A Storied Memory

I’ve been working on piece about a trip I took to England and Ireland in the fall of 1984 with my friend Chris. I remembered a fair amount – or at least I thought I did. For instance, I knew we’d rented a car after taking a ferry from Hollyhead to Dublin, and that Chris was our driver, as I still didn’t have a license. At some point we left Dublin and stayed at a B & B in a village, though I couldn’t remember which, so I gave him a call to see what kernels of memories remained from that trip for him.

“Well, we stayed at the Luna Hotel in London,” he began.

“You’re right! God, I forgot that.” I knew I had my first drink – a Malibu & Coke – at the hotel’s bar, but nothing else.

“And then we ate the Sky Luck restaurant that first night.”

“The Chinese restaurant? That’s what it was called?” I’d tried to order duck sauce at the place, and the waiter had never heard of it. Everything else was a muted blur.

“And then we went to the West End and saw that play, Corpse!”

“That’s what it was called?”

Apparently, it was. He then went on to recount the play’s entire plot, including its satisfying twist ending. I only remembered that the lead actor had cooked onions live on stage. Chris also reminded me that he’d bought a leather jacket for eight pounds outside Picadilly Circus, that the manager of the Hotel Luna was also the one that helped book our passage to Dublin, as well as the name of the man who ran the first B & B we stayed at in Ireland. He did not, however, remember the name of the village outside Dublin where we eventually stayed.

I was flabbergasted. We’d been on the same trip. His memory was so detailed. I mostly remembered being on that ferry across the Irish Sea at 2:00 AM in November and how dark and moody it was out on the bow, and how I got food poisoning toward the end of our trip and wrote a letter to a girl I loved whom I hadn’t seen in years as a way to sooth myself.

“How the hell did you remember all that?” I asked finally.

“Well, I think those are just the things I told people stories about.”

Of course, I thought. I’ve heard it said we make memories by the things we do, but it’s really the stories we tell that hold a moment in our minds like a photograph. Everything else largely fades away, which is fine. We keep what seems to matter to us, clues in their own way not to where we’ve been but for how we might best go forward.

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