OH YEAH
Winter has happened to me almost forty times. You’d think I’d remember to figure in the time to chip the ice off my windshield before whatever dumb appointment I have to burn rubber to.
You might also think I’d remember after eleven years in this house that, as disclosed in the buyer’s agreement, “small numbers of field mice” come in each fall through portals that defy spacetime, and that they are all varsity rugby players who take their practice seriously. Or, you might think that once I did remember this seasonal fact, that I’d *also* remember to take the mouse traps I’ve set OUT of the oven before turning it on.
Memory is a tricky mistress.
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The holidays are a tricky time.
One whiff of spruce and I’m nine again, drooling over a Breyer horse (the draft with ribbons in its mane, duh). One choral carol in four parts and I’m roadkill— maybe something about mortality and ephemeral versus eternal beauty?
There’s wonderment and joy, for sure, in all of this, but there’s also anxiety, regret, fear, grief, and uncertainty dangling from those fragrant fingers of fir: have I loved my life well enough? Will I make a life for my children they can love with even more depth, clarity? Do I, can I, believe in any form of magic? Is that possible, once you’ve been clubbed to death enough times?
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I once taught a first-year writing seminar called Nautical Humanity, in which we read seafaring literature. And, because nobody stopped me, I also cut up a long-ass rope into thirteen three- or four- foot lengths, doled them out, and required that the students learn how to tie at least three functional, seaworthy knots. And I quizzed them on these. In person, one a time. (Who WAS I in my twenties?)
One of these knots was the one-handed bowline. It’s a knot you’re supposed to be able to tie around your own waist when someone throws you a life-line. At this point, you’re presumably very much overboard and about to drown, so you’re going to need one of your hands to hang on to the rope while the other ties its tail around your waist.
I struggled to teach this knot unless someone threw me the rope and said “hurry!” I couldn’t show them the steps slowly or thoughtfully or with verbal acuity— all I could do was pretend I was about to drown and tie it over and over as fast as possible while they stared. Only my brain-stem could really manage that knot.
Muscle memory, the unexamined action, has an essential function, but it can also be limited, and limiting.
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Come December, I find myself tick-tocking between muscle-memory and intentionality. It was automatic for me to go out and yoink an unsuspecting conifer from its forest life and shove into my home this year, as most years. Decorating it, though, I suddenly found myself at a loss, wondering: is it OK that all I really want to put on this damn thing is birds? And then some more birds? Like, the sparkly ones? ALL THE SPARKLY BIRDS?
And that was a pretty fun little moment, to say with clarity to my tentative child self, who was concerned she may not be following the script, “Yes. All of them. DROWN IN SPARKLES.”
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It seems there are TWO kinds of “Oh Yeah!” moments on the menu this time of year: the ones where you haul out rote feelings and activities and engage in them yet again, with joy or exasperation or both (or to save yourself from drowning), and the ones where you encounter, through the gaps in the dense forest of memory and expectation, some part of yourself that might have been hidden, or dimmed.
Both can sting. Both, however, can sparkle.
I think remembering matters. Or is it re-membering. It’s about connections. Integration. Weaving. It also makes the past present, perhaps even anticipating a new future. I think too it’s why we sometimes sing from memory. As Pauli Murray said, “Hope is a song in a weary throat.” Blessings and joy to all whom you love and who love you.