~ Meredith ~

Photograph your earliest memory

I was about two. My Nan was floating me on my back in the sea and I was looking up at her flowery swimming cap.

The simplicity of that memory…the purity of it…is so globally inclusive that we can all experience it, even though it didn’t happen to us. We can feel the water lapping around our bodies, and the support of a pair of loving arms beneath us. We can hear the plaintive sound of gulls, sporadically muted by the blanket of water, and the calm, comforting, reassuring voice of our Nan telling us everything is okay. We can visualize her flowery swimming cap and a smiling face surrounded by a halo of white hair, against a blue cloud-dotted sky.

The Scottish poet Thomas Campbell wrote, “To live in the hearts we leave behind / Is not to die.” Meredith’s Nan has taken up temporary residence in our hearts.

Blog photograph copyrighted to the photographer and used with permission by utata.org. All photographs used on utata.org are stored on flickr.com and are obtained via the flickr API. Text is copyrighted to the author, greg fallis and is used with permission by utata.org. Please see Show and Share Your Work