Silence again between us, and it’s good. The car radio plays, and the grooved pavement hums underneath us as we pass over a bridge. Then by flowers, taped to a roadside cross, a skid in the gravel shoulder, a gash in the grass, now filled with gray sky rain water.
Details matter, she said.
(That cross. a snow cone, backseat windows that don’t roll down all the way, a broken shoelace, oversized headphones, fireworks.)
The vast majority of our days are overwhemingly similar, she said. One day fades into the next, and again, and together they blur into weeks, months, years. Snapshots help us keep track of where we’ve been. What we’ve done and what we’ve seen. Because if we remembered every moment - even the unremarkable - we would never have the momentum or the time to escape the gravity of the one life we’ve been given.
(A concession stand at the fair missing the second o in popcorn. I see it moving away, as the red rocket I’m riding flings me backward. I’m sitting next to my cousin maybe, or maybe a stranger. I come so close to remembering, then it all pulls away.)
It isn’t about perfection, she said. Our snapshots all have that proverbial thumb in the corner. They are badly composed and poorly exposed, but we remember them anyway - maybe even because of these imperfections. And we tell our histories by these moments. Episodes, like sitcoms: our family pictures jokes, our siblings often punchlines.
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