Category: Ramblings

One ear filled with music and the other open to the melody of the rain falling on the canvas umbrella that covers me. The words tonight seeking to let out. My music and movie selection always opening doors typically shut. I have begun my confession, finding love and acceptance instead of the judgment I have for so many years feared. Lies have lived so deep within that they had become truth.

I have never considered myself an artist. I have defined it by those with paint on their hands and clothes and a resulting image open for all to see. Many years ago on the deck of a home that was not my own in a state that was foreign to me I found the story of the pearl earring. I so young and filled with fear could see only her, I was Griet. Willing to succumb to the commands of the master, the artist. The melody of each changing scene and the evolution of the character becoming my mirror. The symphony of instruments played in perfect harmony swirling in my head each night before bed. As the scenes of my life have changed my image of her has not. Tonight it did. It was no longer the pearl earring in my lobe that I longed for.

It has been years since I have sat before them and watched their eyes exchange glances, tonight the hiatus was over. As the familiar instruments descended upon the screen my eyes no longer sought her face, she had become secondary to him…Jan the artist. I could see myself in him, unsatisfied and self conscious of that which others had proclaimed to be finished and without error. I could see the painted over chair legs at the bottom of the painting and in my minds eye I could see the evolution of this creation. Every stroke of the brush was a piece of him immortalized in canvas. That is why it needed to be perfect, it could not be undone once the veil had been lifted and the eyes of others fell upon it.

I have begun a new painting of my own, my paints the words against the white canvassed screen. Each keystroke drawing me deeper into the colors in my soul, allowing the light to strike and create shadows and depth. Like that pearl earring, everything flows easily, there is no forcing the truth. She is like water overflowing from the faucet, she does not obey the bowl she is poured into, she will continue to pour until she begins to flow over the sides, seeping into each crevice and leaving her mark on each surface. Any pause I have taken has never been for the lack of words, but rather a momentary lack of courage to immortalize them. Each prick of the needle brining forth but a drop of blood and leaving behind the indelible mark of its passage.

I have long feared the memories that have been so tightly buried and yet now, in the rain I fear only the thought of holding them much longer. Now comes the difficult part, the self care. Enjoying the right to care for myself with no motivation other than my fulfilling my own needs. Not the ones that for so long could only be filled by others. My need for solitude grows and yet with it grows the need for those to walk quietly beside me. To offer care and warmth only when requested. This a larger feat than the sentence that describes it.

The fruits of this journey have already begun to reveal themselves. So I press on in the hopes of seeing more of this bundle unravel and those who would spend hours on the phone with me as I work thru the pieces that fall out. Timing I am finding is everything. The palms nod their acknowledgment to me as they blow in the night breeze. The end of the page drawing near.

“Here in the dark, I will rise, I will rise again. A humble seed with grow”

I’m not supposed to be here today. I’m meant to be somewhere else now. There is nowhere to go where you are not and yet this air and these roads make my throat swollen and unable to swallow the truth of your absence. The passing of time has made nothing easier. It has only made my silence louder than trains that should be passing me by.

I’ve been consumed recently with the things of our youth. The moments when we are Christopher Robin playing in the hundred acre wood to us leaving it behind. Yet more times than not I find myself seeing more of Pooh reflecting back at me. How often my hand has joined another for their journey only to be left behind in the wood as they move on in the world. I think of the last time your hand was in mine.

There was this small little island in Ireland that was filled flowers and trees from all over the world, somehow they were surviving in these environments that were not akin to those that they are meant to thrive on. Somewhere hidden in the trees was a round stone building that in times of war was used as a lookout. So much of me is that island. There are things that are living in me, some of them beautiful, some of them coarse and cold and yet they all co exist within the soil of my soul. I remember most how quiet it was, I remember the tears that it brought forth to hear nothing more than my own heartbeat and the air overflowing from the breaths pulled in so deep into my lungs. I think it was on those mountain tops and in the forest of trees that I finally forgave myself…I will return and even though I carry you with me, there is a part of you I left hidden in the hillside forcing me to return and reclaim you.

I don’t know how to finish this. My thoughts are not coherent, I have no poetry for you. Everything in my heart must remain there and I remember why I seek solace in other lands.

Je’taime mi vida.

