All We Are Is Our Memories
- 20 hours ago
- 5 min read
A morning in Sydney that I’ve been turning over for almost thirty years
My dad said, "All we are is our memories".
He said it right before he died.
I’ve been sitting with that line for three years now... the way it lands differently depending on the day, the way it feels like both a comfort and a dare. Because if it’s true, then the invisible things aren’t nothing. They’re everything. They’re just stored somewhere you can’t point to.
I want to tell you about a morning in September of 1997 that I think about more than almost any other morning of my life. Not because anything dramatic happened. But because everything that happened was quiet and real, and then two weeks later, one of the people in it was gone.
It started because I didn’t want the hotel doing my laundry.
I was staying in a very fancy hotel in Sydney, Australia, the kind of place with amenities I genuinely loved, but something about handing my clothes over to be handled by strangers didn’t sit right. So my daughter and I got up early, packed a basket, and walked to the laundromat like regular people.
She was seven.
On the way there, she spotted a motorcycle. A Harley styled like a ’57 Chevy, teal and white and chrome, and we stopped. Just stopped, the way you do when something is worth stopping for. I noticed the detail of it. The saddlebags that actually looked like saddlebags. The echoes of the 1950s in every line.
And then I noticed the boots.
Brown soft leather. Worn. Standing next to the bike like they’d been somewhere real.
My eyes traveled up from the boots. Silver belt buckle. Button-up shirt.
And standing right there, on a Sydney sidewalk on an ordinary Tuesday morning, was John Denver.
I looked at him, and I said, " Well, hello. You’re John Denver. I’m Jane."
And he smiled. He had toothpaste in the corner of his mouth. His face was slightly sunburnt and tight the way faces get in dry heat. He reached out and shook my hand — a warm handshake, not much bigger than mine.
And then I just… told him everything.
The Current River. My dad playing Rocky Mountain High on the recorder around the campfire. Singing along in Colorado. Hearing Thank God I’m a Country Boy echo across the mountains at Estes Park when I was ten years old, convinced that John Denver actually lived up there somewhere in the peaks.
He stood there with toothpaste in the corner of his mouth, and he listened. For almost ten minutes. Patient and present and completely unhurried, like a man who had nowhere else to be.
Two weeks later, he was gone.
We picked up our laundry basket and walked back to the hotel.
And that’s when the morning handed us its second act.
A Mercedes limo was pulling into the circle drive at the same moment we were approaching it, and a mob of women moved toward it like one organism. My daughter and I looked at each other. Who is in there?
The door opened.
Out stepped Fabio. Long gold hair. White shirt, with puffy sleeves, and wide cuffs at the wrist, unbuttoned well past his sternum. High-waisted black pants with a slight flair. The full construction of a man built for exactly this moment.
Every woman within fifty feet lost their mind.
My daughter looked at him. Then looked at me. I could see it... she wanted in. So I said, "Sure, come on", and I took her hand and held our laundry basket and started moving through the crowd, saying coming through! I have a little girl who wants to meet Fabio, and I don’t know why that sentence worked, but it parted every woman in our path like the Red Sea.
We walked right up to him. I said, "Hi Fabio, I’m Jane. This is my daughter. She wanted to meet you".
He looked at her and said, "Oh! You have such beautiful hair," and stroked it, and she looked up at him the way a seven-year-old looks at something that has arrived with all the bells and whistles of importance. Like something holy had just stepped out of a limo.
Ten seconds. Thank you, Fabio. Have a wonderful day.
We walked through the lobby with our folded laundry, and I asked her what she liked most about him.
She thought about it.
"His shoes", she said. "His shoes were wonderful."
I turned around to look.
Black patent leather. Square silver buckle. A serious heel.
She was absolutely right. Best pilgrim shoes I’d ever seen. And she found them while every grown woman in that circle drive was dissolved by exactly what they were supposed to be dissolved by.
I’ve thought about that morning for almost thirty years.
About the difference between a man standing next to a bike he loved on a Tuesday morning, unhurried, toothpaste on his face, warm handshake, listening, and a man stepping out of a vehicle built for the specific purpose of arriving. Both real. Both worth something. But only one of them left a handprint I can still feel.
My daughter and I both read from the ground up that morning. Boots first. Shoes first. Then everything else. Nobody taught us that. It’s just where we both looked.
My dad’s name was Bill. Just plain Bill, he’d say. And he played Annie's Song on the recorder at every campfire we ever sat around. That’s a memory so real I can still smell the smoke. I can still hear the notes landing slightly imperfect, the way recorder notes do, and my dad not caring at all.
Invisible. But completely real.
I think that’s what that morning was. A lesson in where the real things live. They don’t announce themselves. They don’t arrive in a limo. They don’t have a publicist, a circle drive, or a mob of women moving toward them as one.
Sometimes they’re just standing next to a beautiful bike.
With toothpaste on their face.
Listening like you’re the only person on the sidewalk.
My dad said all we are is our memories. I think he was right. I think he knew that the invisible things are the most permanent ones, the ones that don’t fade when the moment ends, the ones that are still completely real thirty years later on a Tuesday morning when you’re just trying to do the laundry.
Thank you for reading. If this piece resonated with you and you’d like support in untangling these patterns in your own life, I offer a free 30-minute consultation. It’s a gentle space to talk, reflect, and see whether working together feels like a good fit. You can book a time through my website whenever you’re ready.
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