The Scattering of Light: On Memories & Letting Go

January. I swing it wide open like a door and hesitate before stepping into it. All my old lives. All my long nights. What I fought for, that which broke my heart, the wanting, the singular need that seemed terribly urgent. Where do they go? Are they within me, are they behind me, or are they, like a loose scarf, unraveling around my neck, a bright yellow thing, waving and waving in the wind? The scarf does not pull me along, does not get caught on a branch, it just stays tethered to me, a new warmth, like the hand of another touching my cheek.

All I want is to be here. Not twenty steps ahead and not two steps back. My feet planted. My eyes gazing. On the preciousness of now. How quickly it disappears. The wild mystery of living within something even as it becomes old, even as it fades just as you let out an exhale. To think all of life is a sum of these little, fleeting moments. Placing my book on the nightstand before turning my body in bed. Bending my knees under the blanket only to feel my husband straightening them at night to lessen my leg cramps in the morning. How I always wake up first and watch while he sleeps. I tiptoe around our apartment, keeping the lights off for as long as I can. It is perhaps my favorite time of the day—the early mornings. Its quietness. Its stillness. I peek through the blinds as if expecting a shadow to be lurking in the corner. How wild to think this, too, is something we have in common: the starting of a new day as though one were breaking the seal of an envelope. It is not quite certain what we would find, but we open it anyway and look inside. A yellow dawn greets me. I press my face to the window and take it all in.

Regardless of what is given or taken from me, there is a mark of ordinariness and simplicity that I am certain I want to keep. Daniel baking chocolate and oatmeal cookies. How quickly we take down the Christmas lights. Sitting side by side, eating leftover pizza. So much Pentatonix. It is not lost on me that this is our first holiday together as a couple. I try to remember as much of it as possible, when nothing is yet a tradition, and all that matters is being here, being full of good, good things. Gratitude, most of all.

We call our families. On the screen, my mother beams. My whole childhood, I carried my father’s face, and now, I am stunned to see myself in my mother and her in me. I spot her aging first – under her eyes, the thinning of her hair, the lines mapping her face –  and my first response is to worry. Worry about what might happen. Worry about what the old years take with them. Worry about the memory of her and how they’re already slipping my mind. My failure to remember. My failure to make it all count. When she complains about her chest, her knees, her many illnesses, I do not say what I’m afraid of. More than once, my husband points it out to me—my mannerisms, my words, how I sigh as I will patience, the ache in my legs, even how I walk sometimes, slightly bent over, as if carrying something. All my mother. My father remains in my laughter, my humor, my workaholism, but my mother, she takes over my body. The more she grows—stubborn in her ways, the more evident my becoming.

Something has healed in this important relationship, and I don’t know how. I can’t say it is time, or if it has something to do with growing up and surrendering, loosening our grip on things. But I know there is healing because I no longer ache, no longer keep going back to it, twisting it around in bitterness, loathing loathing loathing. I carry this new thing we have carefully, with sweet relief. The truth is, I know we can go back there. Back to the cruelty of failing to see each other. I know how quickly this can fall apart, how deep the scar sits. Are we dancing around it? Are you, too, holding your breath? What I mean to say is: I love you, Mama. I forgive you. I forgive myself. We have withheld from each other, and we have given. I do not want the reckless numbness anymore. To cut something off just to throw my hands up in despair. But to seek the love that renders me open and soft. Exposed and vulnerable. Walls down. Arms wide open. For you. Just for you.

I bring into the new year a hunger for reading, a yearning for walking outdoors, a great mindfulness about the words I speak and what I believe, particularly about myself and a furious yet trembling zeal to face that which I am afraid of: public speaking, unfavorable perceptions about me, making mistakes, saying no, saying yes, letting go. What many do not know is that I do not begin the year with N. Nineteen years of friendship. How I tried to fit the pieces together, to make it all work somehow. Filled with hope, you reach and reach for something, until you realize that sometimes the reconciliation isn’t a given—not even when you fight for it, even when you say Please, don’t keep me in the dark. There is no closure, no last words between us, only a maddening silence. I grieve it like a loss because isn’t this, too, a kind of death?

It takes me too long to let it go, to accept the truth of what is: someone you love does not want you in their lives anymore. What to do with the memories? What to do with the questions, the absence, the fear that everyone leaves in the end? Nothing at all but surrender. That is how I begin: with my aching hands opened wide, scattering the quiet burdens like light.