Spring Thoughts

for my twin sister, Mary In English when we miss someone we say, You were on my mind, as if this person stood upon a platform called MIND and witnessed our thoughts in the very instant of their origin straight through their existence, until new thoughts, equally yours, crowd them out. Such is the fate of the metaphors we invent and use. Other times it may be a deceased loved one who occupies our minds. And so a sister and a brother, even in different cities, will feel the almost living presence of their mother. Perhaps both hear an echo of her chiding wisdom, or they recall in their separate realities a flash of humor that made everyone at the table laugh. Or a long ago vacation at a summer resort returns in bits and pieces, until you see a stand of aspens behind the family, and Mom is not hiding from the camera for once, and trees and people are whole. Memory evokes her presence, and it is a presence that still lives inside us. Isn't it remarkable such miracles still occur? Still I wonder, how can our small memories, even when we combine all of our separate strands into a mental treasury, overcome Time's fleet progress forward. We stop and look backward into the past, when both Mom and Dad were with us, and reality was one and whole. I mean, our family was one and whole, and joy was manifold. Even as I say that remembrance Time has taken its huge steps away from human lives. And we must once again use memory when reality is Time's hostage, or dwell bereft in loss upon loss. But recall that platform of MIND. It is a kind of playfulness with reality scaled down to the dimensions of childhood delights. And you can laugh and cry or both, because real things - trees, photographs of picnics, house keys, knitting, old clothes, grandma's black-bead rosary, Dad's fedora he never wore, Mom's house-dresses she always wore - all these things become infinitely malleable in memory and each has its niche where your mind welcomes it. And then the heaviness of events lightens, even dissolves in remembrance. Isn't it remarkable such miracles occur?