and then if you can remember

I was talking to my aunt this week. I need to call her more often. She reminds me that I wasn't born into the wrong family. She often tells me stories of the childhood she and my mom shared growing up with parents that loved them, but knew neglected them. She remembers these stories and after their effects have started to erode away, she can laugh at a lot of them. Between all the seemingly endless instances of trauma and tragedy, she remembers a lot of good times.

So I was on the phone furrowing my brows at this... “I know I had good times with my mom and her side of the family... but I can't really remember them.” I remember ridicule from older cousins. I remember my grandmother's house being overrun with scores of glowering relatives I didn't know who would get offended and harangue me if I took too long acknowledging them once I entered. I don't remember many good things!

It reminds me of when I broke up with my first serious girlfriend. I was mad as hell and didn't want to hear her voice, see her face, or have anyone mention her name around me. I couldn't remember anything good about the times we spent together. Then months later after the heat of my anger began to dissipate, it's almost as if those most pleasant memories started popping up again like wildflowers springing up from the seemingly lifeless carpet of soot after a forest fire. Not long prior, I might have sworn up and down that said moments never happened.

I'm listening to Anita Baker's Rapture album right now. I love Anita Baker. But oddly enough, I've been completely disenchanted with listening to her for years now. I'm almost certain that it's because I associate her music with my mother. When I was a child, I can remember my mother playing and playing and playing her 45rpm "Angel". And then a few years later when Rapture was released in 1986, it was a permanent fixture in the house.

My hope is that now that the smoke and ashes, the clouds and fog is clearing in my head, that maybe I'll remember something positive from then. True, I did spend much more time with my grandparents than with my mother. But she wasn't an absentee. I just need to remember some more things that made me smile.

Ooh! I got it! Here's one. My mom used to take us (and whatever cousins lived with us at the time) to the drive thru theatre to see movies. I remember back in 1990, she took us to see Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves and during the credits while Bryan Adams' "Everything I Do (I Do It For You)" was playing, she told me how my father always treated her so well and told her he would die for her. I remember feeling really happy then.

Now, I'm quite certain my mother feels plenty different about her childhood than my aunt does. Though similarly traumatized, my mother seemed to have compartmentalized it away more. She seems to react with mild disdain whenever I begin to talk about the past. I'm sure it's unsettling for her. But I hope she can begin to inch past it. After the house burning down and confronting old hurts and what not, I feel so much more free. I hope she can do the same and follow suit. I think I'm going somewhere with this. I think.