What will they remember? For a while I thought mine would recall every detail of childhood:
"No Mummy, we sat on that bench over THERE last time. Remember? We ate fishy crackers. And a bird came. I want to sit THERE.”
I was sure such specificity would translate into forever-moments. The ones I tried to savour even as we were still sitting on the bench. I wanted to remember the purity in that glint of excitement, the little extra curve to the r in the word “there”, the small fingers in mine forever.
I remember sitting under the low, wide tree in the front yard of my grandparent’s farm. I do not know now what sort of tree it was, it may even have been a bush, but I was a child covered by branches and gentle shade, and it seemed a tree to me. Nearby was an aging pear tree, whose branches offered a safe haven. Across and opposite, just a scamper away, was the front door of the farmhouse. Next to me was my grandmother’s button box: an old coffee tin with a black lid, a tall square-ish shape, the outside depicting workers with kerchief wrapped heads bending over bushes in a field.
