The Gossamer Threads of Memory
By Elle Dooley
I invite you to a bit of crazy meandering through my thought process, a journey of memories connected by what, I don’t know. I was musing on the relationship between memory and legacy.
Visiting the legacy left by those who have had an important place in my life, I think first of what I remember about them. Often, my memories are layered with their memories, the events in their lives that left an impression that they chose to share. In a way, the sharing of their memories created memories for me. I see the sacred spiral at work here.
[A rabbit hole I went down.] There is a great deal of recent research on how human memories are formed, and on how they are stored and accessed. We experience life as a continuum, but our brains store memories as discreet events that are neurally connected. This is a wildly simplified statement. If the science of memory interests you, this article in the NIH newsletter offers a more complete explanation (link).
In a recent Word of the Week, I shared a list I’d created a few years ago. For me, each item on the list generated a profusion of related memories. What bound them together? I don’t know exactly. What I’m pretty sure I know is that the same list, read today, would produce a different chain of memories.
The connections between one memory and another are gossamer threads. Memories tightly woven together one day will be disparate on the next. One memory leads to another, and another, and another in a pattern rich and deep. What the connections of memory will conjure is happily unpredictable, with seemingly endless variation.
As I enter Elderhood, memories become precious. They are a personal archival record. I think of them like beads on a necklace. I touch them from time to time, to remind myself of their feel and to see if the strand is still intact. There is also, I find, a fear that the strand which holds the beads will snap, scattering memory beads to the ground. I see them bounce and scatter, lost to me.
Why do I care about this and what does it have to do with legacy? My memories are important to me. In a way, they are my life, as I remember it. I have a sister who loves to correct my accounts of the past; she tells me my memories are “wrong.” Impossible, I say, although I admit my data may contradict hers. That is to say, the tapestry woven by the threads of my memory are different than the tapestry she weaves.
In a cloud of curiosity, I looked at a list I created in 1993. I alight on a thread that weaves through the entry “that red dress.” I let my mind and memory follow the gossamer threads to the tapestry created by that phrase.
I pull one thread. A red dress I wore to a wedding at which I was incredibly underdressed. Another thread - an enchanting piece of choreography for Harbinger Dance Company at the Detroit Community Music School. Follow the thread and I remember that I danced because I wanted my body back. A thread turns black and I see myself hand stitching a spider web for the staging of another piece of choreography and remembering too how my sweet babies played quietly while we worked. The gossamer thread breaks. I move from Detroit to Ann Arbor and never see any of the instructors or dancers again. The connection is severed.
I’ll pick up the thread at another time. So many memories. They comprise a story. It is mine alone. Should I choose to share them, these memories will be part of my legacy.
You have a legacy that is your own. Your memories and the way you weave them is unique. How will you weave the gossamer threads of your memories into a tapestry that tells the story of your life?
Don’t leave the weaving to others. Join me in the Garden on November 14th for a simple and elegant way to create a written legacy of the tapestry that is your brilliant life.
