The Floating World

How would you like to read these letters, I wonder? In what order best to arrange them? That’s a thing about memories: they’re laid down in a nearly continuous, linear sequence, the wake of time’s arrow, but they can be reviewed in any which order or fashion, and with every review of even one of them, that one mutates a little, and all the others mutate a little around it.  

You could for instance, start here. Do you remember the first time your mother and I took you to an aquarium? It was for your fifth birthday and you’d been asking to go to the aquarium for a while, I can’t remember exactly why. You were interested in sea creatures of course, but you had always been interested in creatures of all sorts, most especially bugs, lizards, butterflies, and moths. We had also taken you to the zoo and to at least one lepidopterarium but those were when you were a toddler, so even if you’ve seen a picture or two, I doubt there are any memories there for you. But you may recall your fifth birthday and the Las Vegas aquarium at Mandalay Bay. So let’s start there for today.
 
I could recount the trip in sequence, but that’s an order my sense of calendrical time imposes on it in retrospect. (I wonder about the flight of that arrow sometimes.) If you remember it anything like the way that I remember events of my early childhood, I’ll wager you have a few vivid flashes surrounded by dim illumination.
 
Do you remember the ray tank, the “touching pool,” now a staple at aquariums? You perched intently on the rim of the pool, waiting for any chance to touch one of the gliding rays. You moved your position several times, delighted in every touch, and you came back for a second round before we left. You also charmed the guide overseeing the tank, conversing with her about the rays and what they liked, but I doubt that you’d remember that. That’s the sort of memory more cherished by a parent.
 
Or maybe you remember the giant octopus, which had sprawled out fully splayed against a vertical wall of glass. You stood for minutes mesmerized by that. Or perhaps the slow stroll through the tunnel of sharks? The cylinder of moon jellies floating like ghosts? I don’t remember any exhibit that didn’t hold you under a spell. I wonder now, did it feel like a dream for you? Does it seem like a dream to you now?  Those dark but glowing rooms lined with glass walls, the creatures swimming past, around, and sometimes over you. You loved it, that much I know. The year before we had done a big, neighborhood kids party for you with a woodland theme. Your mother went all out making things and it was a suburban blast. The year after, you had another sprawling birthday party at the house. But I think it was worth skipping the party that one year to spend the day, just the three of us, in “the deep blue underworld” you still sing about.
 
For a couple of years after that, I wanted to take you to an aquarium again. This past winter, I finally got the chance. I surprised you with a day trip, just us two this time, to the Living Planet Aquarium in Salt Lake, which proved to be more of a massive, interior hybrid of aquarium, butterfly house, aviary, and zoo.
 
My hunch is that, of the two visits, you remember the second better, simply because you were two years older, but also because we spent more time there and it was so much more diverse. In addition to two petting pools, a larger shark tunnel that also contained apparently shark-proof sea turtles, another giant octopus (this one working on its camouflage skills), and wildly colorful arrays of coral fish,  there were freshwater riparian and lacustrine exhibits with viewing stations above and below water. There was an otter exhibit, a snow leopard exhibit (which, oddly, barely interested you), and a rainforest exhibit with piranhas, electric eels, and sleepy sloths. We walked through a garden of Utah butterflies (well, you walked, and I rolled). The butterflies landed on our hands, the back of my wheelchair, and in your hair.
 
That was it, though. Nothing happened on either visit that would have counted as a significant event, other than the visit itself.  In the months since our second aquarium, every time we’ve done some sort of field trip together—park, zoo, natural history museum, planetarium—I’ve checked for your review. Nothing beats the aquarium. You’ve added marine biologist to your future career portfolio (along with actor, entomologist, and artist). But who knows? It may fade. I’d be curious now to know what events in my early childhood were the ones that my parents thought would stay with me. Probably few or none of those that actually did.  

And if you remember either or both of those aquarium trips at all, you’ll almost certainly remember something that I don’t. That’s the weirdest thing about memory world: thanks to language, we can share it, or seem to, at least part of it, and yet no two persons' memories of any single event align. So line up these letters however you like, along whatever timeline. Like all memories written or spoken, they’re phosphorescent creatures of their own, dependent on imagination, otherwise lost, floating along in the real or recreated dark.