As the Breeze Rises

Life gets filled with images and it's hard to say why some of them stick and some of them don't. Writing them down is certainly a means of preservation. Photographs are another. In fact, I have my share of memories which may have been manufactured by photographs rather than preserved by them.

When the garbage truck passed on Saturday, I lifted my fourteen month old to one of our deep window sills so she could watch. I stood inside the curtain while she sat there, fascinated by the sight and the perspective. Is that a little cocoon that she'll have a flash of somewhere in her unconscious? What about pressing her face to the window of the playhouse in our neighbor's basement full of hilarity at some simple peekaboo? Or collapsing in her sister's bed or chasing a dog at a street fair in the city?

I read poems to my girls with the hope that they'll keep fragments of language, or at least know that I did and possibly value that as well. I write things down to be sure that I keep fragments of life. I trust the page more than my memory alone.

One image I have of my father is in his living room, his eyes fixed to pages of a book, his mouth full of Robert Frost's words. Some of my father's favorite poems are my favorite poems. The tone I remember in his readings is the tone I often look for when I read.

I’d like to get away from earth awhile
And then come back to it and begin over.
May no fate willfully misunderstand me
And half grant what I wish and take me away
Not to return. Earth’s the right place for love:
I don’t know where it’s likely to go better.