Flash Memories

There are these half-second yet intense random moments when suddenly I remember.

I had one at the bike shop I work at the other day. A mechanic was sorting out a box of weird collected stuff and brought me string wound around a card. “You want this?”

It made me think of my daughter. We were so poor when she was growing up. I used to scavenge the loose toy bin at the front of the thrift store for ten cent items to add to her “People” menagerie. These consisted of McDonald’s Happy Meal cast-offs, figures from movie promotions, and other odd pieces. It was impossible to gather a cast to make a whole, for example we had Esmeralda and her goat but no Quasimodo. The Hamburglar but no Ronald. Strays from discontinued campaigns. Before it was a thing, we had a multi-ethnic, multi-racial, multi-anamorphic family of people.

It was the little things that made her happy: cheesy Goldfish crackers, stickers, a ball of string. We had a sticker book and plastered the pages, Disney characters surrounded by stars and whatever else. We made stuff out of tape and string. I showed her how to play Cats-in-the-Cradle with a loop of string. Together we constructed worlds—out of leftover bits.

The half-second passed, that neumonic nudge dissipated, and like standing in the vaporous trail of a comet I still sensed the light, the color of her joy. My heart!