The Garden of Remembrance

Posted on by Vincent

I walked this morning through Old Amersham, attracted by the flag of St George on the church tower. I felt strong in myself. The beauty of this chilly, sunny morning uplifted me. I was not possessed by the necessities of life, not driven by problems and desires. The present moment was sunlight kissing old stones, well-pruned trees in the churchyard hiding mysteries in their dark foliage. These were riches enough. I felt desire to capture the moment somehow, so I took some photos, but I knew they could not record my feeling.

I passed beside the little pond into which, thirteen years before, my little daughter had plunged head-first, leaving only her feet sticking out. She explained later that she had “stepped on a bee”, not realising that the water-lilies could not hold her weight. And that’s the way she learns, a metaphor of her life. Make mistakes and learn. She’s like me in that. I pulled her out by the feet and—on a chilly sunny day just like today—we took her back to the car in her soaked best dress, dripping and teeth chattering. To the elderly people sunning themselves on a bench, it was a spectacle of great interest.

“What is memory?” I wondered today, as I passed through the wrought iron gates inscribed “Garden of Remembrance”. We get more wisdom from the book of memory, I reflect, than from any printed book.

11 thoughts on “The Garden of Remembrance”

  1. I was confused about what was so generally funny about fourteen. {from the first section, now edited out.}But then I lost it when I pictured your daughter head first in the pond, those little feet wiggling in the air….Hee hee hee!

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  2. Yes, my daughter was three years old, in a white flounced dress with sailor’s collar, little white socks & navy-blue buttoned shoes: the socks and shoes sticking out of the murky water, still dry. It was a little hard not to laugh, but the elderly people were watching us intently.

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  3. . . . And I believe (knowing my own sense of humor) that once I pulled her out of the water and determined she was okay I would have fell to the ground howling in laughter. I’m just an ass like that.

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  4. “What is memory?” I wondered today, as I passed through the wrought iron gates inscribed “Garden of Remembrance”. We get more wisdom from the book of memory, I reflect, than from any printed book.Well said, my friend. We are,after all, merely making record. The imagination in our memory paints the picture for the words to embellish. Like the thought of little feet and button shoes…..

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  5. (Bryan’s comment related to the original version of the post. His criticisms were so just that I’ve removed the offending section, which referred to an expenses-paid trip to Eindhoven in Holland and what happened there. I was invited to a series of sessions which would be audio-recorded in order to write a memoir and present it to a psychologist much admired by my friend.)

    Maybe it’s just me, but I have to confess that I’m having a hard time following all this. With this post and the previous one, I feel like I’ve arrived long after your train of thought has left the station, and now I’m left to piece together where it went by picking up the discarded cigarette butts and old ticket-stubs scattered on the platform. Let’s see: There was an artsy-looking chair, then you were on a plane plying with the plastic window shade and thinking you were Neo from the Matrix, then there was some Swedish[?] child psychology theory, then people were laughing at the number fourteen, then I blacked out to the taste of my own blood dripping from my nose.In other words, please, with all due respect, kind sir, if I might beg your mercy and your indulgence, for all that is good and holy…what the hell are you talking about?

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  9. Vincent, The beauty of our old journals is the hidden gems that may emerge, that speak to us from a time that may have been lost if we had not captured the moment. I enjoyed the story about your daughter. Then and now when you speak of your daughter, there is a tenderness in your voice that makes me smile. As you noted in your other post about trying to recollect what you were writing–that’s always interesting– it’s like playing detective with our own thoughts. I often contemplate memory since it plays a huge role in the structure of my life. It changes; reorganizes itself; and others remember different parts of a shared memory. Till this day I have a memory of my name almost being Frachesca instead of Rebbecca. I asked my brother awhile back because memory told me my mother was the one that wanted to name me that but it was he that named me complete with two b’s and two c’s. I think he agreed to his naming me. But to Francesca, he looked at me a little oddly and said, he didn’t know where I heard that. He had no idea what I was talking about. Oh dear, Memory!

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  10. p.s. Sorry if I’ve repeated myself. After thinking about it, I have a sense that I’ve said this before. Entering your journal pages sometimes puts me in a memory time warp. And it’s been bothering me, so I had to get it out.

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  11. No, Rebb, you haven’t said it before! I believe your memory about having been nearly called Francesca. And now I know who to blame for your name having two Bs. Over this side of the pond we are less inventive with names and there is only one way to spell Rebecca. Jamaica is more inventive still, for example my wife is called Karleen. The more usual spelling is Karlene. And her middle name is Isoline, very rare, though it’s the title of an obscure opera.But when we compare memories with a parent or a sibling, we find that one remembers differently from the other, as gloriously celebrated in the song from Gigi, sung by Maurice Chevalier & Hermione Gingold: “Yes, I remember it well!” It was certainly as you say a detective story to unravel one’s own notes, and surprising to find how memories are fixed and retrieved. Without prompts to tell us of the facts, it’s easy to record wrong memories!

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