I’ve been watching Samantha Who? on Netflix and it has led my mind right into marathon mode. Racing around and around about what life would be like to lose memories. It’s horrible to think of it, really. To lose all of our memories. Every moment that made you laugh until your face hurt and landed you with the hiccups. Every moment that you felt so loved and so overjoyed because of how something or someone made you feel. To lose each moment your chest fluttered after someone special looked through your eyes and into your soul. To lose every thought of how someone touched your skin and your spine danced like fireworks down to the very bottom of your back. To never remember how it felt to be held by someone who loves you while you cried. These are life. Memories are everything we are. Everywhere we’ve been. Everything that helps us remember where we want to return, and everywhere we want to hide away from for every day.
They are what make me smile when I smell the purple teen spirit deodorant that I used when trying out for (and not making, boo hoo hoo) cheerleader in the 6th grade.
It’s what makes my heart flutter, still after all these years, when I smell this specific cologne (that I don’t even know the name of) that reminds me of one of my first boyfriends, Matt McClusky.
It’s these moments in mental stone that make me giggle when thinking about the nervousness that once choked me about having to hold a boys hand at the movies and not knowing if my hand was going to feel right or if it was going to be all wrong.
It’s what makes me feel energized and special when I hear the song “I Drove All Night” by Celine Dion, because it was the first song she sang at her concert and it was oh so good! It makes me feel energized because I was so excited and it makes me feel special because the ticket was really expensive and as I sat there, all alone, (among thousands of others but no one I knew anyway) I realized how special I was to my Mom for her to have been that happy just to get to send me to her concert even though she couldn’t go and isn’t really even a huge fan of Celine’s like I am.
Memories are what make my heart smile when I hear the song “Lean Like a Cholo” because it reminds me of a flood of memories, all connected to my best friend, Crystal.
These special past thoughts are what make me feel so elated when I see a Pit Bull because I am immediately overcome by Bryant’s licks and whimpers and sad and happy faces and pounds of food and water demolished and kindness right by my side when he knew something was wrong.
It’s the memory of songs from Junior High, that were THE songs to dance to at each party, that always made me feel like anything could happen and that everyone was born to fall in love.
It’s the color scheme of Black/White/Pink or Turquoise/Brown that takes me to times that I was honored to stand at the front and be witness to three of my very closest friends, my family, committing their hearts and their lives to someone among flowers and table cloths and ribbons of these colors.
Memories are what make me remember all the times I watched, heart in throat, breath at a whisper, while my brother played basketball so beautifully nothing else mattered in the whole world in those moments. These memories are everything that was important in my childhood. These memories are all things beautiful in Ben. The memories are what make me cry as my mind barely brushes across the half court, game winning shots, and his suave smiles when I know somewhere inside he must have been terrified, and the just misses and the unfair calls and free throws that rolled just in and then come out that made for heart breaking ends to such enthusiastic beginnings. They are what remind me, after everything that came between us in the following years, that for those moments our desires were completely intertwined and he will never know how much his basketball meant to me. He’ll never know how his games were the one thing that I could lose myself in completely and forget the torture and torment of being the misfit that I didn’t know how to love being. He’ll never know how I stood behind that post at the Nome Gym and cried when that shot went in, making him everyone else’s hero at that moment too. He’ll never know, but my memories are what remind me of this and I can’t breathe when I think of losing them.
It’s my Mom’s memories that are the only thing that keep my Dad alive for me. It’s the moments when she smiles, tears in eyes, and tells me that something I said or did or looked like or reacted to was just like me Dad’s. Those memories are things that are only mine because they are hers. Her stories are what make me know someone she loved and who helped make me. I was 5 when he died and because of her memories I still get to know that he called movies “flicks” and that we have a favorite song in common in, “I Can’t Help Myself” by The Temptations. Her past moments are why when I ask “do you want to read Walt Whitman to help you sleep” she is able to tell me “Your Dad loved poetry. He wrote beautiful poetry” and all of a sudden I knew where that huge part of me came from when I hadn’t ever known before. Her memories helped make me a little more whole than I was before knowing how much like my Dad it turns out I am.
Most importantly it’s the memories of decorated trees and homemade cheesecake and the smell of wassail and all things Christmas that take me right back to the giddy child, who will forever reside in me, that will always be my Mother and will always be home. It’s these memories that overwhelm me with feelings that words would do no justice that no matter how poor and how hard times were, I always awoke to a Christmas morning that was made for a princess. It wasn’t tiaras and robes and feasts for hundreds but it was my castle for a whole day, every year, and no one ever took it away. It was always my Mom who left the tree lights on all Christmas Eve night and placed presents so strategically wrapped and so beautifully arranged under the tree and filled our home with the smells that will always be known as Christmas. The moments of squeezing shut me eyes and holding my breath and knowing that I only had this many seconds longer until I was to be inaugurated into the seat of Princess for a WHOLE DAY! The attention to desires paid through the leading months and the surprises that were never expected but always adored were always my Mother. The tenderness in the suggested reason for purchase and the questioning brow of the boxes contents acceptance. The mornings spent in PJ’s tearing gingerly through memories to be made. These moments, the ones of love and kindness and thought and sincerity and care… These moments, these memories, are my Mother.
