Neopolitan Memories

Blood-red realities!

Image: Author — The sun goes down, hope comes up.

Childhood memories are entangled. They fuse and mingle like the colours of Neapolitan ice cream left out on a summer’s afternoon. As we age, they become non-linear. That part of us, that fraction of our very existence, slips away, and we become less as a result.

So, when I look back and feel for the fragments of what was once a continuous experience, it becomes flawed. Smells, sounds and sights reorder themselves, slip into and through each other and mislead me. It’s like my senses are a fixed-width window travelling across the present.

My memories become foggy, and when I delve into that fog, I suddenly feel like I’m in the thickest fog of my life.

Did that fog fall in the winter or spring preceding my last summer? I don’t know. But it suits me to think it did. Walking to the school bus, then riding down the side of the Sound, was something I did for three and a half years.

When I go home, I can repeat that journey exactly. New shrubs and small trees might have grown tall, but the trees I remember remain there.

That main road down the island is still the same, and I can check it on Google World if I want. The ferries have changed, taking tourists to and from Oban, but nothing remains for junior and infant school.