On remembering

This is a story about what's been true for me. Maybe it's not the same for everyone, but here's what I've found, really, in just the last couple of years.

Unaddressed hurt covers your eyes with big, cold hands. 

But when you address it? When you name it? When you have the courage to pull the hands away and see what they're made of? They lose their strength. 

Your life, your self, appear with so much more color. And the most magical part, for me, is the way the beautiful things, so long out of sight, come creeping back.

Indulge me in a flight of poetic illustration:

In sleep, I looked back and saw a mist.

A flash of memory here and there, but little clarity. Flares of harmful words, and sparks of sweetness.

In awakening, I looked back and saw darkness — and myself inside it.

A sister too much a mother.

A daughter looking for nurture and connection, receiving criticism and distance. 

A girl looking for safety and understanding, receiving fear and abandonment.

A child navigating hurt, loneliness, threat, and injustice in a world with no place for sadness, fear, anger.

"But it wasn't all bad," was my mantra. I felt something like shame, putting a name to the hurt I spent years ignoring. No, it wasn't all bad. But it was all stained with the darkness I finally named.

And I'm still working on healing the wounds left from that hurt. But now I'm self-aware, self-actualizing, self-integrating, self-confident.

In awareness, I look back with clarity.

In clarity, I see both and. I see a fuller truth.

I see a man choking down his own demons for years, fighting to give his kids a better life than he had.

I see a woman contending with her own mental health, committing to raising kids in intellectual independence.

I remember more. 

Now that I've named the suffering, the sweet comes back. More specifically:

I see my dad, strong, sweating, clearing out what seems like miles of go-kart track with a machete. I hear the rumbling motor, smell the exhaust, and I'm back in the woods, pealing around a curve, hitting a root, throwing up a cloud of red dust I can still taste.

I see my mom gently stirring a pot of chicken and dumplings while I stand on a stepstool, glasses fogging, softly dropping in one dumpling at time. Mama open up a space for me in between the floating drops of dough, and the hot steam dampens my hands and I'm warm with the deep satisfaction of wordless teamwork.

Now that I've given a voice to the pain, cried over it, sat with it for a while, treated it with respect, I can look back and see an astounding mix of bitter and sweet. Neither negates the other. I don't know how it works, but honoring my pain and healing the wounds has freed my brain to find the forgotten good.

Mama stirring food coloring into salty homemade play-dough on the stove.

Daddy bringing home plums in his little Coleman cooler in the summer.

Mama sitting in the rocker, reading aloud from Charlotte's Web and Stuart Little.

Daddy reading aloud from the Bible, too early in the morning. At bedtime. On Christmas.

The family crowding around the computer to see what's next in the Netflix DVD queue. 

Us crowding around the piano to sing an old hymn like Southern Von Trapps.

Mama making the babies laugh with "ONE BIG EYEBALL."

That last one came to me just now! I don't think I've ever, since the last time it happened to a sibling, given a single thought to the way my mom would bring the baby to her face, forehead to forehead, nose to nose, eye to eye, and say ONE. BIG. EYEBALL! prompting that infant belly laugh that brings you both to tears.

And that's what I'm talking about. I have a regular old bad memory, but for so long, I seemed to have nothing. And then a lot of ugly. 

But now, every so often, a fresh, soft, warm and sweet memory uncovers itself, and I am so grateful.