Memory Trinkets

One of my favorite movies is "While You Were Sleeping". It's just a fun romantic comedy. There is a scene in the movie where a father is sitting at the dining table eating breakfast and enjoying his morning paper. His adult son joins him. Dad makes a comment something like this: “Son, did you ever have one of those moments when everything just seems great. Everyone is healthy and happy. You just wish you could stop time.” The son proceeds to tell him that this is not one of those moments and makes the confession that he wants to drop out of the family business. I have always remembered this scene. Like this father, I have had those moments often in my life when I want to stop time and enjoy. Recently, on a Saturday afternoon, my family somehow ended up around our bed. Shanon was kneeling by the bed with his laptop opened; looking up information about a comic book Talon is interested in. Terrin was standing on the bed, carefully falling down then celebrating as if he had just performed a back flip. Talon was bouncing back and forth from Terrin to his dad, really interested in both activities. (Given the chance, Talon would have tried the back flip.) I was laying on the outer edge of the bed watching my family. This calm, happy moment lasted long enough that I was able to say a quick prayer for each of them; praying specifically for things happening in each of their lives and for our family as a whole. I even prayed that our family would be this close for many years to come; that we would feel this ease with each other to be our own person. I had one of those moments of clarity about priorities and responsibilities; shutting out the rest of the world and its woes.

Back in 1987, my friend, Marlette called me on my wedding day. She told me to take a break from the preparations -- to stop and really feel my emotions so that at any given time I could recall that moment, that day -- and smile. I have remembered her advice often in my life. I have a special compartment in my head with all of these moments stored like a secret trinket box. This particular Saturday afternoon was one of those moments that I will carry and bring out when I need it.

Memory is a funny thing. As I write about “While You Were Sleeping”, I think of the first time I saw it in a movie theater in Arlington, Texas. I was married, but, I was not a mother. As my single, thirty something friend, Sonya and I drove home that night; she sighed and said “Why can’t I find someone like that?” It was one of those moments that I pressed into a trinket and placed in my box. This souvenir was not an intentional addition to the box; it was like a premonition of change. I was honored to be in the wedding party not all that long after girl’s night at the movie. Sonya now and has two great little boys, she even had kids before I did. When I think of her, that movie trinket comes out of the box and puts me back in her car, my heart aching for the future my friend longed for.

Sometimes those charms pop out of our trinket box and catch us off guard. We hear a song, taste a pie or smell cologne that sends one of those metal shards spinning through our brain. I can smell Dove soap or Charlie cologne, and I am in my Granny Johnson’s house. I can hear a rooster crow, and I am in the middle bedroom at Grandmommie and Granddaddy’s house, the curtains blowing in the breeze, bacon cooking in the kitchen while Willard Scott give the daily report on the radio. At church on Sunday, Tara sat behind me with her newborn baby. One coo and I could swear I felt my milk come in. Or, my friend, Becki, innocently going to the hospital to visit her Grandmother is thrown back to a time in July, 2008 when she spent several emotional weeks in that very place, wondering if the motorcycle accident would leave her a widow and single mother, or a wife and mother fighting to keep her family healthy and happy under impossible circumstances. The ordeal is not over. The fight is still on. Becki has worked so constantly and so determined that she never took the time to feel the emotion. But, her box opened and that ghost charm brought it all back like a string she tied around her finger, reminding her to cry.

We can choose to store away trinkets of moments we want to remember. Special moments that we never want to forget. Also, I believe the Holy Spirit makes deposits into our trinket box and he will pull them out for us when we need to see them. Do I believe he is my every thought and memory? No. However, sometimes we need to remember, to forgive or to just feel the presence of God.