Recognition, Recall and Remembering

Here I am. One year old. Note the beer bottle I was playing with near the chair.

It is said that in order to remember an experience in our lives we need to attach meaning. If we don't, our brains don't have any way to catalog the information for recall.

I've always been sensitive. Maybe that's why when I was in my late teens and early twenties I anesthetized myself with alcohol by binge drinking every weekend. I attached meaning to everything. I remember it all. Except for those weekends that is. My bad.

I have journals that date back to second grade and when I read an entry I can remember the day. I can remember the emotions, the joy, the sorrow, the embarrassment, even the location in some instances.

I remember this picture.

I know what you're saying. Uh huh. You remember that because you've seen the photo but that's not true. I remember the tree.

About fifteen years ago I was looking for artwork to hang on my living room wall. I'd seen an Ansel Adams of a tree that I liked but it wasn't quite right. I combed local art sales, trying to find the perfect painting, preferably by a budding artist ... or a starving one. I knew that I wanted a weeping willow in the mist. I wanted the light to be early morning. I'm not naive enough to think I'd find that particular scene but I was looking for a certain style of painting so that I could hire that artist to paint what I wanted. No such luck.

I'd been visiting my grandmother and asked about artists in northern Iowa. I described what I wanted. A strange smile crept across her face and she excused herself. She returned with this photo in hand.

"Is this the tree you're talking about?" she asked.

I gazed at the old black and white in silence. I wanted to yelp like Lucy Van Pelt when Schroeder finally plays a one-note Jingle Bells .... "That's it!"

My family had no other photos of this tree. We looked. I remember this photo, I recognize the chair ... I recall the emotion of intense happiness, true joy. I loved that tree and how I felt when I was there.

Pull out an old photo and write about it today. Don't have one? Tear out a magazine photo and write a back story to the person featured. Be creative.

Have a great day!
Much love and joy,
Karen

Want to buy Karen's book Children of Light? Go to www.casparapublishing.com