Wednesday, December 9, 2009

Watching

On my ex-husband’s 46th birthday, our daughter and her husband closed on their new apartment. I heard my head say “my little girl owns her own place.” I understood more now what that woman had said to me about how it feels to watch her daughter grow up and be a Mom.

I have been a watcher all my life. From watching my Father’s birds in their cage, I watched the fear in my Mother’s face the night he threatened to kick her up and heard it in her voice the night he brought me back from that adventure on the back of his bicycle.

I watched as my aunt was thrown into the mirror on her wardrobe by her husband and watched again when she retaliated by breaking a plate on his head. I watched as his blood stained the pillow. I watched too when she told her mother that she had thrown away her wedding ring and watched her dug up the yard to find it. I watched as Morris' body was driven away in a car never to walk me to the store again and watched again as his spirit came to visit me, all this before I was nine.

I watched as my mother’s husband molested and raped me and watched as my childhood receded. I watched as we lived our very high life and watched as friends walked away when the light of truth was shown. I watched as our lives crumbled and watched myself spin out of control. All before I was 14. I watched it all. Some things I remember, some I see on my movie screen as an outsider, an observer, separate. So many ways to feel; So many points of rage and sadness; so much time past.

New page, new day, my daughter gives me hope. She was the first right thing I had ever done in my life. She made up for all the pain. She is the reason I would not change the past because I’m afraid that I’d miss her and that whatever the ingredients were that went into her making would somehow be lost. I am here for her and now also for my son. They are my reason my why, my reward for this past. They give me hope. Would he be different if he weren’t a premie? Would he be as sensitive, as intuitive as caring? Would he remember the things he does, attract the people he draws to himself, be as loved as he is. I would be unrecognizable without them. They saved my life, gave me a reason to live when the hole in my soul threatened to consume me. I remember why and the why extends to the people I can touch with my work, to the people I impact in my job. I remember the rest of my family the ones born to different mothers. I pull myself from the ledge, have a good cry for myself and find someone to talk to. I remember how fortunate I am to have my circle and I am humbled in the presence of the Old Ones.

Surely now I can begin to look at myself. Surely now the path can turn within. Surely now I can take inventory of all that I have for my journey. I love and am loved in return. Love was never our problem.

2 comments:

  1. Beautiful piece.
    Our past edifies our present. If we could change our past, we would change our today. Without the anguish, the happiness, the pain of the past days, we wouldn't be here and here is good.

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