Memories

When I was a senior in high school, I entered a poetry contest. I don’t recall anything about my poem, but there are two things I will never forget. I placed third in the competition and the prize was a book of my choosing up to a specified amount. I hadn’t won first place so the cost of the book I wanted was too much. I made a deal with my English teacher so I could get a beautiful hard copy edition of Roget’s Thesaurus.

The second thing I remember is that the girl who won first prize, she a year behind me in school, married my father five years later.

My father has now been dead for 16 years, but my “step-mother” is still that girl who beat me in a poetry competition almost 40 years ago.

Our lives are like mosaics and the memories, tiny scraps of color, are pieced together into Van Goghs, Georgia O’Keefes or, perhaps closer to mine, Jackson Pollocks.

Memory takes a lot of poetic license. It omits some details; others are exaggerated, according to the emotional value of the articles it touches, for memory is seated predominantly in the heart.  -Tennessee Williams, The Glass Menagerie

I won’t forget you...

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P.S. - Found my pants! 
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