The sharp edge of memory

I know her handwriting. Heck, I know her hands, even though those hand aren’t around — not anymore.

My mother died just short of 10 years ago.

But sometimes, it’s like yesterday. Fresh. It sneaks up, steps in and trips me up every time.

You know what it’s like, the steady rolling through the everyday.

You wake up, put your feet on the floor, try to unwind the kinks and work out the familiar morning aches.

Start your day, wait for the surprise bills, the noise under the car, the discovery of the drip under the sink. You know those things are coming. Get a sideline job that might earn you $400, and you know that, as sure as anything, you’ll get an unexpected repair bill for $550.

But you keep moving, rolling

with the punches. Until you get one you truly didn’t expect.

On the back of the stove in the kitchen, there’s a circular dark-wood tray. I think it’s teak: it’s been around forever. I move it when I’m using the back burners, along with the red kettle, so that they don’t get grease-spattered.

It’s the right size for cheese and crackers, or maybe an organization of baked goods.

I just pick it up, turn around and set it on the counter behind me. When I’m done, I put it back.

But last night, turned it over as I moved it, saw its jet-black back, and in the middle, a square of masking tape, with “Eleanor Wangersky” written there in green. Written in the clear block letters she used when she wanted to be sure you could read it. The handwriting of lunchbox notes, of complicated recipes, of messages left by the front door on Post-it notes: “CHECK DEADBOLT!”

There’s another one in that same kitchen, another masking-tape message on the bottom of a long wooden fruit bowl, but it’s faded, with a more familiar “Eleanor W.” slowly erasing itself with age and handling.

And I can see, without even trying, the way she would purse her lips when she was concentrating on writing something down. (That’s always followed by the memory of her laughing, with her whole face, the kind of laughter that leaves the best kind of lines on a face.) And I knew that adding what was essentially a return address would mean that she would get something she loved, and loved to use, back at the end of the day.

I know why her name’s there: it’s the leftovers from the Dalhousie oceanography department and potluck dinners, from functions where everyone brought something, and all of the cleanup didn’t have to be done at the end of the night. Stubby beer bottles in a garbage can of ice, piles of food for hungry and poor graduate students, and a tsunami of small and midsized children.

A memory drives into you like a train, like the sharp stick of a big old ugly splinter.

Just another day.

You try to help when someone else is in the midst of the same shift, when they’re feeling the loss of a parent like a missing tooth, their tongue always touching its way to where the tooth has been — it’s hard. Hard to do anything right, because just about the only thing you can say is, “I know.”

Don’t ever point out that it’s the new abnormal. That does no good for anyone.

It leaves me in a place I often go now: what are all those memories for? What are our lives for, if they vanish so easily?

The tray goes back in its place. But I can see the tape now, right through it.