So I was reading an Inception fic, right? (It was advertised as an Eames+wee!Arthur, what?) And it had a line in there about kids being more trusting and open than adults (with implications of then it would be easier to steal secrets from the-mark-as-a-child than the-mark-as-self), and they said 'oh perhaps like at the grandparents' house where they feel loved, or something like that'. And then the story went and continued (and I decreed that there wasn't enough sap for me, but eh, sometimes I am the maple tree in spring and want all the sap in the world to be mine.)
But after leaving the story I did, as I so often do with stories, spare a moment to think upon what had been presented there, and decided that for me it was not true; there are plenty of ways to feel loved and still not feel secure, especially when still trying to find one's place. (When I was that young, being at my grandparents' house was more about vastness and running around, and always there being new people there, and exploring, and feeling a little bit odd and uncertain but that being okay because evidently that was fine.)
{This is not your eulogy, Uncle, (after all, you do not appear in it, nor does your influence); it might be Grandmother's except that it isn't (for all that she does appear in these memories)-- but what it is is a mark of how there comes a time when memories will not be only heartache.*}
I cast my mind back further and it showed me a memory-of-a-memory (worn blurry around the edges from the passage of time and maybe a bit from repeated handling or neglect [it's hard to tell, sometimes]): of a young little Fish and her father, standing on the back porch against the railing, looking out over the slopes leading to the mountain, (it is bright, maybe the sun was out or maybe the clouds were high and thin), half a kiwi in his hand and a spoon, as they scoop out little tiny slivers of the fruit (they become common later but then they are rare and expensive, and deliciously ripe and perfect (and will always be thought of as luxury)), it is a moment worthy of savouring just as they savored the fruit. [A fragile cup of brown-furred skin scraped bare of green was all that was left, that and memory and sticky fruit juices around the mouth. It is satisfaction and happiness and calm running humming through the browns and the greens and the cheerful, bright tang of a fruit from far-away ground.]
(As I got older, their backyard was smaller and a little less wild and hid fewer undiscovered countries and few secrets. I knew the butterflies by the garage and the penny plants in the corner and the faces were familiar aside from the youngest ones who would become known in their own time, and there was learning and showing and fights and making-ups and drifting-aparts and hearing stories about childhood misbehaviours and growing up. But that would be later.)
I have missed more funerals than I have attended lately, I have had to mourn by myself from far away. (There is an unreality to mourning by yourself. When no one else is crying, how do you know that the news is not a bad dream? If you do not see the house made empty, what reason do you have to believe that it is so? [After all, every other time you've left, you've always been able to come back, so why would this one time be different?
(don't tell me that it's all times after this, I don't want to face that truth yet)])
[I can tell you where the very best doughnuts are found, if they still exist (I haven't been in years). It has been too long since I have driven that way, so I don't know. I wish I could make that trip again, I wish the house with all the family people was waiting for me at the end of that journey just like it used to. [I remember being newly fifteen and stepping onto the ground after the drive to a boisterous crowd of smiling adults and running-around littles, and feeling tall in my skin, like I was a part of this massive family-amoeba which extended to us all and around us all and reaches out a bit to those not yet in it ('I am old enough now ('i am an adult'), responsible to and for this familiamoeba of mine', I thought then) and now I can notice the assumption ('it/they/this will always be here like this to come back to') which I didn't even know I was making at the time, which I now sadly know to my bones is not true. Maybe I am afraid to see if the doughnut shop is gone like so much else, or maybe I just have no reason to go past there anymore. (I would like a doughnut from there, bought on the way to visitings.)]
And all of this is memory and love and family (and some of it is wrapped up in any bite I take of a kiwi, and some of it is echoed with every cup of mint tea (avoided for months after my grandmother died) fresh from the garden I drink, and so I carry these memories with me, under my breastbone and in my mouth.
* So do not take it amiss, Uncle, that I still haven't offered you your eulogy and instead let me offer you this as a promise that someday I will be able to give that eulogy. I miss you.
This entry was originally posted at http://fish-echo.dreamwidth.org/65729.html.
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