Don’t look up. Don’t ever look up.
My eyes remain on the floor, the speckled gray carpet. The polished sheen of waiting room chair legs. Of nervous shoes bouncing and tapping. But always on the floor.
I don’t want to see their faces.
The faces of worry. Of sorrow. Of red eyes swelled from tears and the stained salted rivers on pale cheeks. Faces forced to offer condolences to me, the boy about to lose his father. Condolences they struggle to offer me when they fail to offer it to themselves.
So I don’t look up. I never look up.
The fish tank gurgles. It draws my eyes. Bright fish swim through brighter coral. Oranges through purples. Blues dart through reds. I watch. A tall, slender fish turns to me, feeling my attention. Its mouth flaps open, violently pulling in water, before it expels the water just as quickly. Just as violently. Just as the machine violently pumps air into my dad’s lungs, chest momentarily full, before it deflates and the machine pumps again.
The fish’s mouth pumps again.
It’s mocking me. Laughing at me. It offers no forced condolences. I hate the fish. I want to throw the polished waiting room chair through the glass tank and watch the fish spill out. Would it still mock me then?
I leave the waiting area and slip into my dad’s room. With the violent pumps and computer beeps. With green numbers and red waving lines. I’m not supposed to be back there. Nobody stops me.
There’s nobody in the room to offer sad glances. No fish to hate. Just a boy and his dad. I see this boy, me, by my dying father, hoping for a different fate. But alas now I hold nothing but a memory. A memory trapped within its own snow globe, and no matter how much it’s shaken, the outcome remains.
A memory swirled in snow and time, I place it back on the shelf in my mind.
Snow Globs of Memories
So much of life is forgettable. It fails to leave an impact, to change, to mold. Entire weeks may go by without a lasting memory. Without a moment captured in time.
Nobody can choose what it is their mind decides to remember and what it chooses to forget. Good or bad, happiness or sorrow, the brain makes its final decision, retaining everything about certain moments. The color of the floor, the smell of a flower, the dimples of a smile. There are moments so perfectly etched in memory it’s more than just a photograph.
It’s a snow globe of consciousness.
Travel outside of the memory and nothing exists. It’s blackness. An abyss, surrounding life found within the globe.
It’s possible to walk through the hallways of memory, looking over the shelves of these small globes and pick one up, hold it, remember it.
To stop and relive that first kiss inside of her dorm room. To watch a sister’s wedding unfold once again. To watch mom walk through the airport terminal after not seeing her for years. Running home after the death of a dog. Of curling up on a basement futon after being asked for a divorce.
To forever retain perfectly rendered memories. It’s the curse of memory. It’s the blessing of it.
The Smell of Lilac
The slender branch of the bush buckles under my weight, bobbing and weaving like a prizefighter about to collapse from exhaustion. I reach for the perfect bunching of lilac flowers. A light lavender. It will go perfect with the deep purple bunch I grip onto with my other hand. A selection of flowers I didn’t leave on the ground, out of fear of my sister claiming the prize as her own.
I branch I stand on bows lower to the ground, taking me away from the collection of flowers I have my sights on. It has a rubbery resiliency that will snap back in place once I step off, but its exhaustion will no longer aid me in my question.
I snap off the base of the branch holding the bounty I wish to claim with a bend and a twist. Hopping down, I clip away the unwanted branch, pressing together the purple and lavender lilacs, married together for the first time. I breathe in the aroma. The sweet, light smell that clings to my nose. To my childhood.
Shaken Memories
Some snow globes of memories can be pulled from shelves in the mind, to be relived as often as desired. To be looked over and enjoyed. To be shaken in hopes of distorting history, yet the snow always falls, and the scene remains always the same.
And yet other memories are not plucked from hallways of experience. From the rows of globes waiting to be recalled. Some are forced into consciousness from tastes. From smells. From sights and touches.
The smell of lilacs will always remind of childhood. The taste of black licorice always of the unwanted candy in grandma’s crystal dish. The perfect combination of spices will forever pull snow globes of family dinners from a mental shelf, an unnamed perfume will always highlight senior prom and my date.
There is no control over memories. How they are forever captured in glass domes and presented on cerebral mantels, waiting for attention. To be picked up and relived. Often it’s impossible to know what domes of memories have been created until sifting through the halls of these snowy glass displays, in order to discover what remains and what has been crafted.
It’s why reliving these memories for the first time can come as a surprise. Sometimes it’s a curse. Other times a gift.
Curses and Gifts
The yard took on a golden hue, the world basking in an evening glow. The smell of fresh-cut grass danced with swaying branches of the willow tree. Sound didn’t exist, until the baseball slapped against worn leather of the boy’s mitt. My mitt.
I felt for the stitching, fingers rubbing over nicks from where the dog got hold of the ball. With a suitable grip in place, I threw the ball back to my dad. His reddish-brown glove swallowing the ball.
I asked for him to throw popups. To toss grounders. Not so much to practice my skill, but to hear him say, “nice catch.” Two words. Simple. Basic. The world.
I’d miss some. I’d sometimes overthrow the ball back. But I wouldn’t stop until he approved my catch at least once. I don’t know if he ever knew that.
Catch would always end, and we’d always round the side of the house to go inside.
But not in the snow globe.
In the snow globe, catch never ends, and it’s always there for me to hold, watch, and relive.
The memory of snow globes can sometimes be a curse.
It can also be a gift.