And while these things are the reasons that we all exist, other’s memories so different than mine of course, there are things I’d like to wake up having forgotten. Not just to lose the thoughts but to lose everything those memories make me.
I’d like for a little amnesia to swoop in and knock some things right the hell out.
I’d love to forget the memory of what it felt like when I tried to boil water in the pot in the microwave, because I wasn’t allowed to use the stove when Mom wasn’t home, and the flames that came instead of hot water. I’d probably add days to my life in I could forget that fear.
I’d love to skip right over the moment Katie Brammer called me in 5th grade and told me that Michael Lowe, my boyfriend at the time, was breaking up with me. And then telling my Mom and her acting as if I had said nothing. Acting as if I hadn’t just told her that the world was obviously ending and that I was dying at this very moment from a feeling in my chest that she was supposed to make go away and just…ignored instead.
I’d love to trot right on past the feeling of terror that I lived when I got caught, with the same Katie Brammer, driving my Mom’s car up and down the street in 5th grade because I knew at that very moment, which of course lasted for 1.6 decades, that my Mom was sending me to Military Boarding School and that I was never going to see said Katie Brammer or anyone else EVER AGAIN. Another dozen years added on to my life expectancy.
I’d like very much to cross out the moment that I was running through the gym, in Junior High, and my purse (Old Navy back pack purse, denim stunner that it was) broke and my things went flying across the floor in front of EVERYONE. Things including – GASP - tampons and the loved turned loathed Josh Fore literally screaming, pointing and laughing about “T.J.’s tampons ha ha ha”. Yep, just cross that one right on out.
I’d love to know what my heart may be like if I could forget the moment I was forced to swallow the look in Tyler’s eyes when I asked him who it was that he cheated on me with. What my heart may be like if I could just skip over that life altering, earth shattering, dream stealing look that will always be inside of me. I’d like to not know what it’s like to know that when you swallow something like that, that you’ll carry it forever.
I’d like to eliminate completely the memory of the moments I spent writing, reading, talking, breathing, living Earl William Walker Junior. If I could skip over these memories I wouldn’t call him Earl William Walker Junior because I wouldn’t know that’s how he signed everything he ever wrote. I wouldn’t have the beautiful memories of the things he said and the way he made me feel special even though he was who everyone wanted. I wouldn’t have the moments spent in agonizing suspense in the times between letters from class to class. I wouldn’t have the laughter he instilled in me when everything was gray. I wouldn’t have the moments spent in comfortable silence next to him, feeling his arm move up and down mine as he breathed. I wouldn’t have the moment he walked in after football practice, without a shirt on and knowing I had never seen anything that beautiful and feeling ashamed of that for some reason and not knowing why. I’d lose the memory of the moment he leaned in to kiss me and the sheer panic that turned my head and the connected memory of the nights spent thinking about how my life could have been changed forever if the panic had stayed at bay and kept my face right in his. I’d lose the memory of all the superbly hastened moments that I spent next to him in the hallways and all the hours it took to walk from my classroom to the place in the hall way I knew he would be standing, beautiful, waiting on little ole’ me. But if I lost all these memories, I’d lose every moment, of every day, that have filled every year of the last 13, that I have spent knowing that he will always be the one that got away. My one that just…got away. Not someone’s someone who maybe could have been something. Earl William Walker Junior was my someone and he got away. The age, the immaturity, the person I was then verses the person I am now, none of that matters when it comes to him. The person he helped me become by loving me exactly like I was is something he will never know and I have to live with that memory. While I don’t believe in regrets and I would never truly want to lose memories of the ones I loved and who loved me, the thought of seeing who I could maybe be without that hurt, without that deceit, minus the lies and the memories of pain is ever tempting because I’d like to know the whole me. I’d like to know who I could be if I weren’t in so many pieces. And I don’t think I’ll ever get over part of me wanting to know part of her.
Phone calls of engagements vs. phone calls of betrayal.
Hugs of despair vs. hugs of exhilaration.
Hands touching in desire vs. hands parting in goodbye.
Eyes meeting in anguish vs. eyes meeting in love.
Words exchanged in a fine frenzy vs. weaponed words fighting blindly in rage.
Passion made visible vs. falsely visual passion.
Love vs. hate.
Anger vs. joy.
Fleeting embarrassment vs. motionless shame.
Pain vs. pleasure.
Kindness vs. selfish.
Lie vs. truth.
All of these things, among so many others that can’t be reduced to words, are memories. Some bad. Some good. Some beautiful. Some wretched. Some loving. Some horrendous. Some exhilarating. Some strenuous. So much anger and so much love. These memories are what and who and how and where we are. As individuals. As friends. As family. As significant others. As employees and bosses. As beings in every way. Memories are who we are.
While writing of betrayal and hurt though, I walk away with settled thoughts of those who loved me right, even when I was wrong. Those who hated me even when I was right. Those who talked and those who listened. Those who helped and those who hurt. Those who carried and those who leaned. Those who made me who I am. While I’d like to know the heart that I could hold and the girl I could be unbruised and unscathed I’ll think of her fondly and instead dress the girl I am each day with memories to spare.
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