Post #23 in the Blog Every Day in May Challenge, 250 words or less. Prompt for May 23: Things you’ve learned that school won’t teach you.
Forty-six years after I gave Mother the punch bowl, I attended my Aunt Juanita and Uncle Gilliam’s fiftieth anniversary. There was the punch bowl in all its glory, brimming with golden punch for the occasion.
I stayed afterward to clean up and had the privilege of washing and drying the punch bowl. Looking around to see where to put it, I spotted the box—the same box that I’d had gift-wrapped at Kerley’s in 1957. Battered and taped, it was still adequate to hold the punch bowl and its cups. It prompted lovely memories of that special Christmas when I’d shopped for my family.
As I dried the punch bowl and put it in the box, I said to Mother, “I can’t believe you’re still using this bowl after all these years.”
She looked stricken. “Every time I use this bowl, I think about what I said when I unwrapped it. I am so sorry, Lanita.”
“What did you say?” I asked.
“Oh, typical of me—I said, ‘Well, what would I want with a thing like this? Why would you spend all that money on a punch bowl?’”
So over the years I’d adjusted my memory of her response, substituting what I wanted her to say. From this I learned that “I remember that clearly” is not necessarily the way someone else remembers it. As my Aunt Juanita says, “I don’t remember it the way they do, but I don’t say anything. They have their memories and I have mine.”
Aunt Juanita and Lanita, May 2012, making more memories
