Offerings

A bakery I visited earlier this week in Woodstock, NY had a plate of cannoli almost hidden in the corner of the lowest shelf of its display case. When they caught my eye my mind was made up instantly to purchase one for my wife who had spent an exhausting day in the printmaking studio at the Woodstock School of Art.

It’s been nearly a decade since the days when we lived in New Haven, CT and I would stop on my way home from work with a bag of cannoli. And it’s been more than two decades since we would forage out into the Bronx on a Sunday morning to find the sweetened cheese pastry tubes.

It’s interesting to me how memory adheres to objects.  Although much research is being done on the problems with memory, how it can be unreliable…even how memories of events that never happened can be implanted in the lab, memory is important to give context to our lives.  The memories tied to the cannoli are more about feelings then actual scenarios.  They tie the facts of today to shared experiences in a manner that provides a sense of continuity.  It’s as though in the music of our lives, such memories provide the bass line.

This morning I awoke from a dream where I was telling some folks that “the gift of yesterday needs to be carried into tomorrow.”   It’s amazing how something as simple as a brown bag with a cannoli tucked inside can do just that.