Remember This is a novel about memory, family and the
resilience of love. The story traces the life of one woman, Lauren,
from childhood experiences with her cousin Angela, who is her
youthful soul mate, to a late “coming of age” in adulthood
with a husband whose soul she desperately longs to connect with.
When the book opens, seven-year-old Lauren is playing with her
cousin Angela, whose attraction is that she “seems to make
things bigger.” Angela’s mother is in the hospital
having her fourth baby and while the girls play, a sense of tension
about the impending birth builds in the autumn air. The aura of
mysterious sexuality and unspoken fear that hovers over the adult
world leaks into the children’s games and conversation throughout
the day as they traverse the small rural town of Gairloch, Alberta.
When Angela’s mom dies only six months later, and Lauren
sadly forces Angela to give up her belief that she can will herself
to join her mother in heaven, the girls leave behind the innocence
of their shared childhood.
Lauren has a strong but inarticulate relationship with her mother,
but it is the influence of her Dad's sister, Aunt Marge, that
is a defining force in her life. The childless Marge frightens
her niece with her passionate yet failed attempts to mold Lauren
into a dancer. She pushes Lauren into an anxious confrontation
over dancing before introducing Lauren to what will become her
true passion – the piano.
Family relationships continue to direct Lauren throughout her
childhood. Lauren and many other members of her family are strongly
affected by paternal grandparents Anna and Calvin. The alcoholic
Calvin and his wife have endured a discordant marriage for fifty-seven
years when Calvin disappears. As an adult, Lauren has a provocative
childhood memory of playing a song on the piano – You
Must Remember This – when her grandfather nonchalantly
returned after a three day absence. Taking the old woman's hands,
he slowly danced her around the worn carpet. Lauren “saw
her little girl self pressing down on the ancient keys, frightened,
though aware that without her playing the moment would end. She
was still uncertain what her grampa wanted from his wife at that
moment. Maybe he only wanted to dance.”
The novel takes a leap into the future. After high school Lauren
journeys across Europe, the landscape of her ancestral roots,
especially intrigued by a predecessor who survived “trial
by ordeal” as a suspected witch. Lauren has always been
charmed by the possibility of magic, whose whispered influence
has sifted down through the generations. Breaking free from parental
judgments and warnings, she has her first sexual experience in
the gray light of Paris, in a potentially dangerous though passionate
encounter with a young man who is almost a complete stranger.
During the period in which the Canadian government is preparing
for a referendum that could divide the country, Lauren leaves
her home in Calgary to go to Toronto to follow her dreams of studying
music. The uncertainty of the country is paralleled by personal
upheaval with the death of her grandmother – a woman “she
wasn’t finished with yet” though she had etched her
spirit onto Lauren's soul. In the state of loneliness that follows,
she meets Alex, another uprooted Calgarian.
It is a troubled relationship. Their love is fierce, but often
fails to fully nurture them. Alex was born to a detached teenage
mother who also delivered a stillborn twin brother. Only in a
moment of anguish does Alex admit to at times feeling small phantom
hands on his back, and a parallel heartbeat.
After almost four years of intimacy Alex “vanishes without
leaving even a murky underwater view. She had no idea that after
a liaison of half a decade she could be responsible for subtracting
him from her life so completely.” But she is more surprised
to learn during their reconciliation how resilient their love
is and how much their differences unite them.
Lauren marries Alex and quickly becomes pregnant. Childbearing
haunts her with memories from her childhood: her aunt doing the
“ring test” on her mother for a child who was never
born, and of her sister frightening her with her urgent comforting,
"you're our baby now.”
Soon Lauren is a mother of three and her musical mode of self-expression
slips away. She misses the transcendent energy that her music
brought to her life, but now her energy naturally circles around
her offspring. Unfortunately, “she didn't see Alex as a
full part of that circle; he was a satellite and chose to connect
or disconnect at will.”
The themes of memory and loves resilience continue when Lauren’s
career-driven sister, Pamela, fears carrying through with an unwanted
pregnancy. Pamela’s lover wants to raise the baby and, in
desperation, he urges Lauren to confront her sister. Echoing their
grandfather's disappearance years ago, Pamela also runs away.
On her return, Pamela tells Lauren about journeying to the backyard
of their grandparents' house in Gairloch, kneeling on the floor
of the playhouse with little thought to the new owners, and being
transported back in time. "I could see all of us, piled in
there at Christmas time in our snowsuits, peeling mandarin oranges
and eating tarts, acting out some crazy tea party.” Lauren
understands what her sister means when she whispers, “That
wasn't very long ago, Laurie, really it wasn't."
Lauren and Alex’s love is put to a final test when their
small son falls from a jungle gym and lies unconscious in the
damp summer grass. He recovers, but the accident impels Lauren
and Alex to reconnect and search for a state of grace. While the
children sleep, Lauren finds solace at the piano again. Uplifted
by a sense of completeness, she surrenders herself to a state
of synchronicity with her music.
The final scene of Remember This? dramatizes the power
of memory and love as Lauren is reunited with Angela. The two
women share memories of their seven-year-old selves among the
branches of her cousin’s tree fort – poised halfway
between heaven and earth – their legs kicking out over the
hollyhocks, high above Angela’s mother’s garden.
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