THURSDAY: Buried Treasure

BY COLIN THORNTON

Copyright is held by the author.

DIVE INTO the river. Through the silver-skinned mirror that separates the world of here and now from the depths of the past. I’m swimming upstream, back in time to my baby days.

Faces in the movie of my life float past like feathers and leaves drifting on the current. A silvery flash, a hazy memory, a fleeting glimpse of someone I used to know, a brief moment of recognition, and gone.

Onward into the past. Starting today at seventy-one years old, and swimming back through my 60s, my 50s, my 40s . . . a long career; a loving wife; our first home; an outdoor wedding on a misty August afternoon with friends, family and champagne. Hyper active bachelor days on Queen St., West. Art college, high school. There’s Gary Wagner, my Grade 10 teacher, the one who put me on my life’s path.

An eddy pushes me into a dank backwater of gnarled tree roots and moss-covered rocks. Boulders and rotting logs, car tires and beer cans, all draped in a blanket of brown silt — the pool where dark memories lurk: Mom’s hands, gnarled and twisted, too crippled by arthritis to open a jar or tie her own shoe laces; old friends gone too soon; missed opportunities and bad behaviour; secrets no one else needs to know. All part of my back story, but not what I’m looking for.

I push both arms forward, cup my hands and pull, flutter kicking my way back into the mainstream. The current, rushes past my face, slides over my shoulders and down my spine — 1980 . . . 1970 . . . 1960 . . . Playing clarinet in the public school band; flying down Vradenberg Hill on a cherry-red bike with whitewall tires and handlebar streamers; kindergarten singalongs — row, row, row your boat gently up the stream. Merrily, merrily, eagerly willingly, life is but a dream.

Sunshine throws a silhouette of my shape on the river bed. A pulsing lattice of light slithers across a bed of speckled pink, grey and blue river rocks polished clean and round like birds’ eggs. Time smooths all rough edges.

Pebbles tickle as I slither though the bubbly shallows, sparkling clear and spring-fed cool. How old am I now? Three? Two?

There I am, perched high on my parents’ bed. Cotton shorts, striped t-shirt, suspenders and white booties with scuffed toes. A pudgy little dumpling playing with my favourite toy: A blue tin box. Not just any blue, but Royal Blue, with filigreed corners and bevelled edges, lions and unicorns standing guard. On one side, a garland of maple leaves, rose blossoms and purple thistles surround a portrait of a lady wearing a diamond crown and an emerald necklace. On the back, a man in uniform with brass buttons, gold braid on each shoulder and a stripe of coloured ribbons on his chest. Queen Elizabeth and the Duke of Edinburgh.

I pop the lid, open the tin, and plunge in my hands up to my elbows in cool, slippery treasure. Stir’em up. Swish’em around. Scoop a handful and watch them trickle through my fingers onto the bed. A clicky-clacky cascade of buttons, smooth and round, like nickels and dimes or tiddly-winks. Big, small, thick, thin, plain and fancy. White ones with two holes, black ones with four; red, yellow, green, blue and orange; plastic, bone, wood and metal.

I sweep the cache across the bedspread like butter on toast. Then slap the mattress. Watch them dance. Slap Dance Slap Dance. Giggle, gurgle and drool. I raise handfuls high over my shoulders, let them rain down, bounce off my head, tickle my ears and slide over my shoulders down my arms onto my knees. Scoop them all together again into a slippery, polka dot pile and raise another handful. Again. And again. Mindlessly repetitious. Endlessly fascinating. Candy-coloured bliss.

This is it!

I have reached my destination. Found what I was looking for. My earliest memory. Mom’s button box.

***

Colin Thornton studied drawing and painting in college, played music for a few decades while he built a career in advertising. Today, his paints are dry, drums on a shelf, marimba locked in its case and his advertising days over, so he writes short stories.