While You Were Musing

After posting that little tidbit about memories, it got me to thinking. Memories are one of those elusive things. They can pop up unexpected with a few notes of a song or a brief scent floating on the air in a crowded theater. They can be something that lives inside of you that won't leave you alone and haunts you, in the case of a bad memory. It can effect your whole life... for years. I know. It did.

It can be happy, triggered by a holiday or a movie re-running on HBO in the dead of night. A child may laugh and you suddenly are transported to a time when your children were small and giggling came easier. It can be a favorite food. For me, the combination of a cup of cocoa (yes, Em, the real stuff) and a piece of buttered toast will take me back to being four-years-old and sitting in my grandmothers' kitchen. A train whistle will remind me of dark nights sitting on the stair landing next to a small window and watching the trains go by across the block.

Sometimes you have to dig for a memory. It can be a good one, but it's gotten stuck behind the everyday this-is-why-I-make-lists stuff. I've always been a list maker, notetaker. People ask me why. I say, my brain only holds so much information. If I make a list then I can remember one thing; where I put the list. I don't have to remember all the things that are on the list! I make grocery lists and lists of things to do and songs I hear I like and blog thoughts. Recently, they have been memory lists. Things I want to share. I want to write down. Things I don't want to lose.

Bear with me. These may pop out from time to time. It's all part of the process. Besides. It's my blog, remember? I make the rules... you just have to put up with them. Or leave. Whatever. I hope you stay. I hope you find something in my memories that spark one of your own. Good, bad or indifferent. Of course, the bad ones will probably be over on that other place... 'cause that is where they belong. Don't worry. I have lots of happy ones, too...