Memory

40 years and memory is what is left. Mementos are gone, save the baby scissors and the brownie pan, items with which to bury me. If I wanted to be buried. More likely, they’ll both eventually be scrap metal, tossed along with most of the other stuff in my life, save the couple of things that might hold value for my own children. I wonder what those things will be. They can’t be chosen, as I believe they are chosen for us, wherever our memories might find their home.

How many other treasures – carried through a life, through a war, through a migration – make it through to the next generation. The importance has little to do with the memento and everything to do with the memories they trigger. The memories they house. Years ago, I had all of my good jewelry stolen, valuable in dollars, yes, but also rich in meaning, carrying with each piece the giver, a story, a history that only I could appreciate, only I could remember. I was devastated at first, until I realized the value was really in the memories themselves, and I’ve kept those. They couldn’t be stolen. Not yet anyway. Not by that thief.

The baby scissors bring me straight back to my parents’ bedroom, my mother’s side of the double dresser with the full-width mirror, the cluttered top, the glass tray filled with perfumes, and the corner pocket in the top drawer. On the left-hand side. Holding a few coins, a small brightly-hued Avon lipstick sample, and the baby scissors. They’ve been with me since I moved away at 21 years old. They’ve been with me during every move, during most of my travels, and no matter where I’ve been, they’ve brought with them my memories. They ground me. They hold for me a history and a feeling of home. They keep my mother close. Even now, 40 years later when so much of my memory seems faded and far away, the baby scissors fill me up.

The metal brownie pan is another story all together. It holds the memories of every church bazaar, every elementary-school bake sale, every late-night munchie marathon through the travels of teenager hood. The knife marks traversing the bottom create a map of my life, the pan still well-loved, often-used, and as nondescript as every other pan in my kitchen, save for it’s heft both in weight and in memory.

We keep things for a reason, carrying them through our lives only to be left behind inevitably as we pass on to the next adventure. I do wonder where those memory holders go, what they next become and whether remnants of the memories carry through. 

My mom died shortly after Thanksgiving, 40 years next week. Recently, my sister and I were talking about that year, and we realized our memories of time were wrong – off by days – but the same. It jarred me a bit. But I realized that memories, like mementos, are uniquely ours. They hold exactly what we need.