Losing a good memory is a bane, and often something we just don’t seem to be able to control. Time, change, growing in undetermined patterns takes care of that. Getting the handle on a ‘whoever’ who had some impact on who we were, are and become is one of those things that can be elusive to a point but not willingly forgotten. I don’t want that. It’s a keep memory that doesn’t have enough space on my personal memory chip. The inquiry is, how do I bring it back?
It requires ignition. Something has to be there, implanted in someplace we haven’t looked or even thought to investigate. It needs to show up somewhere. And this one did. I don’t remember where, but perhaps she can remind me how she came back from merely an unclickable icon that I wished was more, into something that rather resembled a full screen shot.
We never dated. Not sure it crossed either wavelength, although my interpretation of what her mind was engaging is only conjecture. (We did hang out at the senior picnic). It’s just the vision, as clear as the moment of her first reflection in my retinas, one of something unmatched, more unique than anything I am unable to compare it to. There was that ARAMCO connection our fathers and uncles shared, but I’m not sure we knew it then.
I don’t know if she carried the awareness, but she had the most unassuming elegance of anyone I’ve ever known. I saw it immediately. No arrogance, no ego, no untouchable sophistication, just a natural elegance. Her stride, the motion of her arms as they gently moved with her walk, the simplicity of how she put me at ease and a voice as gentle as spring’s first warming breeze, I was stricken. I didn’t know what this was. I didn’t recognize it as love, and it wasn’t infatuation, and who she was, I would guess, wouldn’t allow that anyway. Was it mysterious? That, I can’t identify, but it didn’t feel that way. I don’t know the feeling. I still don’t pretend to easily recognize it. I’ve never seen or felt it elsewhere, at least not in the memory banks of this one of my lifetimes. Oh. And with it, she carried around a very obvious and unassuming intelligence.
Somehow or other, as much as I would like to say ‘we refound each other’, I suspect that is not the case. ‘Refinding’ might assume a more complicated relationship. Not necessarily the direction I am meaning to imply. Not pining, not longing for the love I missed. More like; the modern information age allowed me to call up the encounters of a gentle memory. A reunion of twelfth grade mis memories brought her back. I like to believe I initiated the encounter and all the recollections that rediscovery entertained. (Yeah, right!) There she was, like the rest of us, older, now full of life’s experiences, but just as completely and subtly elegant as the first time I saw her.
Time tugs the ropes we’ve tied to so many parts of life. We are directed in directions, living with our experience and the events that have towed us to where we are at this spot in the time continuum. Memories pop up, some with the impact of a toy bubble bottle, others with the subtlety of an over loaded pot of science experiments. Which is this? A question not easily responded to. We now meet with no more than a cup of coffee and a large table of conversation, filling in years of the things that happened, and surprisingly, actually caring. The elegance persists. But the question of what it was, and still is, that makes my mind put her in the feelings category memory files she slides into, is still the question I can’t answer. So, as indicated, it’s on to the next cup of coffee somewhere down the avenue. I wish I knew what it was? Or do I? If it is currently an unknown, then finding out might be groovy.
yobech505 