Releasing a treasure trove of memories

The Boston Globe

Beverly Beckham

Old memories, like flotsam and jetsam, bob to the surface at odd times. I am sitting in church with my granddaughter, Lucy, loving the feel of her arms around my neck. She is all mine in church, no distractions, no one to whisk her away. And I am thinking about Father Coen, and how he used to say that it didn't matter if children understood the Mass. Their presence was enough. That taking kids to church was like taking them to baseball games. Eventually they would come to know and love both.

Father Coen was a pastor in my town and when he retired and became a senior priest in residence at St. Elizabeth in Milton, I followed him there because we were friends and he was my inspiration. I couldn't imagine church or life without him.

But here I am now, five years later, and here is Lucy, whom he never met. And I am remembering him and his words, because of the routine of church, because of the music and the stained glass and the soft lights and my arms around Lucy, this one hour a week, our one uninterrupted hour.

The mind meanders when it's relaxed. I understand this.

As I sit holding Lucy, I watch Abby in front of me, 18 months old already, church a part of her world, too. And I am watching the little boy across the aisle who, once when he arrived late, stopped in front of the altar to wave to the priest, a gesture that said, "See? Here I am!" And I am again in the present and in the moment.

Then the memory tide kicks something up. Who knows why? There's a ripple somewhere. How does this happen that without provocation a long ago afternoon is pushed from deep within all the way to the surface where it shimmers and floats?

I see myself in the surfaced moment, like Scrooge looking though the window of his old school. I am a child but old enough to be left alone, 10, maybe 11. I am in the dining room, looking out the window, waiting for my parents, watching for their car.

And I am thinking how people who wear glasses are lucky because they will never go blind or get their eye poked out, that a stone can hit them in the face but their glasses won't break.

I believe this because I know that God would never let someone who had to wear glasses get injured by a thing designed to help them. I am convinced that this is how the world works.

I know about nuclear war and fallout, but I still believe in the protective quality of glasses.

My parents are late and I am looking out the window and worrying, thinking about car windows shattering, and wishing, selfishly, desperately, that they both wore glasses.

At school, the nuns say that at any moment the Communists could walk into our classroom and line us all up, boys on the left, girls on the right and shoot us dead for believing in God. That's why we must always be in the state of grace. I am not afraid of the Communists but I am afraid of stones and broken glass.

What brought this moment back? And why? It is hardly significant. My parents came home safe. They weren't hurled through a windshield, not ever, just through life the way we all are. And the Communists didn't get us after all.

Wishing on first stars and wishbones. Searching for a pot of gold. Not stepping on a crack. Kids believe in all kinds of fanciful things.

But I didn't just believe. I was certain.

When, I wonder, did I realize that eyeglasses weren't talismans? And why don't I remember this fall from grace?

I wonder what strange things Lucy will believe and what she will recall of these days with me.

I wonder if the little boy who waves to the priest will be an old man some day whose mind takes him back to today?

I wonder what he believes, what he thinks when he races up the aisle, when he waves at the priest, when he puts his dollars into the collection plate.

Flotsam and jetsam. They're indistinguishable, because in time all memories become treasures.