Day 13. Memory

“Memory” 6×6, oil on canvas, framed

I wasn’t sure how to finish my painting today, and when I started adding little swipes of paint in rows, it felt like I was counting, like a person lost in the wild marking the days by carving lines into the trunk of a tree

Today I am invoking the power of memory which seems to disrupt the steady march of time. My youngest (whom I have known the longest) is twelve, the oldest grown, and the middle on his way to college in a few short months. Since I didn’t know my stepsons as babies or small children, all the cliches about it going by too fast feel particularly poignant. I’m as much the “us” and “we” of this poem as I am the older women in line at the grocery store that start and end it.

Memory

The older women in line

At the grocery store, watching us wrestle a toddler, say:

Walk through this life wide-eyed (and tired)

Because

          It goes by fast

          If you blink you’ll miss it

As though it were even possible

To really watch the seed grow

Instead we saw the first green

Pushing up from the soil in a plastic cup

Then taller, eventually a leaf waving to us

Then another

Every change, though expected, a surprise

The image of your small face,

Wild with excitement

Holding your sprouted bean like a trophy

Comes dashing into view

Because of course they were right–

Our lives exist on hummingbird’s wings 

Darting from one shining thing to the next

Until a memory holds us in a hover

Maybe they, with their quiet carts

Really mean that after the long days

And the too-short years 

When you undoubtedly wonder where it all went

You’ll have the time to savor 

What then you could not have possibly.