There is a memory I have a day I once got lost. There have been times I have been truly lost, but this was not a time I was truly lost. This was a time that I was thought to be lost, not by myself, but by the context and situations that I existed in. In my mind, there was a moment of trying a new thing, of doing something fun, or going to go to chase a feeling. It is hazy the way that feelings are remembered in the chasing. It is hazy the way that memories are remembered in the after. I remember the swing. And swinging.
It had a creak, when it moved, especially as I got older. It told you that it was not the right age for you anymore. That this time had passed. That you had grown up to new things, to new experiences. That you no longer belonged here. But in this memory, the creak was still gentle. It was the grumble of the wood that was still doing its assigned purpose, not that groan of a tool at its capacity. The groan of something at the end of its line. The groan of despair, before the sharp break of failure. The creak was gentle.
It was a soft creak, and there was a soft breeze, the kind generated by a swing when there is no room for the air to grow its own strength. The kind generated when there are 4 walls that hover close and box the world in. That create safety through keeping out the untoward(s). And blocking the air. So the breeze could only be that made by artifice, by legs and weight, thrown against ropes, rubber paddle too stiff to sit. Comfortably sit. But maybe that’s an addition I make now, as I massage this memory and squeeze it for juice.
As I try to fill in the blanks that the moths of despair and desperation ate when they fought to keep us from falling into some hole, some place, some thing that seemed too much in that moment and ate the memories around it in its effort to ensure that this time, this lesson would not be forgotten –I look for anchors to tell me where this memory existed. Perhaps that moment that followed that glorious few forgotten moments of wonder on that swing ate those moments of glory. Hasn’t fear always eaten moments of glory? Hasn’t wonder always been subjugated by shame?
Shame came calling, when the world bore witness to my mother’s fear. Wonder, fear and the rush of warmth masquerading as joy as equilibrium drives to be restored when the cause célèbre has been rectified. Blessed we are when we are young, that the artifacts of these moments are swept up easily. Age leaves more and more notches and creases, places to gather detritus, harder for equilibrium to be restored.
Back door swung open and there she stood, so excited I was to have come to the backyard by myself, to have taken myself outside for a moment of safe adventure before my next feeding, before resuming the cycle of what must be done and what must follow what. Back door swung open and there she stood, so shocked, but so relieved, washed with such strong emotion there was nothing else in that moment. Do I invent this back door? Do I invent this moment of discovery? I probe and wonder — did I not just walk in that same door I dream swung open?
Could this memory of a mother so caught by shock she is wordless be real? Has there ever been any other moment — when struck by grief or worry, fear or wonder, anxiety or awe — that she has stood wordless? Say nay and say truth or say yay and continue to dream. The bus had been called, and the school, that is for certain. That shame I remembered, that I had caused, by signaling poorly my whereabouts.
That shame I remember, that it ate away the rest of it, the moments of glory, the moments of wonder, the moments of thinking that I was free to do as I pleased. That these walls could be bent. Or did it? Glass, uncolor my view, lead me back to what truth might I see.