So when I shared the book “The Burning House” with my dad the day before yesterday, he shared an interesting story that I don’t remember hearing before. He and Sonja are being visited this weekend by a treasured family friend, Willie Nour, and his partner Guy. This, of course, set off a round of thorough cleaning, although I use the term rather loosely . . . since their condo is always immaculate and cleaning for a guest is done with a feather duster while for Kathy and me, cleaning for a guest involves a steam shovel and a HazMat team.
Anyway, one of the things they wanted to do was dust the two hutches in the dining room where they each keep lovely and delicate keepsakes – the sort of things that mean a lot and yet you can sort of forget about until there’s some reason to give them a close look. For my dad, this round of painstaking dusting was a chance to hold some of these beautiful things again and remember where they came from or the source of their meaning.
Showing my dad “The Burning House” book reminded him of one of the most beautiful and precious things encased in that hutch . . . a tiny Wedgwood cup and saucer, dusty blue and ivory, from Denmark. My dad bought this back while he was a young teacher for a year in Rinbach, Germany back in the mid 1950’s. One of the things that my Grandmother Gunda lost in that terrible fire was all of her gorgeous Wedgwood china – a staggering loss on all kinds of levels. My dad was aware of that, so when he saw Wedgwood in a store, he decided to buy some for his mother. Unfortunately, all he could possibly afford on his very modest salary was this single cup and saucer- but I can well imagine how deeply moved and profoundly grateful she surely must have been to get a gift like that.
Oddly enough, my dad said that if the whole “house burning down” scenario were to happen to him again, he’s actually pretty sure that he wouldn’t take the time to open up that hutch and retrieve that cup and saucer- or his mother’s Hummel figurines- or probably anything else carefully encased in there. It’s not so much the objects themselves that are precious to him, but rather the memories associated with them. He’s right, of course- but I think a lot of us with especially “crowded” lives really need those actual objects in hand for those memories to fully come alive. It’s the same reason why one might feel a burning hunger to head back to your hometown for an overdue visit. At least for me, there is nothing like actually walking those streets or those school hallways to create an avalanche of vivid memories. Left just to my own imagination, I tend to keep retrieving the same old memories again and again. But it’s interesting how tangible objects or places can energize our memories and allow us to call up memories long forgotten- the old “smell-of-cookies-baking-in-the-kitchen” thing.
I guess I’m thinking about memory a lot these days because I happen to have an adult voice student whose memory is rapidly eroding, practically by the day. She can’t remember the simplest words like “cassette tape” – and the other day when she called to schedule her next voice lesson, she couldn’t even come up with the word “lesson.” She ended up asking me “when do you want me to come to your house for one of those things where I sing for you.” She often does not remember my name anymore, and no longer makes any references whatsoever to what’s going on in the world or to anything going on outside of her immediate sphere. (At her last lesson, I asked her if she had voted in the hugely controversial recall election – and she had absolutely no idea what I was talking about.) But in her lessons, I am sure she is at her sharpest, mentally- and when it comes to understanding and acting on my input, like dropping her jaw on the high notes or singing with a crescendo in a particular phrase, she is sharp as a tack. But I am certain that she does not know who the president of the United States is, or what month of the year it is. But it’s one of the reasons why I keep giving her lessons- because there is something about singing and something about music that seems to enliven her ailing mind, at least for a few minutes each week. And if/when my disorganized distractedness ever goes from irritating or amusing to debilitating and dangerous, I can only hope that music will be a similar sort of lifeline for me.
In the meantime, let’s all be grateful for the gift of memories— and for whatever helps keep us tethered to them.
pictured above: This is a photo of my dad’s hutch, and the aforementioned Wedgwood pieces are front and center.