Making some headway in Sodom and Gomorrah. The Narrator has learned something Very Important about the Baron Charlus, attended another salon, and returned to Balbec. Our hero has once again been bowled over by involuntary memory, this time brought on by simple gesture in a familiar place. I can relate. I used to have very strong attachments to places, returning to former houses and other places often enough for it to become something of a running joke. It’s not as bad as it used to be, but I have definitely spend some time thinking about the why of it.
Proust describes something a bit different - the sudden onrush of memory and the grief which has finally caught up with him. Everything around him now has additional layers of meaning: the pleasant, sun-washed memories of that coastal summer inhabit every space, but over them, like a varnish, are recollections of his grandmother.
While I was still an acolyte, I was blessed to conduct the graveside rites for my grandmother and grandfather. She had held on to his ashes for years to be sure that they would be buried together, and so they were. I think of them often and felt especially close to them recently during Exposition, which happened to be on the Memorial of our Lady of Mount Carmel, which was my grandmother’s namesake.
The house where my grandparents lived in Tampa is long gone. Literally razed to the ground. There’s a gravel parking lot there now. The giant live oak tree which covered nearly their entire property is gone too, and it had probably stood there for a couple of centuries. The lot looks so small; it’s hard to believe that once upon a there was a house, swimming pool, and all the nooks and crannies that could absorb a child’s attention in the tropics of central Florida. True to habit, I drove past it the last time I was in the area, but I didn’t stop. I probably never will again.
Sometimes I wonder what those places will be for our own children and grandchildren. This tiny lot in West Tampa felt like an entire world when I was small; I can’t even imagine how our house and property today will fill our children’s and grandchildren’s minds.