The Census for England and Wales on Sunday was the first to record that my children are now all technically adults.
This was the third time they’ve appeared in the census (and my sixth), each one a momentary snapshot of our individual and collective lives: who we are, what we are, where we are, where we came from. It’s like a gigantic school photograph, what we all looked like at one particular moment.
The census is a hedge against forgetting; but it tells us nothing of our lives in between, the memories gathered in the gaps.
Memories accumulate in odd places. Over the past year, I’ve shared a room with my son Silas. He sleeps in it, I work in it, and to facilitate this amiable father-son détente, we’ve had to do some clearing.
The old drum kit has gone, to Stevie over the road. The table has been moved.
And from the coathooks on the back of the door have been shifted a ton of clothes that Si used to wear: the purple Fiorentina hoodie I brought back from Italy; his old Arsenal training jacket.
They’re Silas himself, really: smaller, full of potential, his hand in mine.
Now there’s a school of thought that says that instead of clinging to those relics of the past I should really just let that stuff go. But aside from being a terrible thing to say to someone who works in a Museum, I don’t think it’s a helpful approach to memory.
The people who collected up the books we call the Bible knew that in memory the past folds into the present. It helps us to understand why we are who we are. It lets us inhabit the past, not to mourn for then but to be joyful now.
So, the Bible is a book of memories. Some are lists, like the census, others are stories, of people and of God, of faithfulness and sadness, of patience, compassion and abiding love from generation to generation.
Now, clothes are less compact than words and my house does not possess limitless storage. Even so, after clearing the coathooks, I couldn’t quite get rid of all the coats. So, I stashed some away. I’m not completely sure what they’re for except that one day I might need help remembering and I don’t think the census will be enough.
This is the purple Fiorentina hoodie. I can’t believe Si was ever that little.