Everyday Memories

 Friends and family may be scattered or gone, but they remain around my house, triggering memories as I go through my day.

I took a puffy peppermint candy from the dish on the table and, like I always do, thought of Lucy. She’s long since moved out of our town, but every time I pick up one of those mints I think of her, since she introduced me to them.

          I have a pot that reminds me of my son’s in-laws since I expressly bought it for the time I had them to a lunch of soup and sandwiches.

          The small white ramekins were bought for a dinner with Joanne and Frank – individual crab casseroles. The couple were dear friends who lived next to our house at the lake and we would get together with them and other neighbors practically every Saturday night for potluck grilling.

  

        In some cases, it’s a product from the hands of the person, not just an object. The small jelly cupboard in our den was made by my father-in-law, 

while one of my mother’s paintings hangs in the guest bathroom, 

next to
one our daughter did in college. 

A hefty, weird metal object d’art our son created years ago sits next to picture of our silly, sadly departed dog Mamie who's hiding in the pachysandra.

          And I just noticed today that, ironically, the beautiful and complex afghan that my mother knitted is tucked next to a table my father bought years ago.

 Ironic because my parents divorced when I was twelve.

 What are the odds that my father would have picked up that table in that particular town on a trip through New England in the late ‘60s with my stepmother? He bought it at a massive flea market that takes place three times a year in Brimfield, a town that, growing up in Virginia, I didn’t know existed till five years later when I moved here, only twenty minutes away.