Freshly sprouted blossoms shout out their spring song. -- Photo by Pat Bean
“It is singular how soon we lose the impression of what ceases to be constantly before us. A year impairs, a luster obliterates. There is little distinct left without an effort of memory, then indeed the lights are rekindled for a moment – but who can be sure the Imagination is not the torch-bearer? Lord Byron
Travels With Maggie
“Spring is bursting out all over!”
The song lyrics played joyously through my head this morning as I took my dog, Maggie, outside to do her business. The trees were budding, the dandelions were sprouting, a cool breeze stirred my hair, the squirrels were chattering and the birds were twittering.
Back at my desk in front of my computer, I was curious as to what musical from my past had been the inspiration for the song. I suspected it was “Oklahoma “but wasn’t quite sure.
Will I remember that it was a yellow-eyed great-tailed grackle I saw this morning, or will memory rename the bird a Brewer's blackbird? -- Photo by Pat Bean
I Binged, which is what I do instead of Googling, and discovered my memory had tricked me twice. The actually lyrics are “June is bursting out all over,” and the musical in which the song was featured is “Carousel.”
Memory is such an unreliable source.
This fact was made extremely plain to me when my children, now all grown and most with children of their own, began recalling past incidents in their childhood. Although all five of them may have experienced the same thing at the same time, each of their stories were different. More startling was that none of the tales fit my own memories of the events.
How could this possibly be? I still don’t know the answer, although I’ve learned a lot about human nature since the differing stories began being shared.
These memory quirks we all seem to share, however, have increased my appreciation for being a writer. Blogging daily in a public forum, which I have been doing since the first of the year, has become a way of making my life more tangible, to the point that sometimes things don’t seem real until I write them down.
And what was real this morning was that spring, not June, was bursting out all over.
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