Glimmers

...A dispatch from bewilderness

Evidently, my mother worked as a pediatric social worker but could not keep her job once she became pregnant with me. But, then, when my dad could no longer walk or work, she got her job back again. I rarely saw either of them. This, like most things, wasn’t discussed.

There’s more to this story, which also wasn’t discussed, and can only be imagined. Like my mom grew up without moon or stars or sky or pets or parks or the soft feel of grass underfoot. Instead she had asphalt and pigeons. A glimpse of blue through tenements. Plus rice and beans and rice. But not enough beans or rice.

I imagine unsaid stories. Replaying silently. They might be replaying what already happened or rehearsing what could happen next. As in, perhaps, what could go wrong. What could hurt.

We all begin as a dot. A speck becomes a person. Still maybe we acquire glimmers. Which are the reverse of triggers. Maybe we acquire glimmers and triggers. Maybe we try to share the glimmers and tackle the triggers. Maybe we can. Maybe we can’t.

Once, or more than once, my financial advisor asked what I would want in the event of my demise. Like my demise is optional. Not in a linear fashion, but more or less all at once, I became a ghost. Missing from any picture. “Without” roots or family tree.

This brings us to memory. You can’t even eat a bowl of cereal without memory—you need to remember what cereal is, what a bowl is, what a spoon is for, how far the spoon is from your mouth, how fast it must move so it gets to your mouth without spilling the milk it contains.

You have to remember there’s milk in the spoon, and that milk can spill on your shirt. But you can’t. Instead, rooms are spinning. Floors are floating. I could not recall how “this” happened. I could not describe anything. Or explain anything. There were no words. Not for “pigeon” or “pavement” or being a mom.

And then? It was like a box appeared and asked to be filled with meaning. But meaning requires words. Could this be true — I mean this empty box? Of course. Anything could be true right about now. Just look at the news.