memoir | moderndayruth

Tags

coming of age, memoir, memories, time travel

for Jim Maher and Lisa Frideborg Lloyd

We are threaded of memories of things that once were. It is this unique blueprint, inherited from our parents, which became more and more elaborate as we were growing up and becoming individuals – on different sides of the planet, in very different surroundings.
Jim grew up in Australia, Lisa came to age in Sweden, i was born to a country that meanwhile died. You would say, these people are threaded from different substance and their blueprints are too diverse for their memories to ever resonate with each other…
Yet nothing can be further from truth.
You see, there is that layer of archetypal remembrance where all the unique blueprints merge into one big echo of the universal human experience.
And, thus, albeit Jim and Lisa and myself grew up in different parts of the world, we came to age together and that’s the memories we share.
Here is Jim’s story:
“This is the kind of story that when I read I don’t want to finish. Nostalgia set in early while reading it, my mum used to wash her hair in the remainders of Dad’s home made beer, he had a big cauldron in the back shed that was always brewing with egg shells as well as other things floating along with the other ingredients that did not sink on the top of the liquid which was bubbling over the wood fire stove he had made. It was against the law in this country to make your own beer back then or any kind of alcohol),so we had to keep quiet and say nothing about it, mum did not drink it though she said it was the best shampoo, and dad always made sure there was plenty for her! Anyway those days are long gone, my dad died when I was 28 (1985) and mum died in the year 2000.
Thanks for those memories today Lena, I had really forgotten about my mum washing her hair with dad’s homemade beer.
Your story was like going to the fortune teller you wrote about and taking a trip ‘back’ in time (….”she could read the past too”) …to where I once lived. For myself as well… full of what was once for me just common… (long before ‘new age’ was even a phrase or a used terminology let alone a buzz or marketing word) more like just a way of life or practice amongst our elders…
Today your story of The Fortune Teller both bought a happy tear to my eye and also took me back in time for a while.
I want to thank both you and your story for being able to do that Lena.”

And here is Lisa’s: “Very enjoyable read. Made me feel nostalgic and want to visit… possibly because it reminded me of my own coffee grounds-reading grandmother… who, as it happens, was also fabulous at embroidery! Oh, how I wish I had learned more from her! Maybe one day I’ll be blessed with grandchildren… and maybe one of them will be a seer too…”

I am certain the children will indeed see and that they will take the things they’ve seen with them, to the better future.