Today, while I was waiting for waffles to pop out of the toaster, a memory surfaced that I've recalled more than a few times in the past. It's a memory of a morning years ago at our family summer house on Green Island down the shore. Mom was in the kitchen and breakfast was already on the table when I came downstairs from the bedroom. It was a sunny, summer day and we had guests, Uncle Phil and Aunt Phyllis. Uncle Phil, I remember, had been suffering with an illness, so it was good that he was able to come down the shore and stay a few days. Everyone else had eaten already and I reached for a new cereal box that had just been opened. The plastic bag inside the box had been ripped open in an awful way, indicating that someone had struggled with it. I asked Mom about this and she said Uncle Phil had opened it and I was disgusted. This feeling of disgust I soon got over and I felt bad for Uncle Phil, understanding that everyday things became difficult for the elderly. It is this emotion of disgust that has caused the memory of that morning to be preserved liminally, often arising into consciousness when certain signals happen, such as this morning, when I put the waffles in the toaster, pieces broke off onto the countertop, eliciting a brief feeling of disgust. Mom and Uncle Phil have died (r.i.p.), Daddy had died years before that long-ago morn (rest in peace, Dad). This quiet reminiscence is tinged with longing - for the past not to have ended and for the present to be somehow different. I guess the feeling or longing is really for eternity, where time is not and loved ones are always near.