I’m taking a walk in a garden, you are here. The grass is green and wet from the mornings’ rain. I’m a little girl again, wearing a dress of faces, my hair braided and my eyes peering thru my bangs which have grown past the top of my brows, which now tend to get caught in my lashes as I blink. I’m holding your hand as I skip over rocks and dips in the mud. I can’t see where we are going and yet I feel safe and filled with purpose.

The trees and birds play a harmony with the river that is running alongside us. I can hear you speaking and yet the words are not for me. Each step I take my vision begins to change as I grow taller and the garden around us begins to change as I ascend to a higher point of view. There have been so many times I have let go and run off to follow the butterflies, or jump into the fast running river that has called my attention so many times. Yet as many times as I have run from you, your pace has remained allowing me to return to that hand.  That hand that has stayed the same, the smell and the sound of your voice have also remained constant. Suddenly I see a bridge in sight, yet I cannot see what lies on the other side of it. As soon as it appears, I feel the hand that held me so tight begin to loosen, your pace has quickened and mine has somehow slowed. You turn to me and your hand’s cup my face and I am a little girl again and so are you. Your hands have changed and I no longer see the trail of blue and purple veins beneath your skin. Your hair is longer now and your breath is soft and easy. My mouth moves and while no sound is emitted I can see the recognition of my words in your eyes.

Your hand releases and for the first time, I am behind you as you walk toward the bridge. I follow your footsteps until the sunlight envelopes you and all that is left is the memory of your hand in mine. I look beside myself to where you once stood and there she is…my mother. She had been on the other side of you all this time. Our eyes meet and soon so do our hands. We look up and now the bridge is no longer feet away but its miles and miles away. Only a small speck of red in the distance. The river has now turned and lies before us with some stones offering us passage over its waters. I can see the sadness in her eyes and yet her breathing is even and her grip firm and resolute. She swings my arm as we move on.

My sweet Abuela- may you be resting peacefully in the arms of a merciful Savior. Thank you for the lessons I have learned by your side and the harder ones I have learned upon my return. I see now the years the locust ate and I stand on the promise that he will restore them. Your departure has shown me how precious love is and how much grace we have within us to give, a bountiful supply, never-ending and somehow filling me more as I pour it out on others. I thank you for the strength of your daughters that has taught me so much about the need for vulnerability and trust. I thank you for the mother you have given me. The suffering you endured to bring her forth and the faithfulness you had when once you trusted the prayers offered on your knees. There are those things that are passed on to our children not from teaching but from living. What might have been persistence in you is faithfulness in her. I can see myself in all your children and so I see myself in you.

Forgive the failings and the unwillingness to forgive of a young girl. Take heart that you have been used by my Father to show me now my errors and help straighten my path.

 

 

I did not consider the weight of those words as I hovered over the book now button and yet the words printed on the freshly green aluminum over our heads as the car drives are stinging and causing my breathe to catch in my chest.

The clear blue water rushes the rocks and heads for me as I sit upon it wondering what has been done and what there is left to do.

Therapy she says, perhaps closure. Each kilometer a suture threading my skin, my face contouring with each pull on the taut skin of my very soul.

I loved her so much. She was for such a time the sun and the moon. I was her puppy, depending on her for sustenance love and encouragement. Forgetting her wrongs as quickly as they came by simply not knowing any better.

When we become adults we begin to assign blame for this mis steps in our lives that so often lead to terrible consequences. The only evidence we have are the memories we imprinted all that time ago. Except now the lens we use to view those memories have the rest of our experiences fogging the view. Understanding now the ramifications of what those moments were flood our conscious mind and we begin to shiver at the awakening.

I once heard that our lives our like a recording on a cassette, we cannot simply erase, instead we must rewind and re-record. As the shuttle departed the airport that was once big and now seems a small footprint, the feelings begin to well up within me.

I remembered this road so long ago, so much smaller was I in the front seat barely able to look over the dashboard to see the road beneath our frame.

For so long those memories have had such a hazy film over them. Some part of me has missed them. I have held on to my anger because it was the only way I could reconcile in my heart how those moments which no longer exist would not bury me in sadness.

Traveling has taken and given so much to me and I have realized that all the different grounds which my feet tread are memorialized in my mind with neurological pathways. It is not my sentimentality that brings tears to my eyes as we pass the Cancun sign it is my brain remembering a path it took so many times even if it was so long ago.

