I Write Things

I write things. Blurbs. They never amount to much. I save them. But they are always just projects begun and unfinished. Here's a blurb I started this morning that's not even meant to have an ending --

Maybe not today, definitely not tomorrow, but someday, you might want to know me. And I am not speaking of knowing me as you know me now – only as your mom – the woman who feeds you, yells at you about stupid things when she's tired, comes to you in the night when your leg feels icky. I am talking about me, the person, the character, the woman, my “self”. And remember, I did say maybe.

My earliest memory is in the womb. I have no language yet, no associations, so I am free to think all the time of just about anything. I don't know that I am in a womb, so I am a planet floating in a universe for all I know. My existence is, just is, and there is a sleepy contentment about it. There are voices I “talk” to in my mind. Perhaps they are my own other voices. They ask me questions -- conceptual and visual questions, nothing limited by words. They ask me what I want out of this life. I answer, “to be happy”.

The voices follow me into babyhood. Which is blurry. I hear voices all the time now, in and out. Some of them are my sister, my mom, and my father's voices, a few unrecognizable relatives mixed in. I hear them with my eyes open and with them shut, so these sounds are all that life is for a time. I hear bits of pieces of their lives, but they talk so fast, and I understand so little. I do read into the emotions of what is being said. And my family is happy. Always laughing. My mom gives me baths, and I love the sound of her voice when she sings to me. She sings songs like “Anything you can do I can do better” from Annie Get Your Gun, she sings “Canta No Llores” a Mexican Mariachi song, she sings songs by Harry Belafonte. She bathes me in a sink, and she likes to cup her hand in the water to pour it on me, and I like the sound of water falling into water. And whatever I do seems to make everybody laugh or smile. My family likes to talk about me all the time. I was a Christmas present for them all, and they are thrilled about me. Especially my father.

I remember of this time that I live in a place with a special lamp. It's a hanging lamp that's black, and it's got two heads to it, each dangling on a chain; it looks very much like a balance scale, and the light that comes out of it is a very soft light, and I love to stare at this light, how it's got so many sides to it, and how the shades seem to hide and protect us from the too bright light underneath. The light creates sparkles on the wall like little stars, and they move ever so slightly when the lamp swings. And next to the lamp, my father has built a set of three steps, covered by a cerulean blue low pile very artificial rug/runner, and contained by a cast iron railing. And I love these steps. And I love cerulean blue, even now. I love looking at my hands scrunch into the rug, how the fibers struggle to make room, and the feeling on my hands in response, a raspy, itchy kind of feeling. I love the soft clanging sound the whole metal scaffold structure makes when I land on a step, how it echoes and gives, and mostly I love the reward of getting to the top of the steps, hearing my mom being surprised that I could make it up so high, and not fall. She was always so worried that I would fall off those stairs, but I did it anyway, because I wanted to, and that in itself was a novelty. That I could do something for me, because of me, and that no one could stop me.