We had finally finished sealing the garage floor. Now there, if you were to name a thoroughly suburban occupation, is one. Anyway, in the course of putting things back in their respective places and finally throwing out some of those things that should never have earned a place in the garage at all, one of my son's old baseball caps turned up. Thoroughly chewed by the dalmation who came to live with us for awhile (and who was just as quirky as me, so she fit in), the hat with the Ohio State Wrestling logo, a brim, and not much else left of it was an immediate transport for me to another time. A few black and white dalmation-hairs were still stuck to the hat.
Some items seem to be infused with memories that meet electronically somehow through touch with the neurons and dark places where you hide the sad or dark things and light them up, bringing them to the surface again. It's immediate. It's overwhelming. It's consuming.
I remember asking my now-grown son one time if he would like to have this hat. He said there wasn't much left of it - I should just toss it. But I didn't. Being there, at that camp at that time in his life, meant a lot to my son. So it meant a lot to me. And I put it back in the box in the garage.
The dalmation - Patch - meant a lot to us, too. Even me, the eternal, "I don't need a pet" person. She got into some poison one day, and we had to put her down. It was gut-wrenching. Long, long after she was gone, my son sat on the floor and held her. My heart, my son, our dog....it hurt so much.
I think I'll cut the logo out of the hat and mount it in a frame.
