crazy thing – we only needed a few groceries! (although I did have my hand on the little vacuum that I want – someday…)

After Costco we went to Home Outfitters which had good sales, but we wisely kept our wallets in our pockets – not so with Home Depot. We left with some plastic bins to help when we start to tackle the basement. I have a thing for plastic bins… I have them in all shapes and sizes, from small ones just big enough for a tube of toothpaste to giant ones filled with all manner of junk, all ready to be employed when a moment of organizing mania strikes. I like things neatly contained, although you wouldn’t know it from our house!

I was emailing my niece this morning about the memory that is triggered by cicadas. I am 6 or 7 sitting on the lawn at my grandfather’s place in Kelowna. The grass is dry from the hot summer sun, the towering pine trees seem to crackle as they march down the steep slope towards the lake. The lake is way below us – too far to walk – we are probably a km above it in the mountain. The smell of pine and grass is imbedded in my memory. I had to go through my file of hundreds of scanned slides to find a picture, but they don’t seem adequate.

While I was browsing through the slides (1350 of them!), I ran across a photo of my little sister Kirsten and I standing together wearing matching Christmas dresses. I don’t know if you’ve seen the photo that is floating around the internet of two little girls, approximately the same as as Kirsten and I were, the older one scowling while the younger one shows her pleasure at matching her older sister. The caption for both girls is “I’m wearing the same dress as my sister”. I almost fell off my chair laughing when I saw this one of us! Oh my, how times change – now I’d be pleased just to be near enough to her to have a matching outfit. In fact, we bought matching dresses the last time they were here – I decided on mine after she bought hers! We didn’t actually wear them at the same time, but still there was a connection to each other.

 

Memory is the treasure house of the mind wherein the monuments thereof are kept and preserved. ~Thomas Fuller