Is it too late to love who we were,
where we have been,
and from whence we came?
This is my final Flash-Memoir. For the time being and in this format, at least.
When this entry is complete, I will have recorded 60 life snapshots in four years. It all began with this intention in 2017:
January 1st. A good day to begin, again. My new blog of “Flash-Memoirs” is dedicated to my children, Chelsea and Dylan, to whom stories are as ever-present as air. The pieces will come in no particular order and with no master plan, only with the desire to share the slivers of stories within my grasp, and so extend them into the world and through time.
I have recorded myriad images, histories, and memories spanning my Irish roots, my nuclear and extended family, some of the places I have traveled, and of some of the places I am from. I sometimes tired of the effort and once remarked to Chelsea that I wasn’t sure it was worth it. What value were the “snapshots” really adding to anything?
“They create context,” she replied in her simple, insightful manner.
Ah, yes, context. Without that, where would we be?
I was often writing about others, but was seeking a place for myself and I began to discern the arcing spiral of my life. From [photo collage] embarrassed (at my outdoor 6th birthday party) to mischievous (with two “plug” quarters), from devastated (post-divorce) to elevated (with a good friend in the woods). And so life goes …
In “Good Prose,” Tracy Kidder shares that Pacifique, a refugee from an African country beset by civil war, used writing to manage “involuntary memories …the gusts of memory that could come at any time.”
By writing about a memory Pacifique said, he was taking it into his hands and “could control it and make it beautiful.”
The 60 entries began as a gift to others and have also become a gift to myself. Not only for what’s been written but for the knowledge that no matter what life might bring, there will come a time when I can take it in hand and make it beautiful.
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