I think memory is a strange thing. I think it’s strange how we don’t have much of a choice what is going to stick in our minds. I’m thinking about this more lately when I can’t remember things I would like to. Did I just sound like an old woman saying she had a “senior moment”? Damn. But really, there are things that stick in our minds eye and hold the picture of a memory that no photograph can capture. This is the kind of memory I love. It’s not the kind of involuntary memory of classmates’ names from elementary school that I wasn’t even friends with, it’s not the memory that houses the lyrics to the opening song for Full House or the Paul Abdul song I liked in 5th grade. It’s not the kind of memory that I feel like is taking up valuable space.
This memory is a picture of something I won’t ever forget and reminds me of a feeling from that place. I had one the other day as I was driving down our long dirt driveway. I looked in the rear view mirror and saw a boy riding his bike in the reflection. He was chasing me on an old looking black bike and he had a beautiful, young face and red, yellow and black beads hanging around his neck and a royal blue stripped shirt that he wears 2 to 3 days a week. His name is Sibusiso and I don’t have any special connection with him, it was more like a moment where I knew I was in Africa and really felt it as I bumped along the red dirt driveway leaving the farm. And I smiled the kind of smile to myself that is in a category all it’s own. It is way different than a camera smile and it’s nothing like the smile I do when I’m trying to make someone feel like they said something clever. It’s a smile just for me, no one is going to see it, I only get to feel it.
So I hope this new memory pushed something out that I don’t care about. And I’m sure that in years to come when I’m somewhere else in life and thinking back to this time and loving this time in my heart, I’ll see Sibusiso chasing me in my dust, determined to keep up even though he would have dirty boogers later and burning eyes. These memories are the best because you don’t know when they will happen and you can’t force it, they just come to you with all the benefits of a good dream and none of the involuntary forgetting.
