It was on an envelope. A few quick lines. I wrote it while stopped at a traffic light, and I used my steering wheel as a table. I didn’t want to forget. It was an entire passage of thoughts, a new room, that I wanted to explore as I continue to write my memoir. I needed to record it, so I wouldn’t forget. I remember writing on the envelope. I remember recording an important thought.
I can’t find the envelope. I don’t remember what I wrote. I just remember writing….
I have not yet given up hope the envelope is gone. There is a pile of paper I brought in from my car Saturday, and the envelope is probably in the pile.
I just wrote it Friday morning. It can’t be lost yet. Can it?
***
I was reading the memoir, Three Dog Life, and there was a passage about memory that I really liked. I want to record it, so I remember. This passage has nothing to do with the envelope, other than both have to do with memory….
And this passage struck me because it addresses something I’ve wondered about — how my memories in written form impact other people.
“Six months ago a friend was angry with me and I with her. I had written something someone said years ago, but it was she who heard the words, not me, a fact I had completely forgotten. Her experience was precious, and she accused me of stealing her memory. Not only that, but what she remembered with grief I had somehow transmuted to gratitude, so besides stealing her memory, I also got it wrong. We argued, but there was no meeting place. For days the same questions went through my head. Is memory property? If two people remember something differently is one of them wrong? Wasn’t my memory of a memory also real? There were no solid answers, just winding paths I went round and round on. I thought of nothing else; a chasm had opened between me and my friend.
“When I went to see Rich that Thursday, the first thing he said was, “Please forgive the selfishness of an old man who seizes the past for his own.” He paused, but I was already listening closely. This sounded oddly like what I’d been thinking about” (Thomas 129-130).
There’s more, but I have class.
Thomas, Abigail. Three Dog Life. New York: Harcourt, Inc., 2007.
