Memories

They pulled up their chairs in a row behind me and listened eagerly to my stories. My stories were true accounts of experiences I had had. “Is it really true?” they asked. “Yes, it’s true.” I insisted. Their were five or six of them, maybe more, I don’t remember exactly. They were stair-step brothers starting at about age six. That means that they were born approximately one year apart give or take a few months. The details of that time are sketchy but I had never washed dishes before to such a delightful audience. It was wonderful. I barely noticed the huge pile of dirty pots and pans, utensils, cups and plates on the long counter beside me. The eager listeners were respectful and enthusiastic. “Tell us more!” they begged as each tale came to an end. I had had adventures in my nineteen years, but this was classic. I talked and talked. Talking is what I did best, and I told story after story. The dishes were getting washed and rinsed and piled on the other side of the sink. Their mother burst into the room, brandishing a long wooden spoon. “Get out!” she hollered, “Get out! Either pitch in and help or just get out!” They scrambled and I was left alone with the rest of the pile. My shoulders sank and my spirits dropped. I had lost my companions and was left alone to the lonely task of cleaning up the kitchen. I don’t suppose it did look right to the poor mother. All those big boys sitting in a row behind me, watching me do the dishes. She couldn’t know that I was perfectly happy and that if I needed any help at all they would have eagerly jumped in. She couldn’t know that keeping them together in chairs was much easier for me than to supervise the half grown boys in a cleaning effort. I hadn’t won their confidence yet. I hadn’t won their team spirit yet. I was doing what I really did do best. Telling stories. Worse than having to wash that mountain of dirty dishes was having to wash them alone. It was too much like my own lonely childhood, standing for hours in front of a sink of dirty dishes, beside a counter with the remains of a meal eaten by a family of ten to twelve or more people. It’s no wonder I eventually became the Queen of disposable dishes. Disposable dishes weren’t that common back in those days though and a woman who was faithfully bringing a new child into the world every year was really thankful to get some help in the dish washing department, I’m sure. I haven’t forgotten that day, that audience, those eager listeners and how wonderful it was to have the company in an otherwise lonely task. They are all grown up now and have families of their own. I doubt that they remember that day the way I do. I was the one who had to put the chairs back around the long table. I treasure that memory though. It is one of the ones which hasn’t left my consciousness. I lost a lot of memories over the years. At one point I lost so many memories I wasn’t sure of the way to the grocery store and I couldn’t remember my own phone number nor house address. I stumbled over the children’s names and ages. I piled the children into the car and backed out of the driveway. I drove down the main road and it all looked unfamiliar. I started to panic but didn’t want the children to know. We drove around, street after street. Finally the children helped me and I pretended that it was a game. One day we drove from dentist to dentist because I couldn’t remember which dentist I had made the appointment with. Each office looked just as unfamiliar as the last and I was sure it must be this one. We went in and announced our arrival to much confusion at the front desk and eventually annoyance at which point we decided it was best to leave. We never did have a dentist appointment that day. None of the dentists had us on their schedules or in their files. I felt like an alien for sure, that day. Or perhaps more like a time traveler. And to think that I was entrusted with four beautiful children. I didn’t have trouble figuring it out at home. There were always books. We could take a stack of books and place them on the coffee table and just start reading together. I loved books. We studied them, the pictures in them, the words in them, and the lives of those who wrote them. I’m not sure exactly when I started to pick up a pencil or pen but it was during that time of severe memory loss that I was encouraged to start writing. It was thought that writing would stimulate the memory and writing did that. It is still doing that. Writing is opening the closed doors. I read something remarkable yesterday about Laura Ingalls Wilder. Her daughter Rose encouraged her to write about her childhood. She was close to my age at the time, maybe a little older. She couldn’t remember many things, especially since she was only two when they lived in the ‘Big Woods’ so she said that when she went back in her memory as far as she could and left her mind there for awhile, it would go further back and bring things out of the dimness of the past that were beyond her ordinary remembrance. Paraphrased from "Inside Laura’s Little House” by Carolyn Strom Collins and Christina Wyss Eriksson. Page 95. What an interesting concept. One problem for me was that there was too much pain in my past and conjuring up memories opened up the wounds. But writing most certainly helped. It helped to unlock doors. There is still a lot of good memories locked in the archives and a lot of pain has already been diffused. Every once in awhile a new one comes back and it’s like opening a brand new book that is written about me. 

Elizabeth Williams, daily writing exercise, 1,040 words.