I spent the best part of my childhood living in a place that would be something between a village and a town. Our house had made its place near a river. The water wasn’t clear but a deep green like water moss. Groves bordered two sides of the house – mangoes and guavas. Two separate gardens were carefully maintained by my mother. We hung tree ladders and clambered on walls, ran because we could and played with our dogs. Evenings were spent taking walks up a nearby hill or playing on jumping grass. It was perfect for children growing up on a diet of Peterswood and Kirrin.
And we had our own set of adventures. Floods and missing dogs and an angry workforce that necessitated police protection. And we didn’t think they were extraordinary. The lives we led were regular like the books we read.
Now years later, when I’ve become an aunt, children read a different kind of book. They read about special children who do miraculous things. Who are not ordinary. And I wonder if what my kids are learning is just a deep restlessness with who they are.
And if I, their aunt, will add to it with my own restlessness - do everything, be everything and go everywhere in this one life.
The other day succumbing to the lure of the thought – I started thinking about whether I’d like a super power like in the TV episodes or the many books I read. And I couldn’t find any that seems like it would be mine. I’m not really the kind who likes to be invisible (ha) or a flyer or see through things. I suppose I could really go for snapping my fingers and being wherever I want to be. But then I guess that’s one power that anyone living in Cesspool would kill for. I think I’d really choose memory. I’d love to have a memory that remembers the moment I was born, what I thought when I was 4 months and what I felt when I was 2 and I’d love to remember the time I was a Chinese or that lifetime in Prague or that moment when I floated like a wisp being nothing…. If I remembered everything I have been then maybe I’d find some answers for who I am.
I go back to the past I do remember and I am wafting above the river near my old home. I remember it well still. The green with a hint of brown, its lazy flow as if it wasn’t in a hurry but was moving nonetheless for lack of better things to do, the bend and then the bridge above it. Wait… I didn’t remember the bridge earlier. But it was there and the new me marvels at the dullness of the child me. Why did I never cross the bridge? Why, I didn’t even think of it! And I wonder if I can go back and cross that bridge. But if I did it now to make up for then I still will never know what I would have seen then.
I can never cross that bridge.
And we had our own set of adventures. Floods and missing dogs and an angry workforce that necessitated police protection. And we didn’t think they were extraordinary. The lives we led were regular like the books we read.
Now years later, when I’ve become an aunt, children read a different kind of book. They read about special children who do miraculous things. Who are not ordinary. And I wonder if what my kids are learning is just a deep restlessness with who they are.
And if I, their aunt, will add to it with my own restlessness - do everything, be everything and go everywhere in this one life.
The other day succumbing to the lure of the thought – I started thinking about whether I’d like a super power like in the TV episodes or the many books I read. And I couldn’t find any that seems like it would be mine. I’m not really the kind who likes to be invisible (ha) or a flyer or see through things. I suppose I could really go for snapping my fingers and being wherever I want to be. But then I guess that’s one power that anyone living in Cesspool would kill for. I think I’d really choose memory. I’d love to have a memory that remembers the moment I was born, what I thought when I was 4 months and what I felt when I was 2 and I’d love to remember the time I was a Chinese or that lifetime in Prague or that moment when I floated like a wisp being nothing…. If I remembered everything I have been then maybe I’d find some answers for who I am.
I go back to the past I do remember and I am wafting above the river near my old home. I remember it well still. The green with a hint of brown, its lazy flow as if it wasn’t in a hurry but was moving nonetheless for lack of better things to do, the bend and then the bridge above it. Wait… I didn’t remember the bridge earlier. But it was there and the new me marvels at the dullness of the child me. Why did I never cross the bridge? Why, I didn’t even think of it! And I wonder if I can go back and cross that bridge. But if I did it now to make up for then I still will never know what I would have seen then.
I can never cross that bridge.
