West With Giraffes

by Lynda Rutledge

Memories stick to things. Out of nowhere, something finds your nose, ears, or eyes and you’re on the other side of the country or world or in a whole other decade, being kissed by a doe-eyed beauty or punched by a drunken pal. You’ve got no control over it, none at all. One whiff of dust whenever they clean my room and I’m back in the Panhandle staring down a brown blizzard. One glimpse of pink peonies and I’m back in WWII France, standing over a fresh battlefield grave. And one howl of a rolling old police siren and I am back in the moment I’m driving the rig smack into Washington, DC, seconds from a nervous retch.

You can carry around a heavy load only for so long, though, before you’ve got to set it down,

It’s a strange thing how you can spend years with some folks and never know them, yet, with others, you only need a handful of days to know them far beyond years. As

Time heals all wounds, they say. I’m here to tell you that time can wound you all on its own. In a long life, there is a singular moment when you know you’ve made more memories than any new ones you’ll ever make. That’s the moment your truest stories—the ones that made you the you that you became—are ever more in the front of your mind, as you begin to reach back for the you that you deemed best.

It is a foolish man who thinks stories do not matter—when in the end, they may be all that matter and all the forever we’ll ever know.

My Life in a Man-Made