Looking in, I can see the scene she describes so deftly. The pair of young girls. The young adult mama of one of them. The slanting mountain sunlight illuminating their glowing skin. The large mountain newf ironically named Ladybug lumbering thru the brush.
They find what they are looking for and begin plucking and plinking the huckleberries into their small metal pails, eating as many as ever see the pail. Even Ladybug tentatively trying a few from the girls outstretched fingers. Resting in the sun, fingers stained purple, bellies full of mountain hucks and sleepy mountain silence.
I realize I want that moment to be mine too. Want to displace one of the ugly memories of my childhood - hell ALL of the ugly memories - with ones like this. Want to consciously create a childhood full of light and gladness. I want to be there and taste the hucks from the girls fingers with Ladybug. Want to stretch out in the grass share that afternoon sated, purple-fingered and innocent. I tell Sabine I am co-opting that memory for my own and she oh so graciously weaves a new image - of the four of us laughing, skipping down the trail. She the close guardian now of three small girls, two towheads and one shy brunette, lying tangled toegther in their sleepy huckleberry heap.
Lovely world to come across--the one of ripe bushes draping the folds of mountains i've left behind, dog i've left behind, patience i've left behind. Naya said to me the other night, "I wish you could just enjoy me." It was very sad on the one hand as she is right, I am not enjoying her as much as I sometimes have, I am obsessing over a mountain of schoolwork that can't possibly be climbed and if I don't climb it I will let part of myself die; yet, on the other hand, the fact that she could say something so clearly, so boldly to her mama about what needs weren't being met, was touching, even though right now I may not be the sort of person who smiles, laughs, murmurs with her in the woods and wants little else. Even though.
ReplyDelete& of course, what a surprise to find you processing this scene & your childhood & a conversation we exchanged & your needs & your needs not met. Life is complicated. So much so that I don't even know how to respond, as this is the non-language. But I think I'm just glad somehow of the cross over of our lives. That we affect each other. & Of course, therein also lies the tragedy. If only I only affected Naya with my lightness and laughter. But I am more complicated than that because of needs unmet.
Hmmmmm....re:needs unmet. Isn't that part of the human condition? That all of our needs just cannot be met? And in that we are challenged to learn to learn to meet our needs for ourselves? To even learn the very difficult task of meeting our own needs above another's? It is the wise woman who knows when and which needs are paramount at any given time. You are among the wisest women I know and you will figure it out in a way that suits both you and Naya. In a way that is righteously Sabine.
ReplyDeleteYou'd be surprised how often the huckleberries percolate my thoughts as an ideal of sweetness, innocence, and nostalgia toward things I have never known.