I was sitting in the passenger seat watching the sand dunes rise and fall then rise again. Out of the corner of one eye I was watching Colby making sure he was at least watching some of the road as he stared up towards the red cliffs. Out of the other I was watching something that wasn't there. Tiny bubbles of memories floating above the van barely formed before vanishing into dry desert air: my sister in the backseat of the station wagon holding a soda & laughing, my sister asleep against the window angry and pouting that I had touched her pillow...there are sounds and smells, a whole childhood spent driving this stretch of highway heading for the cool paradise of Lake Powell. 
At some point it slowly settled in, this may not be normal to linger with the dead like this. 
The van clips a stone in the road it crashes like thunder flashing orange through my mind and I flinch. In a blink of an eye I can see a hundred other moments falling. I open my eyes. And it is all gone, sort of. We all have these memories and moments that haunt us, perhaps they are failures we forgot to grow from, or Loves lost, or the dark side of man looming over head. Mine suddenly remind me of a door in a giant flat brick wall flying open in the wind. Banging against the fame, papers fly out scattering and the door bangs shut as if nothing has happened.
Fact: It takes more energy to ignore than it does to focus.
More thoughts settle. I didn’t realize the battle I fight within my mind to keep this door shut was actually this constant. I thought it was here or there.
But it’s not.
It is here and there, and it is all the time.
Everyday I stand with my back to the door trying to hold it shut and pretend I'm not. What if I decide today is the day I stop. What if today I slide down the wall out of the way and I let her go? What will happen?
It is curious, I don't even have the slightest idea if walking from my post will be losing or winning this fight? What I do know is I want yesterday standing in the kitchen of the Boy trying to tell him something important (something really important!) and not being able to get the words out to be the last time that happens to me- EVER. If I start down that road the one marked 'I don't really talk about this a lot but...' I want to be able to follow it until I have said what needs to be said.
It is strange, when I think about it I see myself step aside and open the door peeking inside. What I see is my garden, then the waving yellow grasses of the back field, and beyond that the endless desert. I walk through to the other side. The whole world is silent over there, even the wind. And the pages of paper are blank.
Be careful what you wish for the door may swing both ways.
Perhaps I should have decided which side of the wall I wanted to defend before I walked through it.
Every day you either see a scar or courage.
Where you dwell will define your struggle. ~Dodinsky~
Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgement that something else is more important than fear. ~Ambrose Redmoon~
No comments:
Post a Comment