Memories assault us when we're least expecting. It's the memoirist's job to capture them as they flitter through the brain's clutter. Some writers carry notepads, others keep journals, still others sink deep into morning pages. The task of catching fleeting memories is a slow, but essential process.
As I venture into a new project, I rely on the journals and
letters I've already mentioned in this blog series as well as the glorious flashes
of sight, sound, smell that arise more frequently the deeper I dig into
memories. The triggers? A total mystery. An example:
Thanksgiving day my daughter's future sister-in-law arrived
to the festivities with a brilliant poinsettia she pressed into my arms. In a wash
of memory, I was thirty-six years younger, alone in Mexico City. It was
November 1979, my first winter in the city. I was still ignorant about most
things Mexican. I didn't know poinsettias were an indigenous plant brought
north in 1828 by Joel Roberts Poinsett, the first United States Ambassador to
Mexico (1825-1829), and arrogantly renamed in his honor. I didn't know the
glorious Flor de Noche Buena grew as
trees throughout Central Mexico. I didn't know that the floating gardens of
Xochimilco, then on the southern edge of the city, were renown for the
cultivation of these plants. I didn't know that in early December each year the
largest city in the world was transformed by glorious color.
It happened overnight, or so it seemed in early December
1979. I have no memory of the day, the time or even where I was. It must have
been somewhere along the glorious Paseo de la Reforma, a wide avenue as elegant
as the Champs Elysees but not as commercialized. Not then. I was on foot,
probably emerging from the subway on my way to a teaching assignment when I saw
them. I froze as people jostled around me. I still feel the press of their
bodies, smell the mingled scent of perfume and sweat. I stopped in place
overwhelmed by what I saw. The concrete world of Mexico City I'd grown
accustomed to over the past year was alive with color. The median running
between the opposing lanes of traffic for as far as the eye could see were
mounded beds of fiery red Noche Buenas.
I do not have a photo of what I saw that day, but here is a
glorious shot of magic in the making from Google images:
Happy Holidays!
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