The Gift of Memory

     Windy day. The sun was shining and the wind was up--not gale force, but enough to lift her hair from her forehead and cool her face as she walked.

    You walk too fast.

    Who said that first? Not her mother. No, not Mother. Mother called her Pokey Penny because she walked so slowly, stopped to look at everything--ants in a sidewalk crack, odd-shaped rocks, the deep yellow of dandelions in the grass. No, it wasn't Mother. Let's go, let's go! Mother said every time they left the house. It'll be there when we get back.

    Which, she learned, was true--the trail of ants was endless, the rock immobile, and even the clover and dandelions rooted in place. So now, she too was a walker, a brisk walker, fast and with purpose enough to make any mother proud, well, any mother who cared, which might mean only her mother--which made her laugh, then smile, then stop walking altogether and shake her head, with that slow back and forth movement of a new thought, a realization that she was still linked to those old tapes, tapes from her long dead mother, even from Henry, may he rest in peace--because peace was always so elusive for him, something to be caught rather than savored. 

    They were gone, the people she had loved, and here she was on a beautiful, windy day, here with the joy of movement, of being alive and moving in an overflowing world, at her own steady pace, with memories celebrating the simple pleasure of walking, however you do it, wherever you go, and whenever.

    Yes. The gift of memory...and luck...gave her pleasure that she never had to earn, improve, or fix: the definition of a true gift....and still there even when she slowed down.