Sunday, March 22, 2020

A Beautiful Fragment of Memory

Night View, Landscape, Lighting, Republic Of Korea



The amazing little intersections of life.

Way back when I was about four or five years old, my parents took us kids to the house of my godfather, a man I've only met a handful of times in my life. Back then he was still married to his first wife, whose face I cannot picture and whose name I cannot remember. However, at one point in the evening she pulled me into her lap and started singing a song to me that I had never heard: "Julie, Julie, Julie, do you love me?"

Fast forward about forty-five years. I was driving to work, listening to Oldies radio, and I heard that song, which it turns out was sung by Bobby Sherman. The years fell away, and I remembered that moment, sitting in the lap of a stranger who sang softly in my ear.

I don't know her name and can't see her face, but I remember her, thanks to a melody and a kind gesture.

Who knows how many people we influence in tiny ways? Who knows how many things we do will go into someone's permanent memory?