Memoirous

About this time last year I was prepping for my trip to Switzerland/Germany/Rhine River Bike Ride— This year, my bus trip to Traverse City and biking around Sleeping Bear Dunes. I’ve always maintained a nature shelf. My daughter now has one for both her children. I change things out as the seasons change. I can see from the mementos on the shelf and various ephemera bike trips I’ve made through the years. In 2016 I made a fall trip from John of Groats in the northernmost of the UK down to Land’s End in Cornwall. In 2014 I made a trip over to Sweden to visit friends, which included a hapless backpacking jaunt and biking around Gotland—an island off the mainland. I love looking at my postcards and small finds. The word souvenir comes from the French meaning a thing that is kept as a reminder of a person, place, or event. to remember, come First recorded in 1775 as meaning “a remembrance or memory,” the noun souvenir stems from the French souvenir “to remember, come to mind.” A ...

  The word souvenir is French for remember. While traveling I like to pick up little things: a pebble, a pinecone, a seashell to bring home. I have a small shelf where I keep these momentos. I also buy things to bring to friends to let them know I was thinking of them while gone. That even though I was having a great time, they were never far from my thoughts. Souvenir is from the Latin subvenire ‘occur to the mind.’ Memories are souvenirs of the mind. Keep and cherish them. Place them on the shelf of a journal or diary so that later you can revisit them. It is on snowy days such as these that I gaze upon my cheapy Walgreen snow globe I bought in Key West—a margarita floating in a sea of glitter—and relish those warm tropical days of birds chattering in the top of palm trees and warm gulf waters washing the shores.