Snippets

The Twig

THE TWIG

I am constantly amazed by the complexity of the human brain and its power to recall long forgotten memories,

This sense of amazement has not diminished as I enter my own latter years of life. In fact it appears to be increasing. Whenever something or somebody triggers off the recollection of an event that happened many years ago, it springs vividly to life in one’s mind; as if it had occurred a day or two before. 

Often these recollections are of events that are quite unremarkable and hardly worthy of being remembered of themselves. Yet whenever something happens to spark off such a memory the brain never falters. The occurrence is brought to mind often with a startling clarity. Names, places and events are recalled and relived together with their sounds and tastes. Even smells are capable of recall.

Such a recollection happened yesterday while I was working in the garden with Will, my two-year old grandson.

Our task for the day was to clear the long neglected and badly overgrown patch below the four trees optimistically called, the orchard. It lay at the very bottom of the garden, out of site of the house. The area was rarely visited by anybody, hence the neglect.

Will loved being there, losing himself in the dense undergrowth of high weeds and saplings. On this day, he barged through the underbrush gouging out tracks in the growth between its denser clumps and thickets. His fast, toddler’s swagger and unintelligible gurgling stopped only when he disturbed a nesting thrush or blackbird. Will would stand still and listened to the bird as it scolded him from a nearby branch; after which he would run off  about his explorations with renewed vigour.

I called to him for help from time to time to clear away the mowings and clippings. He came eagerly enough when I called out to him and soon decided it was better to scatter the cut vegetation back over the ground than stack it to rot down in a tidy heap. He was easily distracted and would leave me with the work to scamper off and play his own games until I recalled him to the task in hand.

It was a good partnership for the most part. I cut and chopped the weeds; Will occasionally helped to clear them away. I sweated and complained while Will chatted away with the incessant mumblings of a contented two-year-old. This continued in a cycle of games and work for most of the afternoon. Then, when the sun lowered in the sky, giving everything a golden sheen to mark the transition from afternoon to evening; it happened!

Will had taken hold of a small ash sapling from the heap of clippings and waved it round his head. He made raspberry noises with his mouth as he waved his stick and I smiled at him in the knowledge that he was both happy and safe in what he was doing. Will was emulating the helicopter that had flown overhead earlier that day. I left him to his game and went back to the job in hand. I would have loved to stand and watch the boy at play, but wanted to have less work to do the next time I was press-ganged by Will's grand-mother into  tidying this patch.

Then I heard him yell and spun round thinking he was in trouble of some sort. He had stumbled and was falling towards me. Instinctively I reached out to catch him and the brush of his sapling swiped across my face. I yelled in surprise. It was now Will's turn to worry that something dreadful might have happened to me. He forgot his own distress and looked at me, silent and with concern on his face.

I had been surprised, but felt no pain. I was not hurt and  stood quite still as something remarkable  happened.

My mind transported me back to the war years. I was again a toddler, a little older than Will was now. We played then in gangs. Each street had its own gang. Every child in the street that had speech, understanding and the ability to walk; or more importantly to run away was a member. The gang looked after its own people. Many of us were temporarily without fathers while they were away in the services or on war work. A lot of us were without mothers either during the daytimes. The Mums did the jobs of their husbands in the workshops and factories while their menfolk fought the war. The street gangs served important social functions,  acting often in loco parentis: unofficially of course.

Our games then were often of chase and we ran after each other through fields and woods. Sometimes laughing, at other times crying if we fell or were slightly injured. Always we were happy and together. I had not thought of these moments for more than 60 years and now they were recalled for me as if they happened yesterday. Will's sapling had worked that magic and I basked in the nostalgia of the moment. I later marvelled at the power of the brain to store treasured memories in its closets and bring them out whenever an appropriate signal unlocked the door to one’s cerebral treasure chest.

It had not been the sapling itself that sparked off the memory. It was not the fibrous silkiness of the leaves or the sting of its abrupt contact with my face either. It had been the acrid sweetness of its smell that caused the revelation. A comfortable sweet smell that I had not encountered for so many years. For those, few brief moments I had been transported back in time. I was away from my grandson and this place where we were working and was again a grandchild myself, playing with my friends of those years in the wild places we frequented. Back to the days when we ran headlong and without care through meadows and woods. It was then that I first felt the sting of branches across my face and the acrid sweet aftertaste they left behind them.

How wonderful those moments were in the days before now. How wonderful also the power of our minds to recall them for us to relive again.