Lest I Forget

What a queer thing is memory: sporatic, embarrassing, ticklish, and rather jolly.

Upon reading an e-mail from a friend who recently visited a clear-watered small lake called Lempster Long Pond, I was reminded of the many times we got up at 5a.m. on a Sabbath morning in order to get to the rock at the far end by about 6, to eat breakfast there, jump in to the scrubbingly cold green-depths, and get back in time for church. And the huge snapping turtles in the swampy bay and the loons toting around their chicks on their backs, and the great blue heron balancing on one foot with great dignity in even his dangling head tassel, and Oscar the dog who we would let off onto the shore and who would swim the last bit.

Today I found my favorite pen, a very fine-pointed thing of the metallic aqua color one sometimes finds on special types of flies that crash into one's window screens on hot days; an implement that instantly guiltifies me about my pen-thieving tendencies, and yet pours me full up with the pleasure of the friendship of Keiron Hall who later presented me with my going away present--the coveted inkwell that makes one take too many notes in class because it is so delightful to write with.

When I saw the two girls headed toward me with a white "Y" shared between them originating from some ipod gadget, I squeaked and immediately remembered listening to one of my favorite Chopin Piano Concertos with my mother in a similar fashion, letting the music pump a connection into us that words would not have created quite so beautifully, and I giggled again at how I would deviously play around with the volume and skip songs and how Mum would give me a I-love-you-so-much-and-you-are-an-imp smirkle.

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Random memories are exhilarating as well as perplexing, especially when they bring into one's mind a Bible verse one read three years ago on such-and-such-a-day-when-the-sky-looked-so-green-that-one-found-ants-crawling-in-it sort of thing, or when the memory text one learned when one was six presents itself for inspection to a shocked audience of recent members. We are promised that we need never worry about the things we should say in regards to God and His glory in us-- and I suppose that it is through His sense of humor and His delight in rambuctious rememberings that He will work this out. And I can recall now quite a few such specimens.