I could feel the weight of his little head falling slowly on my arm as his eyes gave way to the rocking of the van and the warmth of his Madina safe at his side. The innocence and dependence in his action reminded me of my vulnerable state as a child coming to this country with my Madina. The tears bursted thru the vault I had locked them in and began to pour down my face. The noise behind me beginning to oscillate as I moved in and out of my memories. Vivid flashbacks of me in that green Volkswagen. Remembering that same trust I had laid bare in that four poster bed for my nap.

Damn this hurts. My memories have gone into sepsis and the only way out is thru, so I wipe the tears as the driver tries to reach for my hand but pulls away before our skin touches. I’m glad he stopped. I don’t want to be touched right now.

In the movies there is this moment where a montage of memories plays for the audience to see. I have that montage running thru my mind. Wandering the Omni hotel by myself and somehow always finding myself at the omelet station~ “Jamon y Queso” I would say in the biggest voice I could muster. Or the summer camp where I learned how good I was at swimming, and remembering how angry the boys were when I would beat them…more I remember were the names they would call me. The Chinese food in Kulkulcan or the stage I strutted down in the gallery below. Fresh squeezed orange juice and questions. All these incredible and painful memories are raveled up and super glued together.

I hope no one is reading this anymore. I hope everyone (aka three people) stopped once they realized this wasn’t about my vacation in Mexico but rather the reprogramming of my mind with Cancun in my view.

I thought I wanted to re-record. But I can’t. I am this woman because of those experiences. I was grown up and old. I was young and innocent.

I am the result of love and obsession of possession and of abandonment.

I hate her because I miss her and I miss the love that was once my sustenance. Where I could have been lost she shined the light on me. But when I grew she couldn’t grow with me and I couldn’t have stayed the 7 year old in awe of every breath she took.

Our relationship left the road that was paved and descended down the road of rocks and sand. Curving and dipping with no warning, the sunlight blocking our view from the danger ahead.

Nearly 15 years since the last time my feet touched that sand. Who is the girl that stood before the expanse of that ocean, what did she see in the big blue that day. I remember that day perfectly, the sound of the ocean, the smell of the sunblock she made me put on before we left the house. The warm embrace of the breeze against my skin.

As I wrote these words my mind wandered to that spot on the very dusty bookshelf and I quickly caught the blue and green. This is what I found within its bookmarks.

I have held Isla Dorada tight to my chest. There are still moments I wonder if that tree I planted as a tiny girl still sits near the lagoon. Does it remember my hands pressing the dirt upon it. I can’t keep going..my eyes are tired and my heart is pleading for rest. I place the album back to collect dust and I cuddle my Tricolor girl and settle for the rising and falling of her chest.

As a young girl, I lost my faith in people, but mostly women. Faith that they could love me unconditionally, that they could be trusted with my hurts and my fears. I allowed the mistakes of a few rob me of so many moments of happiness, freedom to fall and of safe places to sleep. Many years later when the roaring water boiled over and all those unsaid truths caused more harm than a thousand lies I knew I had to open the door and allow someone in. I had waited so long that all my desires and longing were now placed on this one person, inevitably they tumbled from the pedestal I had so precariously placed them upon. That boulder crushed me and yet it created a determination within for me to try again. Only now, after a few “safe” years of friendship have I come to know that there is too much of me for one woman (except my sweet mama, her shoulders are strong). I had to find different people to share different parts of me with, different paths we could take together.

On my very first day along the west coast of a little island called Ireland, I took this photo. The red arrow marked the path of an experienced “rambler” and the other a more leisurely walk for those who just got off a 12-hour plane ride. Both paths would eventually lead us to the same lighthouse, the same cliff with only the ocean below our feet. Yet we would arrive at different times with one of us struggling more to descend into the valleys and persist to climb.

There is a line from a movie that says ” I’d rather fight with you than make love with anyone else” In the platonic sense I feel that way with you. I want to “ramble” thru Craggs and hollows with you, pulling each other up when our boots get stuck in the mud. Pausing to revel in how far we have gone, and what we have accomplished together. Something feels safe with you, I can’t explain it, much like I could never explain the rip current that pulled me to Éire.

This journey is beginning, and while it is full of excitement it is also filled with questions. Some that may take a lifetime or a season to answer. I’m game…are you?