He’d buried happy moments of the past back to the beginning, and then, very near the end, he followed the time trail backward to relive each one. You would think the roadblocks of fading memory might stand in his way, some gems so vaguely remembered that he might miss them. But as he met them, he crawled over them or slid around each one, inching sidestep by sidestep between some wall and the barrier, until he passed the obstruction.
A massive undertaking, it was, pushing on back in time, especially since he knew full well that death followed close behind him. At each burial point, he’d dig to whatever depth he needed to unearth the memory. He would examine it closely, hold it up to behold its beauty, and then lay it to rest again, lovingly covering it over, gentle handful of dust brushed over it by gentle handful of dust. A caressing back into the welcoming earth.
Then he’d be back up, determinedly pushing on, heading as fast as possible before the tick of the clock slowed, the pendulum motion coming to its inevitable standstill.
And then, when he’d come to the final place, he fell to his knees and thanked whatever were the powers that be for allowing him to succeed in making the journey back. This one was buried deep, but as he rubbed the dust from it, pulling back the veil of darkness, the patina began to show through the powder, and he at last came face to face with that first joyful moment of his life.
It was a tricycle, blue, with multi-colored streamers coming out of the small holes in the glittering handlebar grips. His grandmother was pushing him along. The feeling of flying, he remembered, was a miracle second only, it felt, to getting up from a crawl to take those first few of the million steps he would take in life. The two were in the park near his home. He could see the rush of green, the trees and the grass, all going by him at what felt, at that age, a terrific speed.
His grandmother was smiling, and she sang a song. That kind of song, you know, where some melody pops into your head at odd moments throughout your life. The one where you wonder how you know that tune.
The words were the last thing he wanted to know. He knew instinctively it was one from her childhood, To remember those lyrics, that was the goal. A song of his roots, a song of his beginning, a life song, like a signature anthem. Straining, he tried to mouth the words he heard, indistinct at first but gradually becoming clearer.
And the words he finally made out, made no sense at all. Which, amazingly, didn’t frustrate him in the least. It was wonderfully, astonishingly nonsensical.
Of course, that was the greatest lesson to learn at the beginning of everything. How perfect, he thought, that this should have been the first memory to save.
He sat back on the green grass and watched the two laugh and sail along in a world of pure joy.
Humming the melody and making up his own rambling verse, he closed his eyes, saw his grandmother smiling down at him, reached for her hand, and followed her home.
Lanning Lee 