Musings on memories

Earlier this week I began my short story diaries in which I will update my remaining few readers on my short story collection progress. But then, a snow storm took over Texas, and after asking my boyfriend to brave the snow to pick up my brother and his dog, I was completely exhausted and just focused on staying mentally afloat. Things were fortunate for me—we had power this entire week and at worst lost water. But we’re okay now, though my writing goals and plans for the Lenten season have been pushed to the wayside. At least for this week.

What’s been on top of my mind in conversation lately is the strangeness of memories. I know I’ll remember this past week because of the panic I felt driving in the snow and the comfort later of having my brother here with his dog—a change in scenery and daily life. But other parts of my life, especially the banal, I seem to have no power on what memories stay with me and what leave me. I’m sure it’s this way for everyone, but having a grandmother with Alzheimer’s, I’m always watching out for the ways life forgets itself. I actually think I have a decent memory, but I hate that people will talk to me about books I read and I couldn’t tell you a thing of what happened. I could watch a movie a second time or read a novel, and so much of it leaves me. I remember the feeling of reading it, but not the events. Surely I should give myself a break—these are often books that I read over a decade ago, and I’ve read hundreds of books. And often when I read the books a second time it all comes back. 

But as I get older, it’s also strange to me what parts of my life I forget and other moments I remember so clearly. I remember being in kindergarten and being so quiet for my age, never wanting attention. But for some reason another classmate and I crawled across hallway to enter the classroom, and Mrs. Jacqueln scolded us both and moved my clip down for the day to the “yellow” zone for misbehaving. I remember reading Charles Bukowski as a senior in my economics class, and my teacher shouting “Bukowski! How do you know him?” I remember my first job out of college, getting Cuvee nitro cold brew coffee with my manager and feeling the caffeine shakes for hours afterwards.

There are so many moments like this. They feel monumental now because they’re all I have, but I can’t help but wonder lately of all the other little moments like this that I’ve forgotten and will never have back. Why did these moments define me? Why did my brain prioritize the seemingly banal of one conversation over another? Why do some memories still exist if I search hard for them and others are mere fiction no matter how hard someone tries to jog my memory?

It’s a strange phenomenon, and I’m sure it’s one that only grows as you get older. Forgetting makes me terribly sad, so as of late I try to save everything in as many places as possible. I take photos and videos of special things. I keep logs of everything I read and watch, and try to write reviews so I remember them better next time someone asks about it. I write down a moment of everyday in my yearly journals. And I think this all helps. I know I’m at an important moment in my life where I have fallen in love with someone, and we are nearing our next future. I want to savor all our time together, so I write it down as best I can. Often he and I lament that we can’t relive the earlier days, and I couldn’t agree more. I wish I could portal myself back to our first meeting, which I remembered vividly even before we began to date, and to our first two dates, when we felt so kidlike in our affection, so nervous. At our six month anniversary, I gave him a gift writing down all our memories in the best detail I could. But now our time blurs together more, with living together and the sameness of a year in a pandemic. I still try to preserve things, and I think I’ve realized in writing this all, that I write to preserve. I’m deeply nostalgic, and nothing makes me sadder than the loss of time, a constant known to all, but always something that seems to grieve me more than others. 

My senior year of high school, I hardly hung out with friends because I was deeply aware that it was the final year of living with my family—ever. I treasured our time together, but sometimes cried knowing one day it would pass and we’d all be gone. It was so existential, and sometimes I wonder if maybe I’m someone more sick with nostalgia, someone who maybe has a more sensitive inner ear to the passage of time, the way some people are easily seasick. I’ve always been aware of time, been obsessed with it. My first attempt at poetic writing was about this very topic. It was the first time someone complimented my work, and I was in seventh grade. I remember that. She was a track star a year older than me. I don’t remember her name, but she messaged me and said my writing was really good.

I remember that.

Even now, everyone tells me how good I am with time. Maybe it’s a gift. One time a friend asked me how long it would take to drive me from work to the auto-shop near my home. I said we’d get there at 6:08PM, and that’s when we did. I get teased for being so specific, but I think I feel the passing of time more accurately than most. It makes me punctual. It makes me sad.

Most often when I grow sad about memories and how they choose their priority—I seem to have no say in the matter—I think about time as a dimension. I imagine that scene in Donnie Darko or Interstellar, and I feel less alone in this world, because like the geography of our planet, when time is a dimension it’s something that can be traveled. All my memories exist, whether I’ve visited them recently or not. In this place, I can walk to second grade Emma or tennis-player Emma or Emma falling in love with her dream boy Emma. I can watch every moment, be in every moment, and it’s true and it’s not a figment of the ways time and memory intertwine and thwart themselves into the present perspective. There is no hindsight. Everyone is there that I love and they are always there when time is a dimension. And best of all, I am no longer plagued with the human disease of forgetting.

Oh, how I hate to forget. I hope that in writing this alone, I can preserve time again in this place on February 20, 2021. May a photo or a smell or a feeling preserve me here with these words, anchoring me back. I pray for it, I really do.

I suppose nothing makes me as spiritual or as big a believer in God than the notion that with God, time is a dimension, and in that dimension I can see everything about my life at once and never forget any of it.