Fading Memories

I was boarding the plane back to the US and I could already feel my vacation slipping away. The stress of the taxi and the airport and the papers and the bag checking takes up too much space. I tried to be so careful with my moments, tried to wallow in them and let them envelope me. I tried to sink into the ancient smells and the tastes I held on my tongue and feeling of being myself somewhere else. But as I sat on that plane, the plane that looked like all the other planes, those moments were fading from my mind. All the brightness and color and laughter and flavor was turning black and white and dull inside.

I didn't want to forget my first morning waking up in Lisbon, opening the tall french doors and sitting on a tiny balcony. I looked over to the elderly building across the way with peeling paint and weeds growing through the cracks then down into the black and white cobbled streets that feel both old and new at once and I felt like I could breathe again. That I was myself alone and where I was supposed to be. Everything was beautiful.

I didn't want to forget my sister arguing with the waiter about splitting an entree, only to have me interrupt with, "Ok, dois," (Ok, two) in my terrible Portuguese which somehow impressed him so much he brought us free ginjinha. I didn't want to forget drinking ginjinha, that famous cherry liqueur that goes down like cough syrup, bitter and not quite drunk enough to want another. Or the next two he brought us just for fun.

I didn't want to forget driving with my sister through the Spanish countryside, navigating Las Pueblas Blancas, mastering roundabouts along the way. Or the way she liked to over pronounce the name of every town with her American accent. "Sauce-jo." Or the time she somehow drove vertically across the gorge that separates old and new Ronda, twice.

I didn't want to forget wandering the streets of Arcos de la Frontera and stumbling upon a view that took our breath away.

I didn't want to forget the feeling of sitting at that cafe, drinking cappuccinos surrounded by amazing architecture and having no where to be. Or at the end of the trip, when we were exhausted and I tried to take a another selfie with my sister and she said, "Where are we, what is this?" And made me laugh out loud.

I find I have to remind myself that I was actually there. I look at the photos on my phone. I send my sister texts about the trip to reassure myself that it wasn't a dream. "Remember when the hotel owner thought we were German?" "Remember the mint tea in Tangier?" I want to keep all those memories closeby. I want them to spill out of my mouth at the slightest provocation, which, of course they can't because society. But I want them there anyway. I feel myself willing them forward constantly.

And it's so unfair.

Because then, I'll be reading a book, or sitting in my car or shopping at Trader Joe's and a song or a phrase or a moment triggers something, a memory, but a bad one, and I can't stop it. The memory flashes in my mind and that wrenching feeling sweeps through my gut, all warmth and heat, and crawls up my throat clawing at my insides and I feel sick. My body trembles and I gasp in air trying to exorcise it. As though I am experiencing it all over again, physically, as though no time has passed.

Those memories get to stay,

But the joyful ones, those I have to dig into with my fingernails and hang onto with my life. I have to flip through them constantly, like a mental photo album, remembering, just in case they decide to slip away.


Me and my sister in Ronda, Spain 2016