memories flooding back
I don’t know whether it’s that I’m far from home, or I miss my family, or just that I’m getting older in general, but recently so many memories have been randomly coming back to me — visceral memories; clear, vibrant images. And in most cases they’re not even of home, but of other places, other trips I’ve taken, other memories I now know I’m lucky to have a part of me.
When I was 13 me and my mom took a trip together, just the two of us, to California — spending three days each in San Diego, L.A., and San Francisco. Yesterday I was walking through the fog, here in Rome, and I suddenly remembered something I don’t even think I’ve ever thought of since then. Standing on a hill in San Francisco, being told by a tour or perhaps reading it on a little sign, that we were looking at the church where Marilyn Monroe married Joe DiMaggio. I guess it strikes me now, the importance of that to people who visit, the fact that it’s an anecdote that’s remained interesting to people after all these years. As if she were our Princess Di, our version of royalty. On the level perhaps, and ironically, of a JFK and Jackie wedding, had we known who they were already at that time.
I’ve never been particularly girly, nor have I ever thought about weddings and getting married and all of that, though I guess like most people I imagine it will happen eventually. Maybe this memory was just a nice flash of the past, or maybe, on some subconscious level, that I should start thinking about these things, if I want to marry my Joe DiMaggio in a church (or, well, not a church) some day. I’m not as young as I once was.
