A couple of months ago, when visiting my mama and step-father, I loaded a rectangular, wooden box into my trunk. This tiny trunk contained treasures I planned to use to create a memory book for my mama. I’d read an article written by a daughter who did this for her mother who had Alzheimer’s and she discovered it was one way to connect when conversations were no longer a part of their shared vocabulary.
When I got home and lifted the latch of the box, the memories floated up –many made from the days before I was even born. Memories, encased in photos, grouped and tucked into specific recycled manila envelopes, labeled in my mother’s beautiful handwriting: Pam-Greg-Mark-Milton-Family-Friends. (My mother was nothing if not organized, neat and tidy). On my kitchen table, moments in time, captured in still shots, spread out before me.
In this particular moment in time, I am seven years old (so says the writing on the back of the photo). My mama is next to me with the photographer’s lens at our backs. We stand in the foamy waters of the Pacific Ocean near Santa Barbara. I am bent over, hands in the frigid waters, wearing light blue and white striped pedal pushers. I am shirtless. My mother stands next to me, in an olive colored Sweater, her dark plaid pants pushed up to mid-calf. Her posture is protective, leaning towards me, a towel or perhaps my shirt in her arms.
It is my first time at the ocean. I am enthralled with its vastness. Entranced by the ebb and flow of the turquoise water laced with its foamy whiteness. The cold numbs my feet as they sink into the soft dark sand.
What does she see, my mama, as she gazes out over the endless vista? Does something deep inside her sense that eventually her life will unfurl like a tidal wave, leaving her to stand on shifting sands? Does she know that her memory will ebb and flow like the tides, eventually bobbing up and down like a piece of driftwood carried far out to sea?
My mama
What will she see now as her hands turns the pages of this memory book? Will she be able to sift through photos and memories and land on something solid? Something familiar? Or have these images moved to a distant place in the horizon?
Building on the Sand (by Bonnie Thurston)
At the outset one is told
to construct the edifice of self
with the best possible material,
great blocks hewn
from the cultural rock.
One builds her tower
to reach toward heaven
until, perhaps halfway
(if she is fortunate),
she understands
this building is illusion,
building on sand.
Then begins the costly
and liberating work
of deconstruction,
breaking the large,
imposing pediment
into small, smooth stones
to skip across life’s surface,
send out ripples
towards concentric infinity
before sinking into the depths
where pearls lie
building on sand.
Always Mercy,
Pamela
