Memories in Brine

‘The clock talked loud. I threw it away, it scared me what it talked”. ~Tillie Olsen, Tell Me a Riddle


I finished watching Marley and Me on TV a few minutes ago. Apart from the sudden scrabbling for paper tissues towards the end, I was reasonably stoic about this lovely tearjerker. To dog lovers like me, they really should give an advance warning sign (just like they do with PG and A ratings to general viewers) saying ‘Waterworks Just Ahead’.

It’s the last few minutes of the film. John Grogan, the chief protagonist and author sits with Marley, his tempestuous, loving and utterly mad Labrador, as he’s put to sleep, and talks to him about the life they had. Marley has travelled from barmy child-in-chief of the house to an older, wiser brother as Human Child 1, 2 & 3 are born. Time then passes in a happy haze, and the kids are now older. Marley with a loving life and his growing family is now ill, dying. Somewhere in that gentle, murmured conversation, something strikes a chord. ‘Remember when, when you came home for the first time? You were so naughty Marley. Your fear of thunderstorms, your eating up everything in the garage including the wall? There are a lot of memories in there, aren’t there, boy? Maybe you don’t remember all of them -things tend to all run into each other don’t they?’ Marley’s boot-black eyes look at John’s in a moment of complete connection and understanding. Yes, in a full, happy life, memories do tend to ‘run into one other’.

Seeing the whole movie telescope into that few minutes of a flashback between the dying dog and his human made me remember that after a while, things truly tend to run into each other. You try and remember school graduation, or the winning of an award, or the time of pure happiness holding hands, and gazing into a caldera in dreamy Santorini. But in some giant accordion press of time, incidents and anecdotes just tunnel into each other. You don’t remember timelines, exact dates and milestones. But when you do, you catch your breath; you can only remember how it made you feel.

At which point do you turn around and discover with predictably bittersweet sadness, that these are memories, and they clearly belong in your past. At which point do you notice, while you are counting the beads of day in the chain in your hand, that there are likely as many such memories behind you, as there ahead of you, and that most of the happiest ones are, in all likelihood, those from the past. At what time do you discover that infinite just got mutated and boxed, based on the pain in your knees as you ascend stairs n, or the fact that happy yawn and stretch as you awoke in the morning, is replaced by a desire to turn in for another 5 minutes, or get out of bed, feet dragging, duty bound only by a grumpy bladder or a time clock at work.

I always wondered when the ‘now’ would be a future memory and would do everything I could to hold that moment, into something that I would truly, intensely remember. The Good Old Days were in Present Tense. Sometimes I wonder if photographs are our frantic albeit futile need to preserve, freeze and stretch such moments in time. We rarely go back and revisit those photos, although it is clear that most all of them are preserved, however mixed up, in some curdled brine in our minds. We stir it up, and one or the other come up, reluctantly, and not always in great condition. There nevertheless.

There are times I long to catalogue the moments in my head. Pedestrian or otherwise, I wish I could write or record every single thing I’ve experienced. I envy bloggers, diarists, story writers who are able to experience and comment simultaneously. What a filofax to look back on, maybe embrace...

I wouldn’t mind even an old fashioned file with thoughts labelled under Love, Magic, Sad, Food, Life, and School etc. Like Miss Lemon’s much touted perfect filing system in the Poirot series, I too want to be able to docket, file, and cross reference all the wonderful things in my life. I want to be able to slide open that creaky filing cabinet , with a sense of purpose , knowing with certainty that I will find exactly what I want , and where I had kept it last .

In my head , I see that room with the warm lighting , and I see the cabinets on the left, But in the darker , smoky section in the far side of the room, I know my eyes are really quickly scanning to ensure that are enough filing cabinets to hold what is to come.

Sometimes I just don’t know.

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