Love Holds Memory

Love holds memory.

I walked to the window with you, and we just stood there so quietly and stared. “The pond always gets depleted and loses water; then the rain comes and fills it up again right at the right time”, my auntie said. At least that’s what I heard you say. A person can say so much without saying what needs to be heard. I knew it meant whenever I needed to come home, I could.

I packed up my car and my son and I drove remembering what you said. I drove for hours thinking that I’m tired of packing up and moving; I want to settle somewhere. My baby deserved stability and I deserved my own home. Then I started to get so mad thinking to myself, how the hell am I supposed to break generational curses if I can’t see the pattern within my village. Going through our history, I played out our late-night parties repeatedly in my head like an old black and white film. Only this time the film wasn’t projected on the wall. It was stamped into my memory. My nana drunk, swearing and dancing up and down our dining room. My great aunts and uncles cutting the rug in the living room with bottles tossed back over their heads oh and the front porch occupied by my cousins reeked of cigarette smoke after a long lunch break. I asked my nana when she was going to bed and she told me “Soon baby, you go up and get in the bed, I’m coming”. I knew then and there she wasn’t coming up for a long time. I always stayed up and waited for her, no matter how late she would go to bed. Most times I fell asleep on the couch until the last person left. I never understood how you could party so long after working so hard. I asked myself was this a façade or a distraction. Was it the fact that we lived in a huge house, and you had to work two jobs to pay for the lifestyle you wanted or was it because you couldn’t stand being home to deal with the lifestyle you wanted? When we would finally head up, I would always think what the next day would hold, I never doubted the level of fun, love or care shown in our home, not for one minute. Pop-Pop always told these terrible jokes that were so corny but made you laugh so hard you would cry. He would come home every day from work and without a peep he would pass me a brown paper bag full of junk. I mean the worst type of goodies to give a kid. Sour straws, sour gum balls, Beef Jerky and he always remembered my Crazy Hair. He never talked too much but he remembered me. I could always see sadness in him, I knew it bothered him that he slept in one bed while his wife slept in another across the hall. He never spoke but I saw into his eyes, and it screamed for love. My uncles: they were far from perfect, but they worked hard to show that they were sophisticated. One worked and I never saw him while the other dressed us up all the time to go everywhere. Church, park, pizza run, NA meetings, school. Didn’t matter, I was rolling. The only person that was missing was you. No one ever spoke about you, they all made it as home as it could be. Our dinners when we all sat around the table to talk smack were fun. You missed it.

I played on the Bahamian beaches, ran, and browned my melanin. I always rubbed sand in my hair because you hated when I did that. I saw coconuts cut from the trees, Sausages in a bag full of hot sauce, my cousin whooped me with a stick from outside that she made me go tear down. I went to school with my younger cousins wearing their uniforms year-round and I was the girl from the mainland being introduced with their accents of twang as family from America. I did think once, in what pocket of the world were you hiding that was more important to see me put sand in my hair. You told nana not to let me do that, but she let me be myself. Secretly we wanted to make you feel something.

Then I thought back to the same question again. How can I break a curse if I don’t know the pattern? I bugged myself with that question on the daily until I saw it. We are trained to believe that what we settled for wasn’t good enough, that the love that is so close and dear to us is fiction and could never be true. We strive for more, we over work, overindulge and overcompensate. We are we blinded by want. Now desensitized to the true meaning of being grateful for what we have, like we made it here on our own. We painted a picture for ourselves that muraled a woman with her arms up flexing her muscles (super strong and totally disconnected).

As we arrived home, I put the car in park and finally settled. We unpacked the car and I watched you play with our son. I looked down at the patch of carpet where I was standing, my feet red and bruised from running and it made me remember the spot where I stood in that window by the pond. The carpet felt warm as I ran my toes through the threads. The glass began to fog just a bit in the corners as I leaned in to see something flying over the pond. When I finally registered, I saw this beautiful American Barn Owl soaring over the pond. Squinting, I could see its white belly, ashy white heart shaped face and short square tail. It would fly back and forth repeatedly. Its habitual motion as it took laps around the pond pushed me into tears. It stayed its course until it swooped down with its long wings and grabbed something with its mouth. When it raised from the ground it rushed off into the sky and disappeared. I remember that owl vividly with its heart shaped face dancing over the water as the thunder clouds rolled in. I heard the thunder creeping closer in the distance and I wondered how the owl was so calm as it swooped down to get dinner. Even with such chaos closing in around it, it soared off that pond replenished then flew away. The rain started to fall, I watched as the water filled it and the rings were submerged. It reminded me that we will get stained in this life, but love holds memory just as water does and if held delicately and fought after habitually comes replenishment.