What is a memory?

While reading a story to my students to get them thinking about writing a Memoir (yes, 3rd graders can write memoirs) I found myself getting choked up.


The story I was reading is Wilfred Gordon McDonald Partridge by Mem Fox. It is about a little boy who lives next to a "old people home" and his very best friend there is Miss Nancy Alison Delacourt Cooper (because she has four names like him). She has lost her memory and Wilfred Gordon wants to help her get it back. So he asks the other "old people" what a memory is and these are the answers he gets:

Something from long ago

Something that makes you laugh

Something warm

Something that makes you cry

Something as precious as gold

Wilfred Gordon went to his house and got items that demonstrated all those different descriptions and brought them to Miss Nancy to help her find her memory.

Sniff, Sniff. . . read the book it is much better than my description.

So I got to thinking about those descriptions and what items I would take from my life to get my memory back.

Something from long ago. . .

A rolling pin that my Grandfather gave me for my wedding. It is one of those old wooden ones and it may seem chauvinistic, but it shows that even though I didn't think my Grandfather knew me that well he really did. I love to cook and bake and he knew that. It was one of the sweetest gifts I got for our wedding.

Something that makes you laugh. . .

My puppy. She is a pug and seriously they are the funniest dogs, or at least ours is. She is the biggest princess especially now during a MN winter and J. says that is because I baby her too much.

Something warm. . .

A flower hair pin. that I bought on our honeymoon in Hawaii. Every time I come across it I can almost feel the warm weather. I have not worn it since our Honeymoon in 2004, but I keep saving it for that big anniversary trip we take someday.

Something that makes you cry. . .

One thing. . .it seems so many things make me cry these days. The latest is the changing table that my cousin gave me the summer we started TTC (2007) and I put it in the "baby room." I don't go in that room too often since it is a spare bedroom that houses my scrapbooking supplies. But, I go in there enough to see it and it always makes me sad.

Something as precious as gold. . .

My hubby J. I can't even believe how unbelievable he has been through this whole process. He should have left me a few psychotic months ago, but he didn't and that makes him as precious as gold.