“I wanted to take a photo of his face just then. That boyish grin. That look of love, of contentedness. Couldn t he see? We didn t need children to complete us. We were already complete. I had my flowers and plants, and he had his writing. Wasn t that enough? Didn t he love the ebb and flow of our life together just as it was? The way I d race home for dinner with a basket brimming with vegetables from the market or a handful of herbs from a garden project, eager to read the pages he d written that day. Didn t he love, as I did, the quiet mornings we spent in our garden, sipping espresso and discussing our latest venture to a flea market in Queens or an antiques shop in Connecticut? Once we carted an enormous painted dresser to a taping of Antiques Roadshow only to find that the piece was made in China. I grinned at the memory.”
“She misses this, and other things, moments. Scenes and moments.”
“Christstollen. I can shake away thoughts of favorite gifts and trips to Oma s house and building snowmen with Santa hats every Christmas Eve, as long as enough snow covered the ground. But my mother s stollen won t fall off as easily. She made it for my father; he ate the first piece with cream cheese at breakfast while I had bacon and chocolate chip pancakes and my mother drank her special amaretto tea. The recipe is there, tucked in her recipe box, the index card translucent in places from butter stains. I hold it in my hand, considering, reading the ingredients and pawing through the cupboards and pantry. We have raisins and a bag of dried cranberries from last year s Christmas baking. There s a wrinkled orange in the fruit bin, a couple plastic packets of lemon juice that came with one of my father s fish and chips take-out orders. No marzipan, almonds, candied fruit, or mace. I ll be up all night. It s too much effort. But the card won t seem to leave my hand. So I start, soaking the fruit and preparing the sponge.”
“Nevrátil som sa. Nebola to prvá ani najväčšia chyba v mojom živote, a navyše som sa bál, že sa dozviem priveľa a môj Thomas Bernhard sa zosype ako domček z karát.”
“Some of my favorite memories are of falling asleep.”
“Nostalgia an excuse not to live, kills us all in the end.”
“That s the trouble with living things. Don t last very long. Kittens one day, old cats the next. And then just memories. And the memories fade and blend and smudge together…”
“Memories are like the heart; you mustn’t ask too much of them. Just let them get on quietly with their schooling.”
“The thing about memories was, you never could control when they came up again.”
“Depression years come back to me now as the happy times, even though we were all struggling. We were happy and didn t know it.”
“...-smells and sounds I d grown up with and known every year of my life until then but that had suddenly turned on me and acquired an inflection forever coloured by the events of the summer.”
“Take a moment in between breaths to let yourself see what s left to be seen, all the places you ve been. Your old haunts. I pass by them every day, and after all these years I ll find myself wondering if they re just facades, like the saloon fronts and gun shops of an old ghost town set. As if I can poke my head inside the doors in the light of day and see nothing but framed out rooms and sandy floors, existing for no other reason than to give structure to who I used to be.”
“Hospice care? No, you must mean Frisbee game. Because there s no way my brother and I aren t outside right now playing Frisbee in the middlle of the street in the middle of summer and there are weird bugs everywhere no matter how much bug spray we put on ourselves and our mom is coming out to tell us for the third and final time, C mon inside kids, it s getting dark.”
“Ich frage mich, ob die Erinnerungen für uns Menschen nicht der Kraftstoff sind, von dem wir leben? Ob diese Erinnerungen wirklich wichtig sind oder nicht, ist für das Weiterleben nicht von Bedeutung. Sie sind nur der Brennstoff.”
“Hold on to and cherish even the smallest of moments... you may not know it yet, but years from now when you look back... they could become one of your biggest memories!”
“Those memories were still there, and tonight, he sat searching for them, just like always, grabbing at moonbeams. Every once in a while he would catch one and take a ride, and it was like magic.”
“Memory is permanent and life s encounters, transient. - Vindication Across Time”