The Memory Palace: True Short Stories of the Past

by Nate DiMeo

I have assumed that it was taken on a day my grandmother had told me about: One summer afternoon they went to the beach, took this photo, and on the way home, they squeezed into the back of their friend’s car, where she sat in his lap in the back, sandy and sun-kissed, and she knew for sure that she loved him. If this photograph is, in fact, from that day, what a thing it is—taken at a time when cameras weren’t ubiquitous, when their successful operation wasn’t guaranteed, when each picture cost money that maybe you didn’t have. How remarkable to have a document of this particular day, one that would be recalled and treasured out of thousands. The start of decades of love, whatever that meant, however it changed over time, however compromised it may have been, however long-suffering or not, however simply true. What are the odds? Or maybe it wasn’t quite like that. Maybe she remembered it this way because she had this photograph. Maybe it represented some warm, half-recalled feeling from a time long ago and the photo crystallized it, turned it into a story. I never asked her about it. I don’t think it matters. Growing up, that picture looked like love itself to me.