The Pond
Reflections on Memory and Memoir
First experiences cling to the vessel of your mind and will never let go. They will be there when the other secondary, tertiary, and later experiences slide off the slate of memory. What is it to remember something so deeply that the mere thought of it sends you into reverie? Why is it that some places, events, times engrave themselves deeply into your subconscious as a reminder of their presence in your life while others leave only the slightest scratch?
My grandparents owned a horse farm called “Southern Pines,” but in my memory and the memory of all in my family it will forever be known as “The Farm.” The Farm is where I would go every Friday after school growing up until the dreadful day that my grandparents decided that they were getting too old to manage the hundreds of acres properly and decided to sell. On the property was a large man-made pond. It was my first experience with a body of water greater than a bathtub. As such, I am drawn back to it in my dreams and my recollections when I am in the mood to reflect upon those experiences that defined my childhood. I am a man who is grateful for these moments in memory for the last despite my ageing and the passing of time.
It was “The Pond” and not “The Lake,” but why? Why did my grandparents decide to name the pond as merely such? Limnologists differ on their definitions of what makes a lake, not a pond and a pond, not a lake, but it comes down to depth, area, and whether or not light can reach the bottom to support plant growth. Perhaps because the pond was man-made was why they decided to not call it a lake, but then again there are man-made lakes, such as Lake Sinclair in my home state of Georgia. So that couldn’t possibly be the root cause of the naming. Besides, when I was a child, The Pond seemed to be deeper than infinity, larger than any other water system I had ever seen before. Yet, it was still a pond and not a lake, and it will remain as such for as long as we remember it that way.
“Oh Mr Catfish, get on my line, bum bum bum, I’ll feed you worms and minnows all of the time, bum bum bum, Oh Mr Catfish.” My Dad would sing this to the tune of Mr Sandman by The Chordettes as we fished, casting lines into the great depths of the pond, like the veteran fishermen we believed ourselves to be. In my mind, Dad was the consummate fishing buddy. That’s what we were, buddies. That was more important in those days than the divorce that ripped my parents and my potential for a family apart. I remember the smell of slightly rotten chicken livers and stink bait, the grime of the mud on the banks of The Pond, and the sight of the bobber dipping just below the surface as a fish began its curious nibbling. That is something I’d rather remember than the arguing, the name-calling, and the buying of my love.
Layers: large bodies of water have them and so do memories. As the seasons change the layers flip corresponding to the changes in temperature. As I age, positive memories become tinged with melancholy and negative memories occasionally become flavoured with bittersweet nostalgia. “Remembrance of things past is not necessarily the remembrance of things as they were,” and that is something that I have to constantly remind myself as I set down to record these memories in ink. There is a dissipation of the objective truth, but that’s all well and good. The only way back in time is through memory and that has to be good enough. “When we think of the past it’s the beautiful things we pick out. We want to believe it was all like that.” Perhaps it was we were just not present enough, or too young to appreciate what was going on. Or, perhaps, the remembrance of the beautiful and the descent of the ugly into our nightmares is what protects us and keeps us whole, keeps us maintaining the illusion that we are not broken people living in a broken world.
With The Farm being sold, came the beginning of the slow dissolution of what was my family unit. The grandparents moved into a house on a golf course and began their not so graceful descent into old age and for my grandmother, dementia. The waters of The Pond fed us with vitality and the pastures of The Farm were fertile with spiritual energy, without which my mother’s side of the family has become enervated. We are all so different now than we were when we were younger, but that’s the blessing and curse of ageing. Life is a process that flows like the creek and pumps that fed The Pond. Yet, in another way, there is stillness inside us, much like the surface of The Pond, which leaves us able to dip into the memories of a better time without fear of drowning since the light can most assuredly reach the bottom of those waters.
