Memory

I wrote a post a couple days ago where I just listed a bunch of things that were beautiful to me. One of them was memory. Sometimes I read about (in People magazine!) someone who has no memory at all, and I always feel so sad for them. Memory is what keeps me going at times. I had to fill out this form for Jay tonight and it had a space on it for "in case of emergency" and I wanted to put my dad. Silly. I thought, well that's who to notify. But, as I've mentioned before, I do not have his phone number anymore.

I must make my father out to be a saint sometimes. He wasn't, of course. He was a good man; honest and kind and salt of the earth. But he also did things that weren't so good. Once, when I was maybe ten, we were at a golf tournament. Me, my mom and my dad. It was toward evening and we were waiting for all the results to come in. Now, my dad was not a heavy drinker. My parents never had drinks when it was just the two of them. They'd have a couple bourbons when they went out with friends but nothing too extreme. This one night though, at the clubhouse, in a town about 90 minutes from where we lived, my dad had eight Bloody Mary's. I know this because my mom asked him and he told her. I remember being mortified. I remember it was eight. I remember he slurred and wobbled. A friend of my dad's had to drive us all home. My dad was funny, as opposed to mean, but as a kid I was horribly embarrassed.

Now, as an adult myself, I like that memory. Memory reminds me of where I come from, it lets me remember my past and my parents. There were time I never thought I would live through their deaths. We were very close, the three of us, and there were certainly times I couldn't imagine myself without them. The beauty of memory is that I don't have to live without them. They are in so much that I do. I keep them in poems and stories and the way I raise Jay. I recall the past, and I can see and hear them again. Now, if I think about the night that my dad had eight Bloody Mary's, I remember being so flipping mad, but I also see it from adult eyes, and I wish I could remember what he said, on the 90 mile ride home; his friend driving the car, his wife next to him, his child staring intently out the window, and him, cracking jokes and having a good laugh.

Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we
must carry it with us or we find it not.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson