The Beauty Of Memories

I am back home after an all too short week in California with my daughter and her family. It had been almost eighteen months to the day that I had last been with them. Prior to my trip my daughter and I had spent time planning for various activities and, as a result, I have come home with a wealth of new and different memories, everything from a walking food tour of China Town in San Francisco to a Painted Ladies Mini-Bus Wine Tasting Tour. All of us, me, my daughter, her husband, and daughter, did the China Town one, and just my daughter and I did the Wine Tasting and some antique shopping, too. One day was spent driving up to Auburn, California to visit my former Tennessee neighbors. Almost every day we enjoyed a bit of swimming pool/hot tub time. And daily there was abundant and delicious food, including one night out at a fancy restaurant in Napa. Lots of wonderful memories were able to be "packed up" and brought home with me. And, perhaps, that is the best part of the week because they will continue to enrich my life, as happy memories are supposed to do. They won't tarnish or get worn out. I will just need to keep them tucked away in my brain where I can hopefully pull them out and enjoy them again as I want and need. Have you ever really thought how much a part memories play in our lives, both little and big , good and bad ways? I'm not sure whether I decided to pay less attention to bad memories because of Covid or whether it is just because I am getting older. But I do know that I now I would prefer to only think about the good memories. Is there a point to remembering and dwelling on unhappy and negative events, unless it is to avoid repeating them again? I have found that when I spend time with sad and unpleasant memories, it can quickly tarnish the happy ones, as well as throw a pall over the creation of the new ones. I think we tend to take memories a bit for granted. They really are the building blocks of who we are and how we relate to others. They really have an awful lot of power over us. They teach. They can bring smiles and laughter, or tears and pain. I have reached a time in my life where I don't want to fill any part of my days thinking about the not so great times. And thankfully, I have just been able to add a whole lot more of them to my memory bank. The image with this post is of just some of the flowers on one of my daughter's many rose bushes. I was really drawn to how different the colors were on this single bush and how beautifully the shadowed light showed them off.