Memory is a Time Machine

La Noblesse du temps by Salvador Dali

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​There’s a photograph near my dining table. My dad snapped this pic on a summer day, in a lush green city park. There are four behatted subjects: my grandmother, my mom, my one-year-old daughter, and me. My two favorite things about this picture are the suspicious glare with which my daughter is regarding her grandfather, and that we are four generations and the span of time that represents.

The photo is like a time-traveling window. I look through it and am in that day. I feel the hot July air on my skin, playground sand rough on my ankles, the slide scorching fingers and bum. I hear the high-pitched squeak of the swing chains being pushed to the max, the squeals of children playing tag. I see squirrels racing around and up the trunks of huge shade trees, bees buzzing amongst the red and pink blooms of roses a short distance away. 

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The above photo of Dali’s bronze sculpture La Noblesse du temps (Nobility of time) was placed in its current location in Andorra in 2010. The soft clock face draped over the tree intrigued me. Dali used the crown on the top edge of the clock to signify time’s dominion over humans. I am resistant to this idea of time lording it over us. 

We can’t stop time, can’t stop the aging of our bodies and faculties. But stepping deeply into our recollections allows us to play with time. In that action of engaging with memories, we are time travelers. 

Most of us can choose a snapshot from our childhood - a physical picture or a picture held in our mind’s eye. We can focus on the details of that memory and allow the sensations of that day to burst into our mind like popcorn popping. The smell of the wet earth after a hard rain. The feel of a cold dog nose pushing into the palm of your hand. The sound of a train horn moving down the track slicing through the still night. The taste of your favorite cookie, hot out of the oven, melting across your tongue. Each sensation gives way to others, a long hallway of memory doors opening one after another, until you are right back in that space and time. You have traveled there. 

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On the day of that four-generation picture of my family, I am a mom still new to her job. Slathering sunblock on little pudgy arms, tying the sunhat back on for the 81st time. In the picture, my hand is holding my daughter’s chest - holding her heart. A couple years later, we’d use our hands over our hearts at morning preschool drop-off. She’d be at the goodbye window (the crying window), and as she watched me walk to my car, we both knew I was in her heart and she was in mine all day long. 

My daughter is now 17. Today we are adventuring - exploring colleges on a 3000-mile road trip.  We are many many days down the line from that July park outing almost 16 years ago. I would not agree that the “time has flown,” or that “it goes so fast.” More than a few days of those growing up years were mighty long ones. I am blessed to have clarity of detail and feeling in myriad moments with my daughter. The more I recall, the more memories come in. The way you look at the night sky, and the longer you gaze, the more bright stars show themselves - until there are so many stars the sky is filled with light.