The human memory is a beautiful thing. Even amongst the ugliness that was my childhood, that memory stands pure. Untouched and unstained.

BY MARRIUM ABBAS

IMAGE BY CAMEO VENCHIARUTTI

I remember that day like it was yesterday. Walking down a tree-lined street with my father beside me after we had picked up my grandmother from the airport. My family was happy, surrounding the couch she sat on, listening intently to the stories of her travels. The two of us left the house while they had their tea, the wet leaves sticking to the darkened concrete while the post-storm sky shone blue above us. My father was in a good mood. Through the silence, I could feel my own safety like a foreign object in my hands. For once, there was no anticipation of his anger.  

This walk with my father was one of those moments that you know is perfect even while it's happening.  

I’ve held onto that memory like a souvenir. All these years between me and my size four rainboots, yet I can still smell the tinge of mud and open earth hovering in the air. 

The human memory is a beautiful thing. Even amongst the ugliness that was my childhood, that memory stands pure. Untouched and unstained. It’s locked away, safe, in the same box that holds all the other souvenirs as evidence that it wasn't all bad. I try to remember these memories anytime I start feeling sorry for myself. I bring them to the forefront of my mind like a lame last-minute gift, one that was quickly thrown together to qualify as a reason to not be angry. At least you have this, I say, offering myself this small collection of hallmark moments.  

But isn't that what growing up is? Even though you grow older to see that you were surrounded by narcissists and alcoholics, you protect those souvenirs from the spillage, like rare gold. Like you wish someone had protected you. 

I hold them in my arms and carry them outside the dense air of my house, stirred by the loud, unmistakable sounds of a family breaking. It’s safe out here, I tell them. You can exist here, too.  

We look at the stars together and pick our favourite ones like I did back then, when these souvenirs were unfolding, and I was marking their ends like leaving a chapter half unread. I decided when to stop remembering, to preserve the air of innocence that seems to flutter around a child’s memory. I could reach my hand into the box and pull out something polished, something that shines from its lack of dirt and grime that gathers on the surfaces of souvenirs unkempt.  

Somewhere, deep inside of me, I knew I’d need these memories again. Like a century-old voice echoing backwards through time, telling me, This moment isn't only happening now. It's eternal. It’s just as alive now as it will be forever. 

As a child, I would never ignore that voice. I'd open my eyes a little wider, staring at the colours around me growing vivid with an early-onset nostalgia peeking through my mind's eye. Half here, half already looking back.  

I’ve always been somewhat of a time traveller this way, my eyes wandering around the ladder of time, forgetting my age. This was my own form of alchemy, extracting elements to make gold, crafting a picture-perfect movie to play in my head loudly, beside the murky depths of my darkest nights. I sometimes reach my fingers through the decades to touch the sky and thank it for its light. I tell it how I too, shine down on myself when the lights go out. Finding a gleaming dot and making it bigger.  

This was my justice—my way to take the very essence of life’s random, unexplainable joy, and lock it up somewhere where nothing can tarnish it. I knew there was so little of it. Even then, I was shaking myself wide awake, to scoop up every detail like a kid collecting candy from a piñata. 

This one's good! Remember it, I'd say to myself the second I realized I felt…different.  

I made sure the floor was swept clean, so I could sit back and enjoy the sweetness of my selective memory, invincible to all the damage it took to get candy to rain down from the battered fragments.  

Nothing in particular made these moments perfect. Most of them happened in places I'd been a thousand times before—such as the light grey sidewalks of my neighbourhood, or our sunlight-filled kitchen on a Saturday morning. And even though some of those days ended with me in places I’d been a thousand times before, like in our hallway with my arm wrapped around my mother’s leg and my siblings standing behind to protect her from the screaming man, something about those moments were too special. Too divine to be tainted with the wreckage that happened in the hours to come.  

A certain stillness, a pause on time, a moment to put the chaos to rest and just be. 

Something bigger has always been inside of me, watching my life. Some sort of outsider, separate from me, yet somehow, more me than myself. It watched me take my first inhale before bellowing out that unstoppable newborn cry. From that moment on, it has silently walked beside me.   

It was there that day that I walked the tree-lined street with my father. It whispered in my ears, and I obeyed, storing away visual snippets of the fallen leaves covering the sidewalk, next to slithering earthworms dug up from the soil.  

And all these years later the souvenirs of my childhood stand out, dripping with colour against the dark grey mass of anger and fear tucked behind my ears, where my sight can't travel.  

Maybe it was me all along, some old wise woman whom I haven't become yet, reaching back through the years to make everything perfect inside of me. I'm certain we will meet one day—whatever it is that’s been protecting me—and when we do, I’ll ask it to sit with me, so we can watch my life back together. It can tell me of all the times it was with me when I felt the most alone. It’ll point out things only I know—my innermost desires, my secrets, my thoughts. I'll smile and whisper back: I always knew you were there. I could feel your eyes behind my own, looking through me all along. 

Marrium Abbas is a writer and a poet, currently studying at Humber College in the Bachelor of Creative and Professional Writing program. “Souvenirs” is her first published work- the first of many on the start of her journey as a writer. She can be reached at: marriumabbas02@gmail.com

Image: Tapestry (Cameo Venchiarutti)

Edited for publication by Elle Warr-Addae, as part of the Bachelor of Creative and Professional Writing Program.

HLR Spotlight is a collaboration between the Faculty of Media & Creative Arts and the Faculty of Liberal Arts & Sciences and Innovative Learning at Humber College in Toronto, Ontario. This project is funded by Humber’s Office of Research & Innovation.