THE KEEPERS

 I have driven the streets, with lawns unable to breathe for the suffocation of things, and random discards stacked and strewn about, as if buried treasure unearthed and forgotten.

 _____________________ 

We are the keepers of memories embodied; held as a baby we are unable to put down.

What is precious, it seems, is not the moment just before us, but the longings of a life we once had, remembered as better than the life we live.

Six. One Nine. The area code of a girl who wore to her prom a strapless hand-painted gown.

If you asked, she would tell you of her insecurities—of being too vulnerable, too naïve, too tall.

This woman who writes to you now, imagines the pink-painted blossoms on green seafoam chiffon, sees her youth as a marvel looking back to then from now.

To reach me you must still dial Six. One. Nine. After twenty-three homes in every part of the Country,  I still find it remarkable how long and far the trail of my innocence spans.

This nostalgia. It comes to me time and again. Though charming in its notion, I am wise to disregard it as a friend.

In the midst of this contemplation, the image of a dilapidated home arrives from a darling friend.  Perched above the Ionian Sea in Vathi Ithaca sits the decaying home of her childhood, the memories of it as difficult as it appears. I hear her tears in the words the woman of her self-iterations writes. Between the lines, I hear the child—

Tormented by memories of an angry daddy confused by what love’s manifestation, to him, looked like.

Anguished with leaving, along with her beloved island, a part of herself behind.

Charged with dispensing of a family legacy embodied in four tumbled-down walls.

A burden unwanted, a woman held back in the holding on.

These manifestations of who we were once. We define them as charming, enchanting as some once-loved storybook.

But I see the piles of discard running over and through the lives we create, like lyrics of a harder or happier time we struggle to recover and rewrite.

We are the keepers. The ones whose hearts are wrapped up tightly in sentimental cellophane—

Living stuck and haunted.

Nurturing the longings of a simpler time.

This is not a story of letting go but taking flight.

Of living forward, with no end in sight.

I had thought that I would write of remembering.

But I am set on a future that is deep and wide, far reaching.

This is what I covet. Not the loss of something past and unrecovered.

But the years advancing.

Evidenced in the tiny lines, like pathways to a bright and unending light.

What is sentimental, what brings the tears to flow, is not some lost opportunity, some unrequited love,

But what has been gifted and given in the here and now.

My territory is more vast than what can be contained in three little numbers [619],

The sanctuary of my spirit more open than the boundaries of four walls.

If we are the keepers, let us be the keepers of the gift of this present moment.

Let us dance in its presence, uninhibited by sorrow, regret, despair.

May we bear witness to our nostalgia. Then release.

Shall we teach our children and our ‘others’ to make room for what is coming?

Then, with all available energy create it to our highest imaginings.

So that what we leave is not greyed and tired piles of discarded things,

But canvases filled with the colors of possibility.

Etymology of a word [extraordinary to discover this after receiving the photo herewith]:

Nostalgia is a learned formation of a Greek compound consisting of [nostos] meaning homecoming and [algos] meaning sorrow or despair. It was coined by a 17th century medical student to describe the anxieties displayed by Swiss mercenaries fighting away from home.

NOTES:

We are all so like my friend whose family home decays on an island far away.

Is our future so uncertain that we feel compelled, even responsible, to hold on so tightly to our past?

I too, love the remembering. But I am mindful not to linger there. When someone utters, “We can give you five years,” you listen. Then you run [not walk] away.

There is no time for reminiscing. At least not too seriously or too long.

Let the things that inspired you once, catapult you into a future unknown.

Regard this “unknowing” as a blank canvas to paint the colors of your wildest imaginings on.

Our Savior admonished, “Dust off your sandals.”

So, on to the next mission…and then the next.

Footnote: For Heidi…for each of us…with love.