22 May 2024

Memory is such an odd thing…

…my one remaining brother and my sister and I usually text each other every day. My sister still lives on property that my grandparents left to my father. She’d put in a lovely in-ground pool some years back, but just put up new fencing around it this year. It looked so nice. I mention to Sis and Butch, “I wonder what on earth Grandma Bess and Granddaddy Chance would have thought of that!”

And so that set my mind to remembering and for some reason, I conjured up the picture of the old cat they used to have. Quite ornery, and with a damaged front foot. They called him “Hun.” Mom told me that one Thanksgiving, Grandma Bess had set out the turkey on the stairs to cool before dinner and that Hun had helped himself to a quite sizable portion!

But thinking of Hun, I had the vaguest memory of an old dog, sort of yellowish in color but running to white due to age, stretched out on his back on the back porch, wanting his tummy rubbed. And then the name came out of nowhere: Toy. I wasn’t even sure of the memory, so I just asked Butch and Sissy and they both confirmed it. Yes, they had a yellow dog named Toy. I’m guessing those animals died something like 55 to 60 years ago, and yet seemingly out of nowhere, the thought of them both came back today. Yes, memory is an odd thing.

2 comments:

Harvey Mozolak said...

Yes, and it will get odder the older you get. Somewhat frightening but also somewhat interesting, taking puzzle parts and reinserting them in a whole picture of a memory.

William Weedon said...

Harvey, there’s a poem in there…