Memory is a photograph book that you are the only editor of - so choose the happy ones to keep and you will be all the healthier for it.
It is a memory of such intense infusion, of feelings of happiness, that it has become both the rose blossomed park and the aged oak bench in my soul.
I choose the most perfect memory of my father and cling to it. I choose it because in that moment he was the person he should have been, would have been, had it not been for the stress of life. In that snapshot his unwarped personality was something so golden and sacred I want to keep it forever. Like an old movie reel I can play it at will, 1979, on the back lawn of our old house. He's laughing, relaxed after mowing the lawn. He asks me if I want an aeroplane ride and of course I do, what four year old doesn't? In moments he has my right wrist and ankle. He spins like a shot-putter, but he never lets go. The garden turns into a green blur, I'm flying- flying until he can spin no more. The memory has no smells or weather, other than a lack of rain. The garden is in fine detail: the crab apple tree, the rhododendron bush, the weeds in the flower beds. But the finest detail is his face, creased with love and my joy- not only for the ride but for being with him, for being with my Dad.
In the gardens I am greeted by the aroma of the roses. Between the neat beds of crimson bloom the fragrance is a time machine, granting me a fleeting visit to my grandfather's front yard. It was the envy of the neighbourhood in that sleepy retirement town, but how he and my grandmother loved it. To walk there was to be bathed in heady perfume. I would run between the beds, small shiny shoes over the petaled ground. In my mind it was confetti from the summer carnival and I was the princess again. The transitory evocation ends with passing strangers in loud conversation, landing me back in the present day. My shoes are dull and I no longer dream of ball gowns and princes...
The grass has that bluish tinge I associate with the seaside, it's coarse and tough, but I love it more than the tame grass of the suburban yards. I prefer the wild look, it's free, untamed. If I were a painter I'd sit with an easel and attempt to do it justice. But instead I just let it make an impression on my memory, I want to recall everything from the soft hue to the way the stalks are made stronger with their intertwined fibres.
The puddles that lie dark on the tarmac are as good as those in The Magician's Nephew, but instead of transporting me to a new fantastical land, they take me back to that summer storm when Ben first told me how he felt. Those drops weren't just magical, they were divine. Each one washed away an unseen pain, a doubt, an angst. For the time our lips were locked together the world itself ceased to exist, blurred and indistinct as a wet painting left out in the torrent that fell from the dark cloud above. When we pulled back his eyes were like every fantasy I'd ever had of him, every moment I had wished could exist between the two of us. The kiss, the look, a stolen moment that could have just washed away but instead was set, colour-fast, indelible.
Memories that comfort, that bring a smile from your bones that radiates through your skin, these are the ones to cherish and keep alive.