Where Memory Goes

I got home today, and my little niece was sitting at the kitchen counter. She’s off from school for the summer, and I assumed that my mom would watch her while my brother worked. It turns out that she’s going to the YMCA day care on the days that my brother has her.

This sparked a memory.

I used to go to the Y for summer day care too when I was little. I had forgotten this. I spent whole summers there. I remembered the strict schedule, losing pogs to an older kid who had a metal slammer and knew I was naive, watered down punch in gatorade jugs, squares of graham crackers and field trips to the Santa Fe Dam. I remembered there was an older kids’ group called Funward Bound that I would eventually join. This group was highly desirable because these kids were able to go on field trips every week rather than the one or two the younger kids got to go on throughout the summer.

I remembered each day feeling so meaningful, so important, like the entire universe on the head of a pin centered on those moments on a green-painted wooden picnic table, like even as a little kid I knew that each thing that happened felt like it should be written in history.

I still feel like that each day, like a girl not talking to me, like a mother not praising, like a friend’s absence, like an ex engaged, like a bit of traffic, like a kid who I can’t get through to in the classroom, like each of these things, all the little moments, are the stars, the dark matter, the cells, the atoms, everything.

But.

I forgot about those days at the Y. Like they were blank sheets of paper. Like nada. Nada. Nada. Just like that. It took my niece’s face to bring them all back.

That will happen to today one day. To these words one day. To everything that’s happening. Everything will just become a sudden recall triggered by another person’s eyes. Or a book title. Or a song. Or a specific food. Today will be gone until then.

I suddenly felt a deep sadness. But, somehow, also fucking free.