Memory Snapshots

Memories flow from these images, as rich and full of life as the waters rushing under that bridge. They fill me up as they do that chest, more real than the physical things that spawn them.

An image of the iconic Bridge of Lions hangs over the chest that my Grandfather made for Grandma Maverick to mark their wedding anniversary. I spent the summer of 1972 in the woods at their place in Charlottesville when he was working in his shop on this surprise for his love of more than 50 years. Watching him use his router to rough out the patterns on the mahogany panels, the smell of charring wood reminded me of a wood-burning set I had gotten for Christmas back when I was in Boy Scouts and had my own projects to fret over. Often I would ask: “What are you carving? What is that going to be?” With mock disgust he would fire back: “It's my casket, dammit! I'm going to be buried in it!”

Then one hot August day when Grandma drove her yellow Nash Rambler station wagon into town to buy groceries at the Safeway store, Grandpa said: “Take a picture of me in my casket.” Morbid, I know, but he insisted that we get the shot before Grandma could pull back up the long driveway and nix the whole idea. Dutifully I helped Grandpa carry the chest out of the shop and onto the sunny path leading up to the main house. When he climbed into “his casket” and sat up all erect and picture perfect under his straw fedora, I snapped away. One of those prints is barely visible here attached to the top right hand side of the lid. I love that box, so full of memories, even when it appears to be empty.

Now the Bridge of Lions connects me to another flood of mental snapshots, happy times from when we lived on Anastasia Island and walked or rode our bikes up and over that bridge and back down again into the center of the old city. Carla, Ruth, Hannah and me peddling single file up the narrow sidewalk, often stopping at the top where the drawbridge teeth clenched tightly like a giant steel mouth, grinning and ready to open wide again very soon..

 We paused at that half-way point to fill our lungs with fresh salt air, spitting over the side rail to watch a little piece of ourselves hit and swirl in that unstoppable tidal flood only forty feet below. Conspiratorial smiles among us at the certainty of rapid acceleration and downhill breezes, we launched into winds that would blow us straight into the heart of downtown for a a family play-date. Memories branded onto our own hearts, now unleashed by these fertile images, each one spawning innumerable invitations to once again revel and play.