“baggage”
May 14, 2008 by constantquantum
everywhere & nowhere 38
Some things we carry with us… no matter how far we wander. Invisible, packed out of the reach of customs officers, they don’t have to weigh down a backpack. We might not even know they’re there.
Take memories, for example.
My father gave me a tall, glossy collection of fairy tales for my birthday a long time ago. The volume was slim. The pages cool to the touch, finished with a smooth satin sheen. I would cradle the book. Hold it at a specific angle. Look over its pages carefully. Thoroughly. Not necessarily because I thot it precious at the time, but because, if the light wasn’t quite right, the illustrations would be hidden by the glare. I must have been old enough to read, tho I don’t remember exactly when I got it. & it’s gone now. Lost in the shuffle of a hundred moves. Its title a shadow of old memories. Filed, stored, dusty, inevitable. I haunt used bookstores with the curiosity of a born reader, but I’m not sure I ever want to find another copy of these particular stories. The book’s existence has the mystery bought by vague reminiscences….
there was a youngest brother
& there was a princess swathed head to foot in sea green silk
mummified
waiting to be rescued
The story wove characters & figures with the resolution of a dream: How, along the route the young man proved his good nature by helping a hive of bees rebuild a nest; & how, in return, the bees swarmed around the figure of the princess when the time came for him to choose his bride from among three other draped harpies….
The plot was sufficient if you believed the cloth surrounding the princess was laced with the honey of her skin. You’d be right there with them when the success of the young lovers’ embrace worked an unravelling on the final page.
The silk, a sea green cocoon. The dawning, like the sun on the ocean. The glare of the page under my mother’s sea shell lamp…
a happily ever after
***
“You’re Okay, Kid,”my cousin Kelly once said after I had fallen short of my own ambitious expectations for about the zillionth time.
“Zillion, trillion, quadrillion… Dumb. Dumb. Dumb! Stupid silly girl! Sissy! Sissy! Sissy!”
I muttered all the teasing expletives to myself, anticipating my critics while kicking at the snow with big felt lined skidoo boots. I was eight years old. It was January, & I had just stumbled so that I lost the foot race with Jack to the fox-and-goose home base/free zone.
Kelly smiled & she helped me brush the snow off my jeans. When I realized she wasn’t laughing at me, I wiped my baby tears away, annoyed, and I contemplated her amused expression. She had fine clear skin, the smile of the girl next door, & a mischievous willingness to try just about anything.
Kelly was my hero that year. Her’s was the kind of encouragement that can only come from someone seven years older; someone who already knew the secrets of bras and boys.
“You just gotta learn to keep your feet on the ground,” she said and then she was off, following the maze paths we had cut in the paper surface of the snow.
***
home is the ground you’re born to
***
When we were younger, my mother rarely grounded my brothers & I if we did anything wrong. By the time I was fourteen, I had left my family and set out on my own…
grounding
a metaphor
the live wire will burn you
laying out the ground work
From grade one on you learn the importance of memory.
***
