It has certainly been a most memorable Christmas present to Himself and me from our lovely son, and we're only a third of the way through it - fifty-two "thank-you"s, pebbles of memory from his childhood and teenage years plopping gently and happily into our inboxes once a week. Each makes ripples of recollections in my mind too: things we'd forgotton, things we remember in turn which he may have forgotton ...
One of the biggest surprises, is how important some things were for him - and how little I knew it at the time. And how significant they are for me too, though I did not realise it till he brought them to my attention. I'm still absorbing them, letting them find their place, touched by hindsight. Perhaps that is one of lovely things about a memory shared: it can bring a gift to the listener too. Perhaps when we scrapbook, our pages hold a memory, an event, an intuition, a moment, until it can plop into the life of a reader years down the line, creating ripples of meaning for them ...
All this was hovering at the back of my mind on a walk with one of my favourite people, when I saw her hesitate by the path, look down, take a few steps, then go back and pick something up. Nothing special: just a stick. Some lovely things from a pack of Julie's Plundered Pages helped me record it:
It might be just a stick. Or perhaps it is something more. Perhaps she'll tell me, years down the line, when she reads the page ...
