The Memory Keeper . . .

It's this new something I want to do. Keeping memories. Showing them to you.
The precious memories. To say, "These are my treasures. The graces I should remember I have, and have had."
Committed to imagination and memory. No pictures but the ones in my mind. To remember without help. To ponder in my heart, like Mary did. She had no pictures, and she didn't forget. Never.

So this is my first memory. The one with the little boy in a John Deer tractor shirt. When the sun poured hot over the ranch and we went to sit in the "shadows". With the wild cow in the corral and the "cute little yellow birds", hungry in the yard. Where we took Popsicles in the heat of the morning and "Let's go eat in the backhoe." The dusty seat in a piece of machinery that "Daddy droved when he was lil boy." The mud from the "fire truck water" we shouldn't get on our shoes.

Purple and red make gray. Popsicles turn your tongue colors, and "let's have a nudder one." So we did and ate them in the backhoe. Again. Because time is short and the day soon ends. Spring will be over and summer not long enough, and there's loads of Popsicles to remember yet. To shake and laugh because they're so cold in our mouth, and wash sticky green fingers, with dirt from play under finger nails.

And the sad thing is, I didn't know it was such a precious memory until later. When the family wanted to know how my day went, and I told them, and in repeating to them these things I knew how rare and original--this eating of Popsicles in a backhoe with a little boy who talks more than you do. Who remembers every piece of construction equipment by name and shows you what Dad uses to plow the fields and the pellets in the meat smoker. So I decided I would do it--remember it as a grace-memory and not just another day.