When my memory makes it better

Why do we remember? For years, scientists have puzzled over memory and how it works and why.

I leave the more cerebral investigations to the guys with the PhD's. Instead, I like to travel back in my memory to be with people or to visit places that are not accessible to me anymore in real time.

One of my best memories is of the grandfather who used to see me only once or twice a year because we lived in a different state. He never talked much, and I was too young at the time to pick apart his mind about anything, but he always made a point of inviting me to walk with him to a little country store across the road from the house he shared with my grandmother. The store was run by a lady named Inez Ledbetter, and it wasn't much bigger than my living room today. Mostly, Inez sold gas and Cokes. In the autumn when I'd go to see my grandparents for Thanksgiving, Inez had an old gas stove lit and my grandfather and I would sit on a little wooden slat bench next to it. Grandpa always got a Dr. Pepper. I usually got a Crush -- grape, lemon, strawberry, whatever Inez had in stock. The drinks came in tall, skinny glass bottles.

We'd sit and drink and not say much unless Inez thought to ask me what grade I was in at school or whether I was going to do this or that while I was in town. She and Grandpa would talk about the weather or the cattle or someone's new truck or the latest fire. Once we'd finished our drinks we'd head for home and that was that.

Once, on the way back across the big front yard to the house, Grandpa stopped at a big stump that was left after a century-old pine tree got struck by lightning and had to be felled.

He took out his pocket knife and showed me how to count the many rings visible in the top of the stump so I could figure for myself how old the tree had been. It was knowledge I filed away and didn't use again for more than 30 years when I got to turn around and teach it to my own children.

I used to dream about my grandfather sometimes and the dream was always the same. We'd be riding in a car, me driving, and on our way through the south Arkansas countryside with trees, fields and cattle flashing past on both sides. Grandpa was wearing a hat, not his farmer's straw hat but the kind of hat men of his generation wore when going to visit someone, and he was talking but I couldn't hear him. We'd ride along in silence, essentially, until I woke up. I was always grateful for those dreams, for the chance to see Grandpa one more time, and for the refreshed memory of my brief time with him.