In a Corner of the Soul, There Are Secret Memories
There are memories that remain in our minds and occasionally reappear like a small treasure as we search the nooks and crannies of our environment – a corner, a piece of paper, or a box. When we find a photo that looks like it was taken when we were as young as can be, or that now-yellowed letter from an old love. When we discover old memories from our youth…things that we left behind and forgot, but live on, deep in our memory. It’s bittersweet.
“Great mistakes leave great memories…”
– Danns Vega
I hope you get excited as I do about memories – the memories each of us have that appear from time to time to make us cry or to make us laugh.
That rose we preserved between the pages of a book reminds us of a time years ago when we still had the unmistakable innocence of a first love; that recipe book from our grandmother, who took such care to make it for us; that diary we completely forgot about that floods our mind with memories of old, good and bad.
I remember once we found my grandfather’s journal – one that he started with such fervor that he could not maintain through to the end. And so is life. I never knew my grandfather, so those written words marked, for me, a beginning and an end.
When I started to read his writings aloud, I sat, silent and absorbed in the moment as if in a movie, and I was overcome with emotion and suddenly felt as if I had traveled back in time; as if in one way or another I met my grandfather, that elderly man who looked back on his childhood and told stories of adventures he had when he was just a little boy in just the same way and with just the same words as I had heard so many times from his beloved companion in life, my grandmother.
In that moment my grandfather’s words were so powerful that I felt closer to him, despite never knowing him. In that moment it seemed that his words wanted the youngest of his grandchildren to know the grandfather they never had the fortune of knowing.
His story was so beautiful that I lost track of time and kept reading and reading…about his antics in grade school to his relationships with his loved ones…until his words fell silent…
That is when we realized that he left us too soon and, although we never could enjoy listening to his stories as we sat on his lap, his words took flight that unrepeatable afternoon… that afternoon of memories.
One may think that time and absence killed them.
But that train sold roundtrip tickets.It’s the little things that left us with a time of roses
in a corner, on a piece of paper, or in a box.Just as a thief lurks behind a door
They have you so at their mercy
like a fallen leaf that the wind drags here or there;
they smile sadly at you
and make us cry when nobody is looking.
-Joan Manuel Serrat-
Have you ever experience the mighty power our memories have to “make us cry when no one is looking…”?