Happy Deja Vu

Well, it's Memorial Day weekend, and this post is dedicated to memory. My memory, at least the last few weeks, is shot. So I want to memorialize it. I used to be able to remember where everything (and I mean EVERYTHING) was in my house. Needle-nose pliers? Oh, yeah, in the second drawer in the pantry. Beneath the placemats. What about that last American Studies exam? On the shelf in the closet above my clothes, tucked between my second-year French book and my Junior yearbook.

So it came as quite a surprise to me that I could forget such essentials as putting my dog in the car after a walk (she was fine - hanging out with the landscaping ladies at the Middle School when I remembered, after having gone all the way home and back). Today I forgot to secure my sunglasses ($35) when I took them off during another walk - more like a hike up Wilbraham Mountain. So I had to return and search for them, essentially repeating the same hour-long hike I had this morning. It was OK. No actually it was great. I saw things I hadn't the first time around. A robin's egg blue robin's egg. Wild columbine, some pink mallow, a jack in the pulpit. The blue sky. The waving grasses. I smelled lots, too - hay-scented fern and honeysuckle, and unnacountably, fresh peaches. And I found my sunglasses, too. And now I remember this day, that walk, differently, and better.

So this weekend,instead of doing something new and different, as I often urge, do the same old thing, but pay attention. Go to the same old Memorial Day Parade, or the same family cookout. Notice differences. Really look, and smell, and hear, so you can remember it all differently, and better. Then write down your experiences, or draw them, or both, which is best of all.