Today has featured the bluest sky I think I’ve ever seen, cloudless with warm, clear bright sunshine. Been porch pondering in the swing watching the birds. I filled up the feeders and hung two bird cakes on a feeder pole. The chubby wren that serenades his bride from the porch bannisters loves the bird cakes. I wasn’t back to the porch steps till he flew down for a snack. I sprayed the pole with cooking spray so Fatty the squirrel and Grandpaw the raccoon can’t climb the pole for a bite of bird cake.

Saw a pretty white crowned sparrow on my scuppernong vine by the porch bannisters. He blended in well with vines but I could see the white and black lines on his head. Don’t usually have sparrows in my yard. They are pretty birds, small and brown, with a little gray vest and a pale beak. The neighborhood hoot owl swooped over the yard after I saw the sparrow and sat on a high oak branch for a long time. The owl was the exact color of the branch. He kept giving me and Penelope an intent, “stink eye” look.

Remembered and watched the sunset tonight. Miss Sun must have been wearing a gown of sequined sterling silver, her rays so bright and white I couldn’t watch her walk down the horizon to bed the day goodnight. Mother Nature used wondrous watercolor shades of amber and cerulean in her painting of the sunset. I watched her wash the whole horizon in pale gold and brush light cerulean along the top of her golden layer. As I watched the painting come to life the horizon was painted a pale peach and the clouds rolled up in blue and light purple, straight hard candy sticks flavored with blueberry and plum. So pretty! Father Sky squinted his eyes to kiss the sun good night in her silver sequined gown and went to wake the night, hanging his moon and bejeweling the night sky canvas with stars to guide the heavenly travelers.

Took all of Rosie’s ornaments off her old Christmas tree today. I put a garbage bag over the tree last year and squished it in the Christmas closet knowing she needed a new tree for this year. I put all her ornaments on two tall slender silver tinsel trees in the lady den. She collected shoe ornaments and after her death I put them on a little Christmas tree and then I began collecting shoes and purses and little girlie ornaments to continue her collection. She’s been gone 21 years, but the wound of her death is just as fresh as the day it happened. I cried putting the ornaments on the tree today. If she was living, I know Santa would have to put an expensive purse under the tree! Probably some, shoes, too!

The holidays are hard to struggle through when you’ve buried a child. Her trees are beautiful to me and when I came in at sunset, to ponder in the lady den, a bright ray of sun beamed through the windows and kissed the trees making the tinsel sparkle brightly. I know it was Rosie saying, “Thanks, Mom!” And as Chief would say, “You’re welcome, Baby Lamb.” Always have a little lamb on her tree. I put a lamb and yellow leopard sunglasses on every tree in the house to have her presence remembered.

I love this quote by George W. Douglas. “Every happiness of yesterday is a memory for tomorrow.” What would we do without our memories? I don’t know — they mean so much to me. Not having memories would make our melancholy days unbearable.

Memories cheer us and help us remember our loved ones. I think God gives us memories to help us have a meaningful life. We cherish and hold onto our memories. Memories of family celebrations and traditions help build the family’s identity and bond families together. We don’t live in the past with our memories but the memories influence how we respond to the world around us. We learn from our mistakes and the memories of those experiences teach us to to rely on our knowledge and experience when making decisions.

Think how many different memories we collect in a lifetime. I’m just quickly thinking — the ABCs, multiplication tables, state capitols, bird identification, telephone numbers, holiday recipes, directions to our loved ones’ homes, getting married, skills we’ve acquired at work, our high school and college days, having children, trips, military experience, moving to a new home, our vocabulary…. Over the course of our lifetime, science says we hold up to 1 quadrillion pieces of information in our brains. I’m pretty sure my memory vault doesn’t store that many. I have trouble remembering yesterday.

We all have stories to tell, but we can only tell stories about things we remember. Howard Thurman defines memory as “one of God’s great gifts to the human spirit without which neither life nor experience could have any meaning.” Memory really is a priceless gift.

“My memories mean a lot to me, and I hold them close to my heart.” —Radhika Apte