I remember sitting in a
restaurant with my papa. I was probably
six years old. It was late August and my
family and I had gone to watch my sister jump her horse in a three day event. My father had taken me out to lunch while my
mother stayed with my sister, helping her to prepare.
My father and I sat in a
booth. I remember the afternoon sun,
golden, pushing through a dusty window.
We ordered marionberry pie, and we sat and talked. My father has rough hands, and uses them to
paint pictures while he talks. When I
think of my father, I think of his hands, and how large they seemed next to my
own.
He was teaching me about
Democritus, who supposed that, if you cut things up into smaller and smaller
parts, eventually you would reach a smallest point. According to some, this was the beginning of
our understanding of the atom. My father
was illustrating this as we talked. As I
child, I loved to learn, particularly the way he taught me. When he told me how the world works things
just made sense.
To show me about atoms, my
father and I cut our piece of pie into halves, ate half, then cut the remaining
portion in half, ate it, and so on until our plates had only a tiny speck of
filling left. We had reached the
crucible of the lesson and my father was in full animation. “Only” he said, “there are smaller parts
yet. Bits so small, we can’t see
them. We just know they are there.”
I think about my family a
lot. About the way it’s become the way
it has. Democritus’ principle has
interesting implications. It seems I am
a person who likes dissecting things; I like looking at the smallest parts. I also like looking at things as they exist
in a bigger picture. Shrinking it down,
blowing it up, over and again until the important stuff becomes clear. Until I get to eat the pie.
I think about life this way,
so I think about my family like this too.
My family has an interesting
history. I can trace my people back and
back, on both sides.
My father’s people lived in
the mountains. It was cold and the
fields were tough and barren. They
crossed an ocean as religious refugees, warmed by their faith and a sense of
righteousness. My mother’s people moved
to a country scarred by a different war than they were leaving. My mother grew up swimming in the sun and
avoiding snakes as she walked to school.
Both wore shoes with holes and ate at simple table.
I try to imagine being in
their place, imagine what it felt like inside of their skin, inside of their
minds. How did it come to this? Where does it go from here? How does it get better?
I grew up in star thistle
fields and under oak trees. My best
friends were our cats and dogs. I had
other friends too, imaginary friends. I
weeded by my father’s side, shot rattle snakes, and played chess. My mother taught me about the heart, and when
my friends died, she’d hold me until the tears dried up. She would let me come into her studio with
her. She’d go into a silent world of
color and image, and I’d draw next to her.
It was a good childhood, I think.
Too, there were hard
things. My parent’s fighting while my
sister and I hid beneath the stairs, their voices raising like waves in a
storm. My father alone after their
divorce, with a bottle of vodka and opera on so loud that the windows would
vibrate. My sister’s drug
addiction. Other things that my family
could not prevent, which left my spirit more hesitant, more scared.
I’ve traced our steps back,
looking for lost information, running my fingers over the stories we tell each
other about the past. Trauma, love,
strength, hope; fragile, tender, aching
humanity.
I am a mother now. I raise one child who grew in my womb and
another who came from my sister‘s. At
night I’ll sometimes creep into their room to watch them sleep, chests slowly
rising and falling and their eyelids soft in dream. It’s been a long road. My niece came to us a shell. Slowly, slowly, slowly, she’s regaining her
whole heart; becoming herself.
Family can mean so many
different things. I’ve lost family
members, and also my family grows larger by the day. Love is exponential and contagious. It is the birthing place for hope, I
think. My niece turned five years old a
few weeks ago. The sky was moist and
electric. We met in the forest, at the
edge of the Salish sea. We ate overly
sweet birthday cake and were surrounded by friends. Facing the water she blew out a candle
for each of her years, wishing for the years to come. My heart nearly exploded, it felt so
full.
When I was small, I felt
responsible for the world’s tragedies and for the pain my family carried. I am the child who wanted to swallow up the
hurt and cry out a miracle. It’s a
relief to discover how small and insignificant I am. And also, because so many things are true at
once, how significant each life is, including my own. Each of us is valuable and each of us has the
capacity to make a difference through our own limited experience. Love can save lives, I’ve seen this to be
true. Each of us exists in a bigger
picture, strung like lights across time.
We are unique. We are all
similar.
Through parenting, I’ve been
able to touch a sort of love which I believe to be universal. A mother’s love, an auntie’s love, a father’s
love, a grandfather’s love, a friend‘s love: Parenting forces us to be vulnerable,
and the rewards are that we can gain compassion, connection, and to be part of
a deep creativity, the creation of generations.
We don’t need to parent perfectly, or to remove ourselves from our
beautiful, flawed humanity. We just need
to be willing to try. To do our
best. To be ourselves. To reach up and touch love.
What holds a family together,
no matter the history or structure of a particular family, is love.
When I was a young lady I had a girlfriend. I admired how tough she was, and how nothing seemed to twist at her. Instead of crying, she'd light a cigarette and shrug her shoulders, lips slammed shut. She seemed impenetrable; how I wanted to be. So at 15, I decided I'd take up smoking and quit crying. And, with some exception, I was successful.
