Savoring Reruns

Me with my Gram, 1963

I am thankful for memories. Memories are the mental scrapbook of your life that you can pull out whenever you have a spare moment to relive them--in the grocery store line, at a stop light, at night when you can't sleep. My head is FULL of these "video books" and I visit them regularly. Memories are funny in that they evoke all of your senses and take you back in time: I am a child, having a sleepover at my Gram's. Her whole house smells like the Occur! perfume she buys from Myrtle Hanson, the door-to-door Avon Lady. Her bed is cozy and sags in the middle like a big feathered nest and I am giddy with the joy of being near her. She's wearing the slippery pink nightie I pulled from the top dresser drawer for her. I feel the wrinkled veins and heat of her hand as she pats my flannel-clad, little girl self. I hear her voice, low and soothing as she recounts stories of visiting her own grandmother in Thief River Falls. I listen, snuggled against the warm weight of her body until her even breathing turns to soft snoring. And the contentment, the love and security that I felt in those moments is mine again. It is a part of my grandmother that I have not lost. It is mine to pull out and enjoy again whenever I want. THIS is the power of Memory. What a priceless gift we've been given--the ability to travel in time, to raise the dead to life!