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Thursday, December 02, 2004
Because lately I have been all about this.
Digging in the Attic
03.July.2003
by Shalagh Knight
Driving home yesterday, I was captivated by the colors the sky had become. Up high it was still light blue and darkened in shades the closer to the horizon you looked. It turned purple, orange, and a deep fiery red. The very sight of this brought feelings of warmth, and for some reason made me sentimental. I pulled into myself and began looking through the boxes in the attic of my mind.
I flipped through pictures, pulling each one out, and smiled to myself. There was my best friend Denise. We met in third grade and remained close friends through high school. Short movies began to play through my mind of the two of us playing in the barn, running through the fields, and having sleepovers on the front lawn. I could see her long dark hair and her silver tooth (from an accident I caused, when I wasn't fast enough to catch her on the bars one day). I saw us riding our bikes and pretending they were unicorns. I saw us grow up, in my mind's eye, and drift apart. I made a note to look her up when I got home.
I began to flip through some letters. There were letters from past boyfriends that I read first. My first love. Perhaps the most perfect love I have ever known. A tan, handsome young man who was very good to me. We ended one summer when I moved away. I read through several other letters, smiling to myself. Silly, juvenile crushes. Pages filled with hearts and arrows, clouds and stars. I read, laughing at myself, the love letter I wrote to Barry Manilow when I twelve. He never wrote me back. I read to myself childish stories I wrote way back then, about my favorite subject: animals and dreams. They were simple, yet imaginative.
As I made my way through the attic I was aware of smells. Why did my senses wake and my heart ache every time I smelled Carrington? Old Spice was hardly a reason it seemed, but one whiff and I was a little girl, sitting on my dad's lap, poking my finger into his bellybutton. I closed my eyes and breathed deeply. I smelled our first new car. I smelled the earthy smell of the copper mines. I smelled the chemicals of the pool where I spent all summer one year, learning to jump from the high dive. I smelled the sweet smell of hay in the barn.
The screen in my head flashed memory after memory, sometimes lingering on a time and place; sometimes just a flash and it was gone. All my childhood was explored. Mostly good, happy memories. Some were sad, such as the beautiful summer day my horse died in my arms. But thankfully it was a quick viewing, triggered by the smell of late summer. It was replaced by the memory where I won the game of kickball for my summer camp team. And the time I won the state spelling Bee in Butte, Montana.
All of a sudden, it seemed, I was home. I had lived a lifetime in twenty short minutes. I sat in the car for a while longer watching the sun go down. I marveled at the beauty of it all and how something so simple could bring forth so many memories. I cast one more look around the attic. I smiled to myself and closed the door, leaving it for the next time something would happen and the kid inside would wake. And once more I would be drawn inward, and begin to rummage through the boxes of my mind.
Copyright © 2003 by Shalagh Knight
Posted at 05:22 am by Shalovee
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