Magical.............Time Machine.............Memories

My April issue of "Southern Living" came today and it seems to be back to the old magazine it used to be, filled with lots of recipes, decorating ideas, and gardening ideas.  Each page I turned filled me with thoughts of actually getting up off the couch and doing something.  I hate that when that happens. Goes against my retirement motto.  When I came to the very last page, I was disappointed that there were no more pictures, nothing to inspire me, but there was an essay and since I had some time on my hands and since I really haven't lost the ability to read, I started reading.  And then I came to this paragraph.

"I guess I could try to explain, to tell them that for us memory is not an inventory, not a catalog of events, but a time machine. It lifts us off the dull treadmill of grown-up responsibilities to a time of adventure and wonder. The past is not dead, so the dead are never really gone. We resurrect them, daily, for one more story, for one more buck dance or ball game, or one more cast into the cool water. I could try to explain this, but instead I think I'll take a boat ride."

This April 2013 Southern Living essay, entitled "My Time Machine" was written by Rick Bragg, a Pulitzer Prize-winning writer and author of several best-selling books, including The Most Most They Every Had and The Prince of Progress.  Mr. Bragg went on to describe his childhood memory of a houseboat which was cute and interesting, but the words he used to describe memory really touched me.  I have never thought about memory being a time machine. 

I write a lot of memories in my blog, some childhood, some when my children were small, and some are memories only made on the day they were published.  It just occurred to me today, that when I write a memory I am not just writing chronicle of events.  I have traveled back in time, reliving those memories as I typed them.  I took that ride right back there snapping green beans for mom, feeling my grandmother's fingers as she rubbed my back, on a California trip with my husband, fixing Kraft Macaroni and Cheese for my son, curling my daughter's hair, or working on the island hideout with my grandsons. 

Of course I have memories of some very sad and painful moments in my life, but for the most part those I share with you are the happy ones, the ones that I will seek when I get in my time machine.  Those happy moments all had a common thread.  We were just having fun, we didn't know we were making memories.

There is an Infiniti commercial that has a voice over that says "The memories we share today become more magical tomorrow."  Magical...........time machine............memories. 

Kudos to Mr. Bragg.  I see why he is a Pulitzer Prize winner. "The past is not dead, so the dead are never really gone."

I love you.  Good night.