A Distant Memory (April 4)

That evening, I looked out of my bedroom window before going to sleep. The storm had lifted. Bright stars shimmered around the moon. A distant memory or perhaps a dream glided into focus. In it my mother and I were seated on the cottage steps. As we scanned the nighttime sky, she seemed to speak half to me, half to the depths of space on the invisible horizon. Her faraway voice told of an immigrant child’s timorous reconnaissance of unfamiliar manners, enthusiasms, even articles of clothing in her new transatlantic home. Then came the struggle to navigate a society shaped by the imposing image of devoted yet self-absorbed adults. And at last the faltering definition of a future that might somehow become her own. This was a mother I had rarely come close to or even glimpsed. But it was no wonder she sensed only perils where Granny saw possibilities. Neither was likely to change.

(p. 57)

Even on the edge of the city where I once lived, the night sky was far less light-polluted in those days than at present, but still it was obvious how much brighter the moon and stars shone over Georgian Bay. As the folk song reminds us, “You don’t know what you’ve got ‘til it’s gone.”  That theme resonates across many scenes and events in ‘Providence Point, and of course there’s a good deal of truth in it. All the same, we need not hone in only on the negative side. A song like ‘Big Yellow Taxi’ – and who knows? maybe also a novel like ‘Providence Point’ – can recreate vivid recollections that reverberate for years and years.

And the philosopher Henri Bergson confirms that viewpoint when he defines memories as past experiences that remain present so as to give daily events their most vivid meaning (‘Matter and Memory,’ 1896).

If you, too, have experienced memories in that way, why not leave a Comment?

(Illustration generated by AI)