Is it the fall season or getting older that bids us look back and consider our past? It's been several years since I wrote the column below. The jar has gotten a little dusty. Life has gone on, I'm older and wiser. I hope. I keep busy with housework, church, writing guilds. Today I did something I used to do often, though it is not mentioned in the column. My mother had the greenest of green thumbs, and I inherited some of that skill. I once kept many houseplants, but let them go. I do like to keep an aloe plant or two around for its medicinal value. A dear friend gave me one a couple of years ago and it multiplied, I divided it into three pots and they became potbound also. I knew they must be divided again and now - eight? - eeek! If they survive I shall gift some of them. I now again have a row of plants in my front window. I've also been sewing a little again. What else will I dredge from the past, I wonder.
* * *
Rememberies
A
clear glass pumpkin-shaped jar sits on my desk, doubtless meant to hold cookies
or some such. But I have crammed into it various mementoes that mark
significant moments in my life.
Visible
on one side of the jar is an old address label with my mother's name and last
apartment address. More than thirty years after her death the poignant ache of
loss lingers in my heart. I'm reminded of the hardships she endured, raising
eight children in deep poverty, and am very doubtful that I could have done as
well as she.
Peeking
through the other side, my grandson's name tag from the family reunion Holston
Valley Medical Center provided for babies who spent the first few days or weeks
of their lives in the NeoNatal Intensive Care Unit. I don't like to remember my
fear at first sight of his tiny, mottled body after long, anxious moments
waiting for the delivering doctor to bring him into view. Or his Lilliputian
form as his Mom held him for brief moments, IV tubes in a matchstick arm,
feeding tube in his button nose. Now a strapping father of two himself, he
bears little resemblance to that preemie in the NICU incubator.
In
the jar is a round piece of molded plastic, which covered an indicator lamp on
the old cordboard where I began work as a telephone operator over thirty (edit:
now, 45 years) years ago. The job that gave me not only independence, but
growth and the realization that I was a person in my own right, not just wife,
mother, caretaker of an aged parent.
A
parking permit from the local community college symbolizes my long-delayed
college degree, not fully earned until after retirement. An Allen wrench. I
used it to assemble a large modular desk for my computer, ownership of which
began another major turn for my life. A red and gold enameled keyring fob with
a menorah and the word "Shalom" from my first and only trip outside
of the US, to Israel.
A
name tag from the Citizen's Police Academy class I took, seeking realism for my
writing. Still another tag identifies me as facilitator for a home Bible Study.
And finally one ringed with ivy leaves from a ten day writers retreat in North
Carolina.
I
found me at that retreat. I'm a writer. One who seeks to trade bits of myself
for personal gratification and, occasionally, money, through essays and
columns. I now have books as evidence that I'm a writer. Books won't fit into
the jar, but the objects it holds show me the path I took to get to the place I
am now. And they provide me with inspiration for further journeys on that path.
