Selective Recollections

Happy families are all alike. Tolstoy: Anna Karenina

Little gifts, a Limoges saucer, a Murano flower— a cumulous of objects in cumulous of years. I forget who gave the saucer, a vase, a pitcher. There were letters, often so lovely they may still be warming pages in some books. But most went, buried with days of the past, love notes, dried flowers. When I left the old house, I walked away from a cabinet where faces stilled by the camera smiled in distant sun— the children, the man I loved. I hold a convergence of lights in my memory, and there is no room for photographs with their unchanging mien. Remembrance makes its own choice, elective instants within recurring images. What do I remember of you? A myriad instants— walks at the beach in paling dusk, dinners at our favorite restaurant, afternoons by book stalls along the Seine, rocking train rides— nothing extraordinary, the simple story we shared, the quiet pace of our days, the rhythm of our breathing.