Hamish’s Soccer Game
Of my three brothers, Hamish was the only one who played soccer several years in a row. I wasn’t a team player. My parents always joked that had I played soccer, I’d probably snatch the ball and run away with it to avoid working together with my teammates. They were likely right. Instead, I swam. My younger brothers, Angus and Liam, followed suit.
I have a memory from that time. It’s a crisp fall day in Vancouver and we’re at Hamish’s soccer game. Perhaps it isn’t so much a memory as it is a collection of feelings. I remember being cold. That kind of damp cold that chills you to your bones. I remember sliced oranges and a promise of hot chocolate. I remember the crunchy fall leaves, my parents’ Honda Odyssey van parked among the other soccer parents’ vehicles that lined the street.
But mostly, I think of the smell. The musky smell of the crunchy leaves. The smell of the previous night’s rain. The far-off smell of a wood burning fireplace. It’s distinct, but hard to attach words to. When fall rolls around, my mind is inevitably transported back to that time and to that feeling.
Lately I’ve been thinking about memories – their power, but also their limitations. My memory of Hamish’s soccer game, for example, lacks context, distinguishable features, and any real facts, if you will. I couldn’t tell you who was on his team, who they were playing, or which of my brothers joined me as a spectator, and yet, this memory is so prominent in my mind.
I wonder about what I’ll remember of Beaver Creek in the future. Eventually, we’ll leave this place. We’ll end up somewhere else and what we’ll have left of our time here will be memories and experiences.
I’ve kept a journal (barely) at various stages of my life. The entries for my entire 33 years are probably enough to fill one notebook. There’s the entry from 1996 where I solemnly declared that for ‘Lent’ I would give up scratching my brothers (my toxic trait at age 7). There’s the entry from 1998 where I described how my friend and I were going to open a veterinary practice. And there are more entries from my time in high school, where I wrote mostly about friends and boys. Well, mostly about boys, I’d say.
These days, I often think about journaling. I tell myself that what I need in order to get into the habit of memorializing the day to day, the highs and lows, the teachings and the learnings is to journal. I convince myself that if I had a new, beautiful journal, I’d write in it. Not so.
I’m torn about the practice of journaling. On the one hand, it’s comforting to go back and to reflect on what once was. Memories are fleeting, but words are forever. On the other hand, something about writing my thoughts and feelings out on paper in that way feels both vulnerable and uncomfortable.
I recently read Tara Westover’s ‘Educated’, a memoir of a young woman who grows up to anti-establishment, survivalist parents in Idaho. Where most children experience a formal education and after-school activities, Tara’s childhood involved working at her father’s scrapyard and bottling her mother’s herbal tinctures. Her memoir is in large part based off of her journals, and her version of events appear to be painstakingly cross referenced with those of the family members she maintains contact with. I loved the book, but even still, it made me think about memory and its limitations.
Even when confronted with the same event, two people’s perceptions and experiences of that event can differ drastically. I’d like to think that journaling might enable me to better remember the past, an undistorted and factual account of my experiences. I think of the tens of thousands of photos I’ve taken since moving north, and the hundreds of thousands I’ve taken in my lifetime. Surely those will help me remember, too. They’re something like a photo journal.
When I really think about it, though, smell unearths my most powerful memories. It’s not words, nor pictures that conjure up the feelings so visceral I am almost transported back in time. It’s smell. So, when I eventually leave Beaver Creek, I know that the smell of mosquito coils will remind me of the gas station in the summer. I know that the smell of fuel will remind me of the kids, for the hours and hours they spend working on and playing with their snow machines and four wheelers. I know the smell of a wild roses will remind me of a friend. I know that the smell of cooking oil will remind me of community members making fry bread at the school.
While I know that smell will bring these memories back, I also know that memories are faulty. Memories are punctuated by chasms of darkness attributed to the omission or twisting of details or forgetfulness. It is better to live in the moment than to think of preserving it. For now, instead of journaling, that’s just what I’ll do.