The Collection

Booboo. Seattle. circa 1997.

Yesterday someone shared a memory with me, and it was like looking at an old Polaroid, sepia colors bleeding from white margins. A family on a boat. Genuine smiles, the kind that crinkle the skin around the eyes. Hair blown wild by the wind. Clothing worn soft by ocean water, colors bleached by sun and salt into a faded echo of what they used to be. The water, a shade of blue-black, scattered with diamonds from a sun sinking on the horizon. And the sky — orange, pink, violet — shifting quickly into darker hues until water and sky became one. A day ending that will never come again.

The memory was shared so richly that I could almost believe I had been there too. My own hair tangled with sea mist. My skin itching with sand. My eager smile aimed at these people who belong to me, but they don't. I don't know who they are.

As I listened to his story, I remembered the times in my own life when these moments happened to me. The untouched film of memory exposed to the image before me, light bouncing off everything, pulled into focus — snap, snap, snap. Perfect memories, captured and collected.

Since I was a small child, a minute human being, I have been doing this. When I was young, I lacked the words to describe it, but I have always felt the impulse: hold this one. This goes in The Collection.

Here is what The Collection means to me. I want to believe that as we prepare to leave this earth, we are granted a final viewing — a reel of images burnt into a kind of cosmic film, revealing not only the goodness we had but the goodness we left behind. Each snapshot, a record of our presence here. Of the impression we made on the people we loved.

From The Collection:

Four years old. Feeding the most brilliant parrot at preschool the fruit she did not want to eat herself. Curved black beak, shaped like a cashew, dipping down to take a piece of apple from her hands. Iridescent blue and green feathers framing the bird's intelligent eyes. Tropical foliage all around the school garden. Cicadas screaming. The teacher calling for care with the cut fruit. A strange, hypnotic feeling as she looked into the bird's eyes — as black as her own. Snap.

Ten years old. Swimming in the ocean in Rio de Janeiro. Salt burning her eyes. The current pulling her too far out; arms and legs beginning to ache, a small bubble of fear forming behind her throat. She looks toward shore, and it is far away; her mother lying on the sand, undisturbed. She thinks of mermaids. Gathers her little legs together and pushes the water. What would happen if she simply dove, was carried away by merpeople, and went to live in the deepest part of the ocean? She floats for a moment to rest — and then feels an arm lifting her small body above the surface. Her father. His eyes are the same color as the sky. He is smiling down at her. Snap.

High school. A friend dies in a car accident on his way to school. The nuns close all the classes. Everyone is crying; she is crying, and this grief is new to her, a concept too large for the small parchment of experience she has so far gathered. She walks toward his open casket. Wilson looks asleep but ashen. His eyes slightly open. They had been inseparable, this group of kids. She looks around the room at the ones still living. At herself, still living. She feels rather than understands the difference. Snap.

And finally…

Summertime. Seattle. A rental house. Twenty-one years old. The backyard small, the grass struggling under the shade of tall pines; it is mostly yellow moss. An old plaid blanket stretched across the ground, something from a thrift store. She is a young mother. Tired from learning to be an adult in a strange land, with strange people speaking a language still strange to her. She lies on the blanket and looks up through the pines. The sun moves in and out as the wind shifts. Cold when it blows, warm when it doesn't. She begins to drift.

And then the child stirs. This child. Beautiful and perfect. Golden curls like a lion cub. Stretching his small hands toward her.

Ma, he says.

She sits up. Looks at this wonder she made. The child stands and takes the tiniest, most careful first step in her direction.

Ma.

She waits.

One more step.

Ma.

She smiles into his little sparkling eyes and folds him into her arms. Snap.

—

I know in my heart that just before I die, that is where I will find myself, watching the expanse of my life unfold before I go. One baby step after the other, and then the holding of something so precious. Precious like that child. That small piece of gold.