The sun is shining today. It is cold but the sky is bright and blue. All things seem possible when the sun is shining, no matter the temperature. Mother Nature is pounding Cape Breton and Newfoundland with snow as I write this, but for the moment she has left me with just a dusting. I know all too well that in any moment she might turn her wrath in this direction in punishment for ignoring her well-being while she buries us in snow. I’m grateful my shovel is idle.
Christmas has been tucked away, the ornaments wrapped, my children’s Christmas art safely stowed. Thea’s twenty-seven-year-old snowman, made of soap flakes when she was five, has earned his full year place of honour on the shelf in my living room. He is feeble, having lost an eye and one arm, and it is much too risky to wrap him up in a box. Samantha’s Christmas mice remain in my Grandma Stewart’s bowl because they make me smile every month of the year, alongside Linden’s turtles and Abby’s drawing, my mother’s blackboard eraser from the one-room school before Alberton Central opened, to name a few. These are just things, but they are finer and more precious than anything else I can imagine. They have magic within them that erupts at my will, that celebrates those moments of childhood and of motherhood that shaped me, that continue to bless and save me.
I find myself reliving the joy of these past weeks. I feel too far away from three of my daughters, but Facetime and phone calls brought us closer. I connected with old friends with love-filled messages that kept me smiling for hours. I often wonder if those individuals have any idea how my life is bettered by them, with the memories that flood my brain and … it got me thinking.
Sandeep Jauhaur, MD, PhD, cardiologist, tells us that what we remember is fundamentally what makes us who we are, the connection between past and present. My memories that bring me the greatest joy are not found in the details but rather in the feeling. “The power of our emotional memories and how our experiences – and the way we process them – leave actual physical footprints on the brain,” says Steve Ramirez, Boston University neuroscientist, who goes on to say, “positive and negative memories have their own separate real estate in the brain”.
Fundamentally, we all have negative memories. Simply put, we remember being burned when we put our hand too close to a heat source, so this memory guides our future actions. But when we recall the power of a positive memory, it overrides the pain of a negative memory. Memories also teach us nothing is permanent. Our negative memories are evidence of our survival and resilience, and our positive memories remind us to seize the moment. Psychology Today reported in 2023 that calling on happy memories alleviates anxiety and lowers cortisol levels, which helps regulate weight, appetite, blood pressure and glucose. The article goes on to recommend counting memories rather than sheep and to let those know who have made life better for us. I’ve told Louis Quesnel probably too many times how his kindness to me in Home Room saved a shy farm kid. I keep reminding him because the memory is such a positive one for me and I hope he understands my excessive blathering.
This morning when I can’t seem to get warm, I pour my coffee and place Annie’s sugar bowl with her spoon and pitcher on the table in front of me, positioned just so and in an instant my kitchen is transformed to the Lahti kitchen, the smell of her coffee on the stove, her refrigerator clunking shut as she retrieves the cream, the clear glass plate, adorned with blueberry muffins fresh from the oven, carefully placed on her table. I have her recipe, in her handwriting saved with my treasures. And then her laugh fills the room, the incredible magic that takes me home. I crawl into her lap, the child in me who found unconditional love on her knee. She has never left me, not ever. I can call her up whenever I need her, and she always comes. We wash clothes together in her basement, I run between the sheets hanging to dry, a flour sack tied around my shoulders as my cape. The wringer washer is humming as it sloshes the clothes back and forth, her hand smoothing her hair back off her face as she feeds the cloth through the wringer, telling me to mind my fingers, her arm outstretched to me in warning. “I love you,” I want to shout, but there’s no need – she knows and always remembered.
wendistewart@live.ca
