His first step was right here

Lost diary entry archive (Atlanta)

I was tidying Leo’s room last night and a vision appeared in my mind, a quick cloud of remember-when ... where I was entering Leo’s room in the middle of the night and comforting him because he was crying. And I realized – or really the point was just crystalized – that if we move (WHEN we move), we will move away from the rooms where those moments happened. 

We will leave behind the love seat where I nursed Leo every night for a year, or at the very least the room where the love seat now sits. And so the love seat -- even in a new house -- will be shorn of its context, its purpose. Shoot, it might even end up neglected in a basement. And oh mercy, mercy mercy me, that is so wrong. I might even be willing to stay here if I begin to be convinced that leaving Atlanta will somehow alter the legacy or my memory of the most important year of my life, the most pivotal, the most blessed.

So many memories – I mean, should I go around and take pictures of the rooms?! Take a picture, say, of the spot on the carpet – it's by his crib, mind you – where he took his first tentative step. 

Maybe.

(Editor's note: We moved. And the moment of where he took his first step lives on only in my mind -- and this blog post. The love seat? It's in the sun room in the new house. Shorn of its context, just like I thought. I guess that's life. But for a memoirist like me, whoa it's a blow to the head. Remembrance of things past, ahhh).

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