For more than seven decades, I’ve been breathing on this earth. More than 36 million minutes of growing up and then growing old. Most of those moments have faded into nothing. Others remain in my memory. Why those, but not those?
I took high school Spanish for two years and remember maybe ten words. But I can tell you the song my great-uncle sang to me on the steps of my grandparents’ porch when I was six and he came back from Luxembourg. And what he was wearing while he sang it (a plain-style straight-cut suit). And the color of my dress and my stockings (both white) and my shoes (patent leather black).
I can’t tell you the current cost of a gallon of milk, but I remember my grandparents’ telephone number (TW5-5451). I recall the names of all my elementary school teachers. But only a few of my college professors.
How strange are the tricks of memory. As Mark Twain says: When I was younger, I could remember anything, whether it happened or not, but I am getting old, and soon I shall remember only the latter.
Perhaps more puzzling are those long-forgotten memories that pop up from my subconscious brain, unbidden and sometimes unwanted.
Why that? I wonder. Why now?
Just the other day, such a lost scene emerged.
On a visit to a brother, my husband and I woke early. So as not to disturb the rest of the house, we took a walk through a sleepy, little college town. There were small stirrings—dishes clinking through an open window, a woman walking a dog, a man in a bathrobe retrieving a newspaper from the end of his driveway.
We turned a corner. And across the street sat a little girl behind a table selling something. We read the sign: Rocks for Sale.
But more arresting than the kid behind a table was the old man behind the kid. He waved both arms over his head in exaggerated motions.
“Buy some!” he mouthed to us.
It was a shout without sound from a grandpa who was watching the battle of life begin—the first foray of a child he loved into entrepreneurship, into having a vision and making it happen.
We crossed the street. It was not an auspicious beginning—just an ordinary girl with rocks lined in a straight row. No geodes or quartz crystals or gemstones, just backyard rocks.
“How much is this one?” my husband asked, picking up what looked to be common sandstone.
And he bought it for a nickel.
The grandpa hadn’t said a word. The girl was on her own. But he was still there, behind her and watching for the next passerby.
After more than two decades, why has this memory come forth? And why now?
Maybe because I’m the old one waving my arms, the grandma of eight young grandkids making their ways.
And maybe because that grandpa in that sleepy town shaped me, helped chisel me into the grandma I am today.
This is a benefit of growing old—that a plethora of memories are stored away, some in deeper storage than others, just waiting.
Apple to Apple 