Tangible Memory

Tangible Memory

By: Robert Aaron Goldsborough

         You can usually feel when someone has left the room.  A sudden change in the air pressure, like the atmosphere itself has a hole right through it.  Then you are alone.  Loneliness is empowering in its way.  It allows us to focus inward and try to see ourselves.  We get to ask those questions that can’t be asked when someone else is present.  Questions about ourselves that no one else would even care to over hear; questions that they may not even know, or want to know the answers to. 

         When I was very young my grandfather gave me the gift of a toy car.  It was dark blue and metal with working doors and real rubber tires.  I loved that little car; the heft of it in my small hands, the feel of the rubber tires as I pushed it along the paving in front of my parents’ small rental.  At the time I felt that car to be the best present I had ever received, compounded by the fact that it was the first thing my grandfather had ever given me.  It would be the last.  We were poor, I did not know we were, I had no ideas outside of my small world to tell me any different.  It was easier to be happy as a child.  Things that were too big weren’t your concern and you were quite pleased with the way that worked.  Looking backwards seems to take on the atmosphere of that empty room; It’s lonely.  I can almost feel the weight of that car in my hand now as I write this.  I know the weight of it is out of proportion with the size of my hands now, but the comfort and gratefulness of just having such a wonderful thing is a tangible memory that my hand has not forgot.  I did not own that special car for long, not even a week. 

         I had and still have, as it goes, an older brother.  He wasn’t that much older than me, but the difference in ages between the very young can seem as distant as oceans, and the older has to be the one to assert his dominance.  I’ve seen it in the animal kingdom hundreds of times and we can see it all the way through high school and sometimes, with the right lack of maturity, we see it extended into adulthood.  Not saying that children are wild animals, but they are wild in their own way.  With emotions sticking to actions and every day fresh with the unknown wanting youth to name it.  Yes, we were all once that free.  Asserting his dominance my brother snuck into the tiny room where I had been laid down for my nap and stole that precious car from me.  I remember tears; all mine, like trying to see through waterfalls.  My voice cracked and pitched inhaling the running water as I asked ‘how?’ and ‘where?’ of everyone.  My brother summoning his entire mean-spirited older-than-you attitude explained how he and our cousin had taken the car and buried it in an alley.  He had no reason besides his grin.  I wanted to be shown where, but he had been clever.  The alley was outside of my reach.  I was still too young to wander that far.  He had told my parents that I had lost the car myself, sealing my and the cars fate.  My special car was buried like the treasure I held it to be, never to be found. 

         That car is probably still buried or paved over as time does, peeling its blue and gnawing the soft rubber away.  I still think about that car from time to time, but as with everything time seems to soften the feelings.  I did ask my brother, years later, why he had done such a cruel thing to me and he had no memory of it, and now that my grandfather has been dead for some years there is no one, but myself to remember that little blue car.  I hope that my brother lied to me about burying it.  I would have preferred that he had traded it with some other kids or even given it away for someone else to play with.  It just seems too cruel to end the life of such a wonderful present by just burying it.  Yes, I gave it the nature of life in my memories as we all do with things from time to time.  We invest part of our lives in objects and animate them like velveteen rabbits.  We miss and attach emotions to things that are not much more than dust collecting bobbles, but we do this with meaning.  This is how we see inside.  This is how we avoid our loneliness.