Reunions

I find I attend many reunions lately. They aren't exactly barbecues or picnics and don't require any preparation, travel, or fuss. They are reunions of the mind, heart, and spirit. My mother lives with me, but at the same time, she resides in a place of retrospection, often relating any news story of today to a story in her past, exposing the threads of time that bind us in our experiences. These threads are her oral history and her gift. I need only gather them in the moment and understand that they are passed along for safe-keeping, and meant to be shared when the time is right. Our memories are medicine. They morph over time. Like a potent elixir, the right memory applied to a particular ill can soothe better than any painkiller or amnesiac. It's not always in forgetting that we are calmed, but in remembering that first kiss, newborn baby, or view from a mountaintop. I'm collecting her moments, so I can conjure them up when she'll need them most, and so I can smile along with her, when we both might rather weep.