In Training

originally posted Friday, April 13, 2007 on myspace.

I'm in training.
I didn't really know it until that trip to Oklahoma for the funeral.
For a really long time... well basically my entire life... I've acknowledged the fact that I have a pretty good memory. It is one of those where I basically have a video playing in my head and will tell a story about a particular experience with pretty extensive detail. I guess it never really occurred to me that I was any different from anyone else. I know there are others out there, but apparently not so much in the same age group of my family members. that said, my mother is actually amazing in the story writing abilities she has happened upon in the last few years. I am continually in awe of what she puts down on paper and shares only with us her family with absolutely no intention of going any further.
It is funny sometimes as I find myself going into detail about a random childhood memory with my sister as she stares dumbfoundedly at me saying she has absolutely no memory of it whatsoever. It's almost disappointing because it is sometimes a memory I seem to think of as profound in some way and she actually has the gall to say she doesn't even remember it!!! Unbelievable! Oh, I'm just kidding! Don't sit there and think I'm sounding like Sharon Almighty!
anyway..... off the subject for a momento....soooo, yeah, here I am with a fabulous visual on me at age um, 4 probably running around outside in a bikini - god I just loved that thing... it was floral, but kind of a soft floral- not pastel, but with soft oranges. kind of peachy and greens in it. You know the little girly kind with the elastic all the way around the waist and the legs so at the end of the day you end up with red symmetrical indentations right where where your legs meet your body... kind of poofy like bloomers. oh, and then the top part of it... hilarious... baggy of course ( i was four!!) with great effort taken by my mother to tie it tight enough to stay on around my neck but not tight enough to cause me to put up a fuss and snatch at it complaining it was too tight...
I really remember being so attached to that suit.. i think it was one of my first memories of really appreciating color and all that it can entail.
so i'm running around the yard and my sister is there too in her suit and my dad has the hose and is spraying my sister and i'm running from him due to my traumatizing fear of water... yes, i hated bathtime too and cried when i got my hair washed.. (once again, I WAS FOUR!) so, my dad gets me with the hose.. so i burst into tears and race into the house.. to find my mother in the dark paneled kitchen standing at the counter with her long brown hair chopping salad vegetables for dinner. Me crying and blubbering about daddy trying to drown me and my mother calmly reassuring me that that was most certainly not his goal.
that is one. one full technicolor moving picture in my head from well, i guess about 30 years of stuff. My dad always makes fun of my mom, and sister me about "living in the past". We do, we have good memories, bad ones, really good ones, ones we'll never share with others and ones we've shared a thousand times and will again... my sisters may be more limited to mine and my mothers, and we all have our own experiences, but we all have em. I don't mind living in the past because I'm always moving forward and creating more and more. Perhaps my greatest fear is losing them... that is scary...
so, remember in the beginning i said i was in training... so, there we all are in Oklahoma creating one of those many memories... one we all would rather have had much much later or actually maybe never... and we're actually in the room at the funeral home with everyone talking and remembering...
My grandmother's sister Aunt Jo who hadn't seen my sister and I in years and had to be reminded which was which was sitting with me on the couch. I was holding onto her warm wrinkly soothing hand with family comfort... the kind that is there regardless of how much time passes between seeing one another.. we were talking about times we had visited over the years. I briefly mentioned visiting her at a particular house and she looked at me and said "you remember that?" Oh I could almost hear the sound of the film as it wraps around the reel and then catches and flutters and smoothes itself out... I can see her with her platinum blonde bouffant hairdo (backcombed with great effort that morning) wearing a white or pastel sleeveless shirt and those polyester shorts that hug your leg all the way to the knee... very very popular in the 70's.. I think they were blue green or pink... she was sitting on the front steps of her house next to her sister.. my grandmother who was almost identical in hair and outfit... i'm pretty sure they bought their shorts at the same store. I think this was when I really made the family connection that they were sisters just like my sister and i and all the closeness that comes with that... it was nice to have that realization... to truly understand it..
and then i realized that when the film had started, so had my mouth and i had narrated the visual to the entire room of about 9 or 10 people there to see Granny at the funeral home... Aunt Jo said... she couldn't believe i remembered that and how young i must have been.... and i think that is where the word came into being that I think i will have to consider my family legacy...
Memorykeeper.... someone said it and it may have been my mother, i can't remember... but somehow for the rest of the trip, I was reminded more than once that that was my job... for the family, by the family, i am that person who is supposed to make sure we don't forget.... i'm in training..
but then, i guess i have been for a long time.