For Marcel Proust it was a madeleine that instantly and vicerally evoked memories of times past. For me, it was a soggy swimming costume. His was more romantic and picturesque.
On Sunday, LittleBear went to a party and he and his cohort spent a splendid afternoon charging round the birthday girl's garden in their swimsuits, hurtling down a water slide, sploshing in a paddling pool, leaping on a trampoline and generally having a high old time. Eventually I brought him home, rinsed out his costume and went to hang it out on the washing line...
... the heavy, damp cling of the fabric in my hands.
... the wet costume gently brushing my cheek as I reach high above my head to peg it up.
... the hot, crisp, burnished grass beneath my toes.
... the glare of the bright, hot sky above my head.
... the heat of the sun on the back of my shoulders.
I was transported immediately, heart and mind, to my grandparents' house in Johannesburg, to summers that seemed to last forever, but can't have been more than the standard two-week Christmas holiday we got from English schools. Afternoons spent leaping in and out of their pool while being reminded to keep quiet so Granny and Grandpa could have their afternoon nap. I could see the fly-screen door into the kitchen, and feel the uneven weight as I pushed it open. I could hear the Hadedas as they flew over the jacaranda tree at the end of the drive. I could taste the tea my grandparents served, that I have spent a lifetime failing to recapture. I was immersed, if only for a moment, in their garden, in the aloes and red hot pokers, the lemon trees and peculiar topiary.
I've spent the last twenty-four hours diving beneath waves of nostalgia and trying to remind myself that the time and place are now long gone, remembered only in the minds of a handful of people and preserved only in a few snippets of yellowing cine film. And I still don't know what blend of tea my grandparents drank.
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