Memories to (spark) imagination (sequel challenge)

[Sandra Davies]

I remember sitting on my Grandad’s lap watching my two-years-younger brother take his first steps, backlit at the end of the hall by the light from the small window beside the front door.

So small an area, that hall, so strongly influential, so readily recollected, was papered halfway up with bumpy brown and shiny anaglypta.

Above was cream and hung with English hunting prints,  the startling scarlet of their coats buried deep in my subconscious, arc-ing resonance when, half a century later, I discovered in Oxford’s Ashmolean museum Uccello’s ‘Hunt at Night’  

Although the truly horrid under-stairs pale blue china bunny is now gone, a bought-for-sentimental-reason, small brown version lives in a cupboard in my bedroom and will not allow itself to be discarded

The circular barometer, mystic numbers and gold shiny arrow-headed needle a source of fascination, and tapped daily by my Grandad, now hangs in my sitting room:  I still seek understanding.

And just this year, the long-forgotten hallstand, near-black wood, brass hooks and small square mirror, green lily-patterned tiles and tin tray for umbrellas, reappeared in the entrance hall of Luke Darbyshere (my fictional detective)’s flat.

[Bill Floyd]

Another great variation on the theme, and an insightful take on the way memory bleeds into everything we are.  The objects with which we associate our lives become talismans of a sort, I think, but only if we still "seek understanding."  Top notch.  

[Mike Handley]

What descriptive fun! And thanks, especially, for providing the link to the panting. I often wonder what of mine, if anything, my children or granddaughter might decide is worth keeping. I have my beloved grandfather's razor and the folded flag presented to the family at his funeral. But the only thing of his -- long gone, gods knows where -- that I think about is a little plastic fisherman and dog, sitting on a log, which used to sit on the dash of his car.

[Teresa]

I love hallstands.  And the sound of "proper" voices.  Can our DNA remember things from generations ago?  Perhaps when my family still lived in your area?  My English and Irish relatives moved here and married Choctaw and Commanche Indians.  What a crazy mix that is.  Teepees and totum poles next to hallstands and hunting prints.  Hmmm...  I love looking back over your shoulder.  Sentence one was so vivid.  And sentence six just goes to show that we writers waste no details.