Menorca and Memory

I recently spent a weekend in Menorca. It’s cleaner, greener, quieter and less invaded by tourists and cement than Mallorca. The scenery is less spectacular, less breathtaking than that of Mallorca. There are no mountains, just little hills covered in pine, welcoming mounds dotted all over the countryside. But it was those montículos and the red earth breaking through now and then in the fields that opened a door in the corridors of my memory. As we drove along in the rented Clio, I was suddenly back in the Devon of my childhood, to the ondulating landscape and russet earth of that corner of the west of England, which has nothing to do with Menorca. But there I was. For a moment I was a 9 year old rosy-cheeked girl striding through the lush grass in my wellies without a care in the world.

Memory is selective and likes to play tricks on us. They say we only remember clearly very important or significant events in our lives, that our other routine days are crammed together in an undefined lump. We can’t remember in detail what happened to us last week unless we consciously make an effort at the time. What a waste of precious days and years! Memory is the glue that holds our life stories together. What are we without it?

My mother used to keep a ‘home’ diary and write down every evening what she had done during the day, but only the most boring and inane things, like what she had cooked for dinner or if she had washed her hair. There was nothing about how she felt, how irritated, upset, happy or excited she had been that day, or what had caused it. Although maybe that was a safety precaution against prying eyes, because her diaries were open to the public. But it was a start, a way of recording her uneventful life that ended up in dusty stacks of little diaries in a cupboard that nobody bothered to read after a while because they were so dull. Even so, it reminded her of her existence every day. She obviously kept her secret diary in her heart.

So after the unexpected gift of memory on Menorca, I am thinking I should transcribe in some form or other what I do, feel and think every day and put it in some kind of order. It not only gives me an inkling of who I am when I am honest with myself, but also it will tell those I leave behind more about who I was and what I did while I was on this planet in this human form. That is if they are interested, of course. There’s a strange beauty to be found in recollection, even of ugly or sad moments, because somehow we shape the chaos of images, emotions and thoughts into a meaningful form.

I’m thankful to the nudge memory gave me on that lovely island, for the vivid flashback to my childhood. I’ll try to write it down from now on.