Vignette

I have a room in my house specifically devoted to storing memories. It's a larger room, and contains a large desk, a fair number of filing cabinets, and many, many bookshelves. The whole room smells like cedar, the way a cedar cigar box smells to a person who has never smoked a cigar.

The cedar tree was the tree of my childhood. It was the most conducive tree to store the nostalgia and reconnaissance of childhood, where memories begin. The pines and magnolias got jealous, but the pines had too many branches, which made it difficult to climb and spend any time in, and the magnolias dropped all these frustrating cones every spring which I had to go and pick up before my dad could mow the front lawn. I never forgave that tree for that.

Memories come from roots, so it makes sense that the room smells like a tree. The chair at the desk is as soft and comfortable as cedar bark. On the desk, there is a little lamp and a stack of folders, and ink and white-out and candles. I don't really write with the ink. It's just kind of there because I thought it was cool.

The desk, the cabinets, and the bookshelves hold thousands and thousands of memories. Some are good, some are bad, some are wonderful, some are terrifying, and some don't make any sense. I really can't explain why I keep those, or really any at all. I guess it's just expected that everyone has a room for these sorts of things.

I also have this intern named Robby. He's awful. I've wanted to fire him so many times for reasons I will explain to you shortly, but he's an unpaid intern. He still lives with his parents and says he's working on a novel. I can't tell if he's actually writing a novel or just making fun of me. He knows I've been wanting to write a novel for years. He never tells me about his novel.

Every week or so, I'll take a box of memories up to my room. Most of them are trash and not worth keeping, like notes about what I had for dinner, or wearisome conversations I overheard at work about someone's dog. The useful things in these weekly boxes are life-changing news about nieces being born, or accomplishments at work. Nice words spoken in love. God's promises in treasured verses. Or even how rice plus cumin and paprika and garlic salt and thousand island dressing makes a good lunch. I totally made up that recipe this week and now it's one of my favorites.

So, then, what makes Robby so insufferable is the way he seems to sabotage my memory room. His job is to organize these memories in a logical way, file them neatly, and clean out any unwanted material. I will give him this, though: he did a nice job with destroying my sixth grade memories. I think all that's left in the folder are some faces and names and the feeling of a cold, dark bus ride. Everything else is gone.

However, he will always take the authorized destruction way too far, and will proceed to take out memories at random, erase people's names or cross out entire anecdotes. He'll make scribbles and spill ink on stuff. Sometimes, he'll even throw out whole binders without consulting me at all. Then, when I'm trying to remember something, I draw a blank because it's no longer there. And who knows what Robby did with it. He probably takes home some of my memories to write about in his novel.

One of my favorite parts of my memory room is the closet of songs. I'm impressed out how much is in there, and how much it's still in tact. Robby must hate music because he never messes with that part. The only thing that destroys this room is the gradual aging of the pages rubbing against each other, or the little mice that nibble small holes in the paper.  The closet holds a wide variety of music: country songs from childhood, pop songs from the time I thought I liked pop, and so many hymns, but usually only the first verse or so. There are also annoying commercial jingles in there, but what can you do? One day, I think I'm going to run out of space, so I'll just have to get a bigger room.

When Robby actually does get around to organizing things, the way he does it is somewhat interesting and unconventional, but also catastrophic. This is not your library card catalog or Dewey decimal system. I don't even have a central computer logging everything I'm supposed to have. Most files are traditionally labeled in a box, folder, or binder. Often, a whole shelf is labeled and dedicated for a general topic, such as German, where I'm still trying to add memories. Sometimes, though, Robby just puts a picture on a folder of memories. It's cool that he's trying to associate certain memories under a common theme or illustration, but it's detrimental because the only way I can access those memories are through that one association. Unless I remember what picture they're filed under, they might as well be forgotten.

An example of this is whenever I walk through a segment of housing construction, I'll see the wood, and the bricks, and the porta-potties and feel absolutely nothing. What really jogs my memory is when I see the stray aluminum can tossed by the wayside. I remember the night years ago we went walking in the housing construction across the street to gather as many aluminum cans as we could. I'm pretty sure we were doing this for a project for one of my sisters, but I found great joy in not only gathering up the cans, but looking forward to recycling them as well. I remember thinking that when the workers return to the job site the next morning, they would be blown away by how much cleaner the site was. I suppose it was trespassing, but it felt fun to be a rebel without a cause, except with a cause. That was the kind of teenager I was. I would not vandalize. I would only recycle.

Every so often, I just like to go up to my memory room, sit at the chair at the desk, and look at some old memories. I'll try to fill in the details if I can remember any, and try to conjure up the exact experience of being in that moment of time. Like the memory of being a teenager, writing on my bed some Saturday afternoon. The window would be open, and I can hear dad's table saw coming from his workshop. I see my mom cross the yard with a basket full of laundry which I just know she's going to come ask me to help fold. I see the wind gently blow the branches of the oak trees in the back yard and I hear the soft, rushing sound of the leaves. This memory is not specific to any day in particular because I'm sure it was repeated several times. "I have to go fold laundry now" is how I would end my journal entry. Ah, the mundane life of an adolescent.

 After I've spent a while in my room reminiscing, I'll stand up and stretch, and take a look around the room. Some drawers will be open with memories spilling out. There will be scattered sheets on the floor, waiting to be filed or destroyed by Robby. The door to the closet of songs won't close anymore since it's getting so full in there.

I love that I have so many of my memories, even though some are unsavory and are kept around for humility's sake and also to keep me from repeating stupid, stupid things I once did. I still have the good and funny ones that I can read and remember and reread like some beautiful story that never gets old.

"That's life," I say as I walk out of the room. Then, I turn off the light and close the door behind me.

TWS