I must have been ten or eleven years old. I remember helping my mom dig a charred cedar chest out of the pump house. She said that her and dad had salvaged it from the previous property owner's burn pile. Mom and I knelt on the porch together all afternoon, sanding down the wood. We had great plans to stain and refurbish it. Wood-stained fingers and days later, those plans came to pass. It was beautiful. We found a place for it in my room at the end of my bed. I kept extra blankets and stuffed animals on top of it for many years. And over those years it was where I stored away letters for my future husband and placed dinnerware and blankets for our future home. My mom called it a hope chest. Today, I pulled everything out of that chest. The eggshell platters that I picked out and ordered with my mom when I was in middle school, specifically to start my hope chest. The pink cocktail glasses my grandma handed down to me when I was eleven. The fine china tea set from Poland that my mother bought for me at an auction when I was fifteen. The linens that had been passed down from my grandma and aunt, one of them embroidered by my aunt while she was in school. The copper silverware my grandfather bought while he was stationed in Thailand that I might just leave behind in my mom's kitchen as a sentiment for her now that he has passed. The mint dinnerware my family gave me for my twenty-third birthday when I thought that I was moving out for the final time. As I spread out every item on my bedroom floor and stared down at it, I teared up. Many years have gone by of hoping and dreaming and many years have dragged on full of heartbreak and indifference. My mom built this alter in my life, and she called it hope. Just as many other mother's have done for their daughters. As I grew up, it was always there: at the end of my bed, beneath my window sill or beside my desk. And no matter how many men let me down, no matter how many letters to my future husband I crumpled up and threw away, it remained buried in the back of my heart, this promise: love would come. I remember being ecstatic that day when my mom suggested the idea of making a hope chest. I remember the sun glowing against the tall autumn grass as we trekked outside to see what we had to work with. I remember the airplanes humming above us like I was certain my heart would someday hum with true love. But, as a child, I had not yet realized the fullness of what a beautiful thing that moment and that chest would mean to me. I had an inkling of a realization that I was not only being given gifts for my future, but that I was, indeed, being given stories. I could not yet recognize the feeling in my soul as I stood by my mother, listening. But I was being rooted into something: something beyond me, before me, and bigger than me. The same blood that runs through my veins ran through many women before me. Women who walked hard paths and loving paths and who turned out stronger for it. At eleven years old, I was only beginning to recognize the blood within my skin, and today, as I begin a new family and a new life, I am only just realizing the wildness birthed to my flesh that I will birth to my children's. And I am strengthened by the resilient spirits and knowing looks just within my grasp as I reach for that platter my momma gave me.. Blog by Nakita Stone, June 9th, 2018
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The parking lot echoes with the sound of passing cars. What is left from the snow fall crunches beneath my boots. Every story begins like this, I think, as I pull my suitcase through the slush. It begins with this feeling. Sometimes, it comes from the cold clouds blanketing the sky or the sun hitting my rear view mirror at just the right angle. It's that feeling of something ending and beginning at the same time. It emphasizes the cycle of life within the dust of my soul. Jon will find my car keys on his kitchen counter. I left them there this morning while he was sleeping. When he finds them, he will know that the car is his to keep. We had an understanding, Jon and I. He'll know that I won't be back. The left wheel on my suitcase is coming lose. It catches on a crack in the uneven sidewalk, jolting my quick steps to a halt. I tug and negotiate with the ground by flinging the suitcase handle up and down through the air, impatiently. The wheel comes out and sends the suitcase flying, with me behind it, off the curb and into a gutter stop. I sit there with my feet in the gutter for minutes before finally clambering out and hauling my suitcase back onto the side walk. Now the lose wheel is squeaking. Months ago I would have bought a new suitcase. Today, I could drop this suitcase over the San Francisco bridge and watch it splash into the the expanse of water below. And I would take a mental picture, as I walked away, at the beauty of that splash. I wouldn't even buy a new one. I pull my luggage into the Greyhound station. Today, my squeaky wheel will only eat away at the fellow travelers. And I'm right. I watch the pretentious mother sitting by the door bore a hole through my worn suitcase. I watch the twitch in her right eye, daring my luggage to wake her sleeping three year old. The man beside her is stretched out across two chairs with a diaper bag in his lap, snoring. My luggage goes unnoticed by him until his wife's maternal twitch turns into an elbow jab in his ribs. He sniffs and rubs his face. I continue to pass them, fully aware of the squeaking wheel and my pant hems drenched in gutter slush. She reaches for the diaper bag. Maybe I'm wrong, I think. Maybe, I am the only one who can hear my squeaky wheel. Jon had told me that this would happen, that I'd never forgive myself until I left. "Go already," he would say. "Stop lying to yourself." And I knew he was right. I knew I was only scared of letting go, of losing myself, of losing him even. I had been sacrificing freedom for stability. Perhaps, I was only scared that I would begin to hear those internal wheels loosen because it is the squeak that pierces your ears before you let go. I'm ready for this to be over now, I tell myself. The bus is pulling up, but I'm watching the homeless man just outside the front door. I hear the breaks screech and I breathe in the fumes from the exhaust coming inside as passengers file out to load their bags. Then, squeak, squeak, I struggle out the front door toward the man with the sign asking for more in life. "I want less," I say. "Here." I lean my baggage against the wall beside him and I walk away. I take the long way around and breathe in the cool air, savoring the scent of fuel, the feeling of freedom, then I step onto the bus. Blog by Nakita Bickle, July 17, 2017 |
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