Up from the Depths

When I came from my house through the garden to the car this morning, the bird that sings "Pretty, pretty, pretty, pretty" was calling from the top of the mulberry tree. The temperature has taken a temporary turn toward spring-like this weekend, and the birds are looking for love. Last summer I figured out who belongs to that song, but I have forgotten. I always thank them for the "pretty" compliment, though; and when I heard it this morning my heart lifted.

Friday was another of those January work days from hell; and that was just by mid-morning. It went downhill from there. The whole week was dark, really, as illustrated by my daily one-inch-square collage. I returned home from work, late, and turned on the evening news. Harry Smith (I can't like him; I watch CBS for Katie, and she was "off." Why should I have been surprised, given the day it was.) informed me that it was the 25th anniversary of the Challenger Shuttle Disaster. I didn't know. As the footage played something bubbled up from the depths of my soul. Sadness for them, memory of the national horror, the bittersweet of passed time. I watched the smiling faces of the seven astronauts; two of them women and one of them a "mere" school teacher, off to send the school children of the world lessons from outer space. Though the seven might have, must have, should have been scared, they looked so happy and calm. They knew that their lives were about to be forever changed with this most excellent adventure, and any fear was so worth it. They were blissfully unaware that their lives were about to end. "Five, four, three, two, one. Ignition. And we have lift-off." And then, 71 seconds into their adventure, the unspeakable. The space ship exploded on the screen again with the memorable smoke patterns that are etched on our minds. I stood all alone in the middle of the room with tears streaming down my face. It was as if it were 1986 again.

A quarter of a century. Where did that go? My family was living in Starkville, Mississippi. Except for the Mississippi part, where we had been living for almost two years, I was happy. I had a wonderful family and was blissfully unaware that that particular brand of well-being was not going to be a forever fact of my life. Ed was at work across the parking lot from our temporary faculty housing, Nicholas was in his first grade classroom, not-quite-two-year-old Emma was down for a nap. It used to be that I watched all the space vehicle lift-offs. It thrilled me every time. But they had become so common place the TV stations no longer broke into programming to show them live. And I no longer looked for them; I could wait for the evening news to learn if they had lifted off as scheduled or if they had been delayed by weather or mechanical or technical difficulty. I turned on the TV that morning to entertain myself while Emma slept, and caught the first broadcasts of something gone terribly wrong. Houston Control was still thinking, hoping, praying that the astronauts would eject and hurtle into the ocean safe and sound. But of course that was just postponement of the inevitable. And I stood all alone in the middle of that room, tears of horror and disbelief streaming down my face.

Memory is a funny thing. Most of the time I experience memory in my head. But sometimes it is in a smell: the gardenias in my garden take me back to high school proms; the smell of a certain brand of cigar puts me back in Wenatchee, Washington visiting my Uncle Ike and Aunt Bertie, riding down the sidewalks in the "surry with the fringe on top"; he of the patch over one eye who smoked cigars with a similar scent. And then there are the "where were you?" events: the personal ones like the death of my father; and the memories we share with the world--the assassination of JFK, 9/11, the Challenger Disaster among them. Visuals of the event; where we were standing or sitting; who was there; what was going on around us before, during, and after; what we felt. It all bubbles up from somewhere down so deep we are barely aware we still hold the memory.

I received a bit of information on Friday afternoon that had the same sort of effect on me. Because I am not sure that it is public knowledge yet, I can't talk about it in specifics. But news of an impending happening brought up those memories of a blissful, not knowing the future, time. Something I thought would be forever, and wasn't. The news shocked me into speechlessness; I had no words even in my head or in my typing fingers. I sat frozen in my chair. The feelings didn't just bubble up, they surged volcanic ash-like from the deepest depths of my stillness. They had no name, only emotion. It was as if I were no longer connected to my body. Memory of a life in the rearview mirror, flashed within me. A piece of my life that I thought had ended 17 years ago, felt more final. Is that even possible? Is the end not the really real end? I guess, like the Challenger memory, all the people we have been stay inside of us. And when something happens to bring those old people and events up from the depths, we have to experience the endings over again. And perhaps each one is more final than the one before. Flirting at the edges of memories brought up by today's information was a vague image that this was not the sequence of events that had been playing out in my vision of the future, either. How dare things not happen as I imagine they will!

Yesterday's warm temperatures lured me out into the garden. I raked a few leaves, cleaned up the garden a bit, let myself dream of spring creations. I checked out the banana tree. The best laid intentions...I had hoped that by not cutting it down to the ground this year, new growth would spring from the slumbering stalks. But maybe its location at the corner of the house was not as protected as I hoped. Maybe it has just been too harsh a winter. The stalks froze to death. Once again, it will have to reinvent itself from the earth. And I looked for signs of emergence. I didn't expect to find much--it is still winter--but there it was. Some kind of bulb has sprouted in various places in the garden. I don't know what they are, and I kind of like it that way. I see the beginnings of something new coming up from the depths--an idea for a project, dreams of adventure, a friendship, a plant--and I have no need to know how it is going to turn out. I try not to name it or make plans for it, but just enjoy each step of development. When I plant seeds and bulbs, I don't chart it on paper so I remember where I planted what. I like feeling like I am planting mystery and anticipation. John Lennon said, "Life is what happens to you when you’re busy making other plans." I try to stay in the life and avoid too much of the busyness of planning and expectation; what happens isn't always in our plan. In opposition to that, of course, is the saying that if you don't make plans, someone will make them for you. It's a fine line. So I dream, hope, plan a bit, steer where I can, then let it go. Or at least I try.

I could imagine being tempted yesterday to start digging in the soil. In my head I saw a surge of visitors to the garden centers. It has been a cold winter, and the temptation to hurry spring is strong. But there is still plenty of winter left. I contented myself with dreaming a bit. Digging into the depths too soon can stir up what needs to happen in the dark before it's ready to see the light. Maybe that is why I don't respond well to therapy. When I go (which has been rare over my lifetime, though there have certainly been times that might have called for it), I go filled with anxiety. There are only 50 minutes in a session, and what I may need to talk about hasn't bubbled to the surface yet. It needs time to work in the dark. (The definition of Introvert.) And when it is ready, I don't need to talk about it anymore! So I am tongue-tied when I am sitting in the presence of kindly professionals who only want to help. I have had friends and lovers who have, knowing that certainly there is something behind what they see in my eyes, insisted that there must be words that go with the something, and who can't understand why am I so stubborn about spilling it. It is true that sometimes I need someone who loves me to dig. But why can't they just say, "I am here when it's ready to emerge, instead of getting frustrated because I won't just spit it out? Which makes it hard to talk about it when I am ready. And so I don't. And that is the stuff of which relational wedges are driven.

Speaking of friends and lovers that had their place in time, and are now gone from all but the depths, I found myself wondering about mine this week. As the Challenger came back to the surface, so did they. I remember all of those people, from my first-grade best friend Maggie Jo (I named a cat after her several years ago, and can still call up her blond curls bouncing on the bumpy school bus ride) and my first true love Mike in the second grade, through my first and second boyfriends and my friends through the years, to more recent-life lovers and friends. Memories of times spent together bubble up from time to time. My question is, do they remember me? Do they call up my face and relive time? I know that my first boyfriend does (he of the gardenia corsages), because he has told me. I am grateful for that. I guess there are just some things I will never know. They come up from my depths; I trust I come up from theirs.