The World's Bright Shapes

It wasn’t quite 6:00 as I woke today and the world felt washed so clean it made me remember my childhood, when all things shone simple and clear to the senses: the red of a favorite sweater; that tingly first bite of plum; the face of an old alarm clock, whose second-hand trembled and jumped minutely, tense with coiled energy.I remember waking in my bed when I was three and looking at my arm against the sheet.  “Well you’re awfully little!” I recall thinking, for the first time feeling my mind as a thing apart from my body.Animals lack this self-consciousness which we humans we have in abundance; we live, and we watch ourselves living.  Add to that the fact that we are acutely observant. We note things without even knowing we note them. One day we are sad past all explaining and it isn’t until night-time that we realize it is the anniversary of the death of one we long ago loved.Memories trail us like vapors, some too tender to speak of:  The caring hand of a parent stroking our worried brow. The slight pressure on our shoulder as a favorite teacher passes us earnest and working at our desk.And, if we dwell closely with others, we sense their feelings as well as our own.  David hasn’t even walked all the way inside the house before I can tell what kind of day he has had. One of our  girls calls on the phone and I answer with what seems to me a neutral hello. “What’s wrong?” she instantly asks, somehow detecting under my voice a sadness I scarce know is there.Stalked by memory, driven by dreams, we feel our feelings so acutely they all but wound us.David once described to me a memory so tender he has spoken of it only once in all the years of our marriage.  Imagine it as your  own: You are not yet ten with a father young and full of life who drives a car of a certain peachy hue, unusual even in that bland pastel era of the 1950s.Then suddenly, inexplicably, this young father sickens and dies, and the car is sold, and never again do you see a car that color. And then one day you do see one, and though you are older by 20 years than your father ever got to be all you can think is: “Here he is! Here he comes! He’s finally back!”Hearing such a memory, we feel our hearts constrict with an answering sadness and this welling compassion both comforts and pains us.It comforts, because it connects us one to another; but  it pains too, because we see then how far we have come from our baby days, when we woke, and only saw the world’s bright shapes, and heard its lively music.