Memory is a Family Circle

Memory scratches from LPs played on a turntable in
a mahogany cabinet, the one with crystal bottles behind
the little door, all these things we did not yet understand:
Jesus Christ Superstar, whiskey and Hair and cycles of
revolution and change, the dizzy spinning (way before we
opened the liquor cabinet), worlds we were stepping into
as we set the discs in motion.

We handled them with care, as shown by our parents: Set
the needle down gently, just so, and make sure to select the
right speed: the big ones are 33s, your Home on the Range
and Bambi, 45s. We were proud when allowed to handle
the arm, our little hands pushing it over, our breaths
held before the music began. We did not know then
how important speed was,

that these numbers meant revolutions per minute, how
this record meant record, made voices come alive, speak
to us from a distance. We went to sleep with Yvonne
Elliman’s lullabies and Bing Crosby singing from wide open
plains, zephyrs gently tickling our dreams. We did not yet
know that sound is memory, how it’s physical, and real
how dance becomes muscle memory,

how we can still do the hustle today, our old hearts
thumping in time to the music, rocking to raucous 70s
beats that turned over Elvis and Chuck Berry, even when
we grew into rolling stones. And later, when I could
not stop moving, I learned memory is a rolling ocean,
carrying all creatures past present and future, all sense of
what matters most,

hydrogen and oxygen in the right amounts water balancing
everything, the sea floating our boat and carrying us
forward, perpetual rhythm, day after day and so on and
so on. The moon pulling seas, night after night, the suck
of tidal breath as ocean currents and tradewinds move in
constant flow round our beloved earth and we give into this,
this natural cycle of our turning world,

our westbound lives illuminated by everything we’ve ever
learned, ever danced, ever heard from before. My mother
told me: memory is the garden your Ma planted, the cycle
of her farm, the sun and moon and sun and moon again,
memory is this candle we light, she said, it’s the way we
celebrate Christmas each year, not the photos of lost ones
but the way they keep

shining. I tell my children: memory is a ship sailing round
the globe, romping with wind and current, dolphins
and whales and animals we cannot see, all singing in the
depths beneath, their frequencies their own, circling the
globe, too, our ship trailing this phosphorescence, this
remarkable light, this idea of all living things, a glowing
and a disappearing 

Michelle Elvy
from Motion Sickness, At the Bay | I Te Kokoru, 2026

NOTE: after The Family Circus comic originally The Family Circle,
created in 1960 by cartoonist Bil Keane

Michelle Elvy is a writer and editor in Ōtepoti Dunedin, Aotearoa New Zealand. Her books include the everrumble, the other side of better and Motion Sickness, shortlisted for the Kathleen Grattan Poetry Award and Runner up in the John O’Connor Award. Her poem ‘Will’ is joint-Runner-Up in the Caselberg Trust International Poetry Competition. Her numerous anthologies include the forthcoming MAYDAY (edited with David Eggleton and Siobhan Harvey), an urgent call to the world from Aotearoa launching in December 2026.