Sunday, November 30, 2008

Memorizing the Ordinary

I try to memorize the ordinary. A mother easily remembers the highs and lows of family life. A baby’s first smile, first steps…the bout with colic that lasted six weeks…we remember those things. We remember Scout awards, the Honor Roll, and—if she tells us—our daughter’s first crush. But in between the Christmases and the birthdays, the sprained ankles and the chicken pox, are long strings, year after year, of ordinary days filled with ordinary things.

On a February night in 1979 I sat nursing my four-month-old son. We were in the living room, the only ones awake in our old farmhouse. The clock struck midnight. I looked down at him. “He is your last baby,” I told myself. “Put this where you can find it again.”

I held my son in my left arm, cradling his head with my right hand. Snow fell outside. New milk trickled across my stomach. I felt the silk of his baby neck, and his soft hair under my lips as I kissed his head. I listened to him swallow.

Years later I resurrected that memory. The baby of the family, well fed for 17 years, was six feet tall and bench-pressing 200+ pounds. His language flew from high-tech to hard core. In his room, an amplifier was pushed to its limits, along with his siblings’ patience. Dual exhausts rumbled in the driveway.

But I’d taken a moment to impress forever an hour of infancy into my brain. That kiss on his head was as real to me as the grin I was lucky to get in passing 17 years later.

Today, in my quiet retirement from child-rearing, when the hum of the dishwasher and the gentle jingle of the dog’s collar are the only sounds I’m likely to hear on a fall evening in this old house, I close my eyes and listen hard for the sound of a vintage Camaro peeling into the driveway, and the thunderous bass of a massive, vibrating subwoofer.

I grew up in my father’s darkroom, relying on photographs to capture memories. And they often do. But when I look through the pictures I took of my children, it isn’t the lovely portraits that pull me back again and again. It’s the candids that caught them in mid-laugh or mid-leap—just doing whatever it is we do on an ordinary day…which often isn’t very much, but which can mean everything.

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

Susan, that was beautiful and a good reminder to take visual (and other sensory) snapshots of everyday things.

Helen said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Helen said...

Yes, this is a beautiful tribute to life's "ordinary" (if there truly are any of those) moments, and I loved the “Put this where you can find it again" (which I first read as a literal "Put him where you can find him again").

Indigo Bunting said...

Absolutely gorgeous post (as usual).

And can I just say that I love the word subwoofer?

crystal said...

Beautiful writing. I'm trying to remember Kermit like this - looking over mental snapshots from the past.

Anonymous said...

Dear Susan,

What a beautiful, lovely post. Thank you. The precious memories of ones children are priceless. I'll take the "ordinary" moments anytime!

Mary

Adam Byrn "Adamus" Tritt said...

Lovely and appreciated.

Reading about those moments, especially those remembered by sight, are to me lovely and fascinating. I remember everything by how it sounds, how it feels, the scent, texture, flavour as I breathe the moment in deep. If it is remembered by visual cues, it is because I described it to myself and, in the end, is remembered in words, concepts, adjectives, adverbs, verbs, nouns, prepositions but, after all, no real vision remains.

I think the trick is to find the sacred in the ordinary so each moment is sacred, each simple, common, repeated now, just as we look for the ordinary in the sacred to move that which is given to the divine into the everyday.

So thank you for this moment in the divine.

Susan said...

Thank you, everyone. I'm so glad it resonated with you.

IB, after reading your comment it occurred to me that Subwoofer might be a cool name for a dog. The right dog, of course. :-)

Helen said...

Oh yes, I love that idea. And anyone with a dog named Subwoofer would have to have a bird named Tweeter.