On Remembering
Memories have been popping up for me, these last few days. More than usual. Yesterday, I was thinking about the last time I was able to sit in a sweat lodge, back in 2021, followed by jumping naked into an Appalachian river. I was hit with vertigo then, and the world spun in circles, whipping my vision across the water as I steadied myself against a rock. After about a minute or two, it passed, and I was able to climb out and continue the afternoon.
There was meaning that I assigned to that experience, and it was the meaning I needed at the time.
And. I look back on it now, and I wonder: was that you, tumor?
Was my brain correcting for this intruder, even then?
It still knocks me down for a second when I really let it hit me: I had brain surgery.
BRAIN SURGERY. For a tumor.
What the fuck?
I was wheeled into an operating room, put to sleep, and then they cut open my head and cut away a tumor from beneath my skull. What the fuck! And I woke up in a hospital room, vomited, didn’t eat for three days, peed into a catheter, and the surgeon and his residents came and looked at me with clipboards and notebooks in-hand, and I smiled and nodded like I was going to remember any of what they were saying with all those drugs I was on, and then I went home and was a hologram of myself for weeks and now I’m… here? Lying next to my toddler while she naps?
Who was that?
And who was that person I was before? That person who solo traveled to a retreat in Pennsylvania and swam bare-skinned in the sunlight and sat silently watching fireflies in the evening before crawling into a tent. I remember her, and yet she feels a bit like a long lost child of mine. And perhaps that is just the state of motherhood anyway, whether or not we get our heads peeled open.
I’ve been thinking about that past self a lot. She feels like another person, but also the most “me” that I know. But then, so is this. This me is the most tender, honest one yet.
Maintaining a familiar identity through experiences of transformation can feel impossible and perhaps useless altogether. This has probably always been true.
And yet nostalgia claims me often.
I think about my partner and me, wandering through the woods or through the desert or up steep, snowy mountain passes. I think of us warming up terrible freeze-dried packaged chili and eating it, even though it reminded us of what it would be like coming out the other end. It was a gorgeous sunset that night at 10,000 feet.
I think of us sitting in the middle of the desert in the early morning - so silent, so still. Trudging up Blue Creek Trail, making it to our campsite, pulling the tent out of the bag and throwing it on the ground. Then falling asleep on top of it before even setting it up. Waking up to the sun setting and wandering across trail to an overlook that peered into Mexico, ridges and hills folding into one another for miles and miles.
I think of us getting down into our underwear and playing in the creek by our old forest campsite while butterflies fluttered all around us. Of us unzipping our tent to see that we were surrounded by nearly-synchronous fireflies, stepping out into the night, and holding hands while little happy tears ran down my face.
We have had so many experiences of awe basically smacking us across the face. It was easy, in a way.
Today, our daughter had a real deal stomach bug for the first time. I’ll spare you (and older her) the details, but lord lord, she would not recommend and neither would I. After we got her put to bed, my partner and I sat on the kitchen floor with the baby monitor between us, eating sweet potato tortilla chips and hummus, and laughing about whatever. And for a brief millisecond, I recognized awe again.
You know those moments when you realize to yourself, “I will remember this small moment for the rest of my life. This one will stick, for whatever reason.”
I can recall one, nearly eight years ago, when my partner and I were about to go on a short local hike in May. We had been seeing each other for around four months at that point. The honeysuckle was blooming, all lush and fragrant across a tall rock outcrop next to where we had parked. I stood in front of it, picking a flower and sucking the honey-sweet nectar drops from the end. He stood next to me, smiling and doing the same. And then there came that realization, “I will never forget this particular moment. I don’t know why. But it will stick.”
Later that evening, we told one another “I love you” for the first time.
I have told him that I love him thousands of times since. And in this last year, he has shown me love in ways I couldn’t have imagined. How to put into words the love that it took to get me through all of this? To sit next to me in our kitchen, after a time that has truly been a test, and laugh while eating chips in the same way we’ve always done?
Maybe that’s where I’m landing here, as I think about all of these things. Our past, our present, our future: love and a willingness to keep going. There’s the awe. To find one another again in adversity and lie down beside one another with laughter and satisfaction over having done it. Over still doing it. And by doing it together, I do it for myself. Whoever that is.
On we go.
P.S. I am still working on my novel. If you like, you can get access to it here: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/afewmoremiles
Or, if you enjoy my blog writing and want to throw in, you can do that there, too.
