PrayingWithMyFingers

Dear God,

It’s like old times this morning.  April in her bed.  Me up taking out the dogs.  I remember her first dog, Shelby.  Shelby was a beautiful Airedale and seventy pounds of wild!  A lot like Reagan – the fifteen pounds of wild.  April wanted that Airedale so badly and, like we all know, wanting something and being responsible for it are two different things.  So the old times found me taking Shelby out more than I should have.  Good memories though.  So, God, this morning I will start with a quote.  “Sometimes a person has to go back, really back - to have a sense, an understanding of all that’s gone to make them - before they can go forward.”  Paule Marshall

This is a good quote.  I relate to it.  I am, as You know, in the process of “going back.”  Really back.  I have started with a goal to think about my life from birth to present.  The goal is to remember as much as possible.  To remember me before my parents, grandparents, brothers and sisters made me who they wanted me to be.  My memories are cloudy and foggy….like the Golden Gate Bridge lost in the San Francisco fog and clouds.  But sometimes I can glimpse the Golden Gate Bridge through the clouds and fog.  Likewise, sometimes I can glimpse my young, golden self through the screens and shadows of who I learned to be.

I hear the young child who knew right from wrong, up from down and dark from light and spoke its Truth in the innocent voice of the child.  But Truth spoken in a dark place is unwelcome.  So the child was trained to question her Self, to believe her Self as wrong, to try very hard to please the parents who insisted their voices were the Truth.  So the little girl of my True Self was forced to desert the sparkling sunshine, the yellow gladiolus, and the smell of dewy green grass for the house with windows that filtered the light, plastic plants and smells of Pine Sol.

Part of my “going back” involves reviewing my old journals.  Recently, a bundle of old photos fell out of a notebook, and I came face to face with the missing child self.  I was in awe of the innocence, the beauty, the sheer childishness of the me child. The wide eyes, wispy blonde hair, plump cheeks and plump little legs caused me to wonder how anyone could ever harm a child, but then I remembered that my Mother — somewhere along the way — had lost her own child self.  The series of photos reveals the toddler, who ran with wild, curling hair, evolving into the young girl, with short bobbed hair, managing brothers and sisters barely younger than herself….the mantle of responsibility rounding her small shoulders.

My task in “going back” is to retrieve that golden girl.  She is the keeper of my lost voice, and together, she and I will speak Truth again, at last. So, Dear God, I pray for Your guidance and that You would give me the gift of clarity so I might see Truth through your Eyes and not an imagined truth through the distorted mind of painful memories.

“Literature boils with the madcap careers of writers brought to the edge by the demands of living on their nerves, wringing out their memories and their nightmares to extract meaning, truth, beauty.”   Herbert Gold

Photo:  wiggum03@flickr