We paid $4 for music lessons today.
On our way down to the Strand Bookstore there was a man playing an erhu. When the kids each dropped a dollar into his pile and he inclined his head in a certain way I was, for the merest fraction of a second, a graduate student traveling in China. Like those polaroids that flip forward in Run, Lola, Run I saw stills of a 24-year old me: stepping out of a velvety Beijing night and into a brightly lit grocery store where surprised faces turned towards my friend and I, and abruptly stopped talking -- frozen; walking under flapping laundry and past Chinese patients wandering around outside of a hospital with bandages wrapped around their heads; sitting in the front of a small boat with some boatmen navigating the river -- looking up into the passing trees and seeing monkeys. Flash-flash-flash-flash. I was there, and then I was back standing on a subway platform with my kids.
We ran our fingers along spines, cracked open new books and carefully let fall open old ones. We read flaps and backs and considered. Both children eventually chose a book for the long car trip we have coming up on Friday.
On the subway platform coming home we listened to three gentlemen harmonizing and crooning along with their keyboard. Another well spent two dollars. Right before our train arrived and we stepped through the automated doors they began "Unchained Melody." Flash-flash-flash. I see my older sister on her wedding day -- she's barely lifting up her gown to show somebody her brightly-colored floral tights; she and her husband are driving down a freeway in Reno -- I'm in the backseat and see their profiles turn and look at each other; my brother-in-law sitting in my grandma's living room with shorts on -- I wonder if after 20 years of being related I'll ever see him again after the divorce is final. The subway doors shut and we are projected forward through the dark tunnel.
I've been thinking about those ice cores we learned about yesterday. Similar to tree rings, the strata that stripe the core represent time. Within each layer tiny bubbles of trapped air tell the stories of what was happening while that time was passing. Layers of days and bubbles of nuances. Minutes and moments. And always the layering. We march forward day by day and right now my kids are collecting little bubbles -- little snapshots that will get trapped in time that will escape again into the ether when a layer gets melted away.
While the kiddos were home with The Sister working on un pequeno Spanish, finishing up piano, and organizing the books in their room I was at tea with some moms from "school." Smothering my scone with jam and cream I felt content to know that kind-hearted, smart, fun women will be there to ground me when we return to the grid next year. Walking with one of my friends after tea, she told me that she had asked her middle school-aged daughter what she thought of the memories that my family is making this year, and her daughter pointed out that she and her two siblings also created shared memories by having attended the same elementary school. I think that she is very insightful. Twenty years from now when her brain shows her a snapshot of her elementary school cafeteria, or third-grade teacher, she can find comfort in knowing that her sister's and her brother's brain will pull up the same image. Experiences are what make life life, but shared experiences make life eternal.
Tonight a family chock-full of our favorite people came over for dinner and we had some King Cake here on the tail end of Epiphany. Last year when we all celebrated together the oldest girl of the family found la feve -- a tiny porcelain cow -- in her piece of cake. The Girl was crushed. That night she wept passionately. As she explained it, it's not that she didn't want her friend to get it (her friend is four years older and my daughter idolizes her), it's just that the cow was so cute it hurt her heart to not get one as well. Flip forward one year and that cute friend, who has kept that bean-sized cow well and safe, brought it tonight and accepted a trade for a plastic giraffe (her favorite animal). Fortunately, The Girl was able to meet the terms of the trade because she happened to have a small plastic giraffe that I brought home from Scotland six years ago. At the time the giraffe didn't mean much to her, but after six years of dormancy tonight was its moment. Someday I will record the story of why I bought that giraffe. I certainly didn't know then -- standing in the gift shop of the Kelvingrove Museum -- the role that it would someday play in my daughter's happiness.
As The Righteous Brothers, and the brothers on the subway platform sing: "And time can do so much."
