We talked that afternoon at Sandy Point of memory and watched a perfect storm build on the horizon. We are all experts in our own memories, but as curators, we are, at best, unreliable; at worst, malicious. The problem, we said, is selectivity or, perhaps, subjectivity.
History is a rocky, internal shore, where every word, thought and deed begs collecting. We pick one up like a pebble, judge its color, its smoothness, its weight. Perhaps it lacks some sense of heft or glitter or purpose, so we discard it, often without realizing it’s gone. Or perhaps, when the sun hits it just right, we notice its lovely purple vein and clutch it tighter. We thumb its smooth side and ignore the stippled roughness on the other. This one, we decide, we will keep.
We tuck these souvenirs in our pockets to warm them. Missing their touch, we pull them out, and turn them over and over in our palms, adding our own friction to the forces that will shape these artifacts into tomorrow’s moons. This is memory: the endless choice of which moments to polish and which to skip across the water.
We talked that afternoon of memory, but what, I wonder, did we take with us?
We may remember the call-and-response of the flies biting at our ankles and the hissing of repellents filling the air, adding meter to our lesson, or the shifting of the shade from the trees and chairs in the sand, making reverse sunflowers of us all.
The approach of the storm—did we all see the sky roil and stain?
Did our knees all weaken at the sirens and the shrieks from the phones in our hands?
Did we race across the whipping grass toward sturdier protection, or did we remain at the picnic shelter, laughing at those who fled?
Do we all remember the squealing of children at the pavilion and the jigging of their counselors, their efforts to entertain and distract their charges both comforting and irritating?
Did we all flinch at the tridents of lightning over the limbs of the trees and the rasping of rain against our legs?
As the storm waned, did we bless the blanching of the clouds and the sweetness of the air—did we all see the ship?
Did it truly rise from the mist beyond the point? Did we all, for a moment, think we could just see on its shrouded deck the figures of Billy and Bobby, Murph and Bugsy, Alfred Pierre and Sully, the lost crew of the Andrea Gail? Did we all send a prayer for safe travels across the water?
We talked that afternoon at Sandy Point of memory; we shared the same minutes. In the years to come, we will choose what to cherish or to discard, what we will polish, and what will endure.
There were flies; there was a storm; there was a ship. And there was the sea.