Remembering

Remembering

You gave me the photo albums,

Wanting to erase your memories.

Sometimes, I wish I could too.

But then I think,

It is better to remember love,

Than to forget.

2024/02/23

It All Went Wrong

Originally Written May 11, 2013, edited in 2024, never posted (until now 02/13/2024)

In a dream, I walk into the gym to begin teaching.  The room is not as it really is, but is a dream-spun training room.  The floor banks from the entrance down to the far right corner.  The students are scattered about.  I have difficulty getting them to pair up and get ready for training.

Several older grapplers are near the entrance of the room, playing with the timer, until they finally make it malfunction completely.  One of them had tried to set it to do 100 minute rounds.  I try to explain that the clock doesn’t allow it, besides, who would want to work multiple rounds longer than an hour and a half?  As we all gather around the timer in an attempt to fix it, one of the larger grapplers puts me in a poor headlock, eventually tying up his own hand within his gi so that he cannot release me, while he also cannot set the lock.  Though not threatened, I cannot get free, nor could the grappler free himself from his own grip.  Eventually I slip out of his trap, and continue to try and instruct the unruly class.

A student, with his girlfriend partner, uses the focus mitts improperly, holding them as well as striking them.  In effect, he feeds himself for his own kicks, which he executes toward his partner – a very dreamlike distortion that is physically impossible but seems normal within the dream.  I chastise him, pointing out that the feeder does not strike, the striker does not feed.  I then proceed to show the class the next combination to work.

I select a student with whom I am familiar.  I have her use the larger Thai pads and feed for me as I demonstrate a kick sequence.  As I began to throw my kick, she backs up, slipping magically through the wall, forcing me to stop mid kick.  With the partner gone, there is no way to demonstrate the sequence.  The class, which seems to be about five groups of two or three people each, becomes even more unruly.

In frustration, and feeling class time is nearly done, I begin to exit the classroom.  I pass by several folding chairs near the entry way, chairs that had not been there earlier.  As I pass the chairs, which at first appeared empty, I realize they do have people in them, and one of them is upset I had not noticed her, though I really had not noticed the people there at all.  I decide I need to return to the room and formally close the class and apologize for having not provided a good training period.

As I turn around to reenter the room and address the class, there she is in one of the chairs.  She turns to look at me, and I lose all words.  I stammer, trying to apologize to the few students for the clumsy nature of the class, but I cannot focus or form words completely as I became more and more aware that she is right there looking at me.

I turn to leave and she gets up.  We both met up in the entry hallway.  She has with her a small child, six or eight years old, who is proud to announce that he had just gotten his middle name.  I have the sense the child is a nephew of some kind.  As the three of us walk out to a main room, I congratulate the boy on his new name, and then he turns and simply evaporates.  It is only then I get a full and clear look at her.

She looks as she did decades ago when we first met.  Her hair a bit longer then it had been in our last years.  She is wearing a very familiar heavy blue sweater, black open weave shawl, black shin length skirt, black transparent hose, and black shoes with two inch heels.  A very common outfit for her, one I have seen her in many times.  The sight of her and that outfit creates a sense of continuity, of past, of familiarity.

She moves to a well-padded sofa that does not have arms.  She sits down on it, and says, “I think I have a Valentine somewhere.”  She has several small gift wrapped packages, each in a metallic paper, one yellow, one blue, one green, one red, and so on.  She begins carefully opening a bit of the wrapping to look inside, searching for a suitable Valentine offering from her store of emergency gifts.

I beg her, “Please don’t.  Don’t.”  I cross in front of the sofa and sit beside her.  As I sit down, she turns and sort of curls up, her head against the back of the sofa, facing downward, as she brings her knees up on the seat.  I sit against one of her knees, my back lightly resting beside her head.  I keep repeating, “Don’t.  Please don’t.”

In my dream, I fight back tears.  I feel a bawl growing in me.  My dream moves from dream to half-dream.  I am neither awake nor asleep.  In my real self, I can feel the tightening of my chest.  My throat is clamped in the grip of holding back a cry, my breathing small gulping inhales as I avoid exhaling, knowing that a long expire will result in an uncontrollable burst.  My eyes feel heavy, full, warm, and wet, my closed lids holding back what would be a torrent of tears.

As I rise from dream toward waking, I realize I am physically experiencing the feelings in my dream, and holding back its sorrow.  Moments of effort remove the rhythmic pumping of my breath, and allow the tears to dry, and the hammer in my chest to cease.  I wake.

It all went wrong.

Lament

Before I let go of you, I thought I could find happiness. When I let go of you, I thought I would find happiness.

I was wrong.

2024/03/06

Memory Loss On Memory Lane

(2024/02/17)

When a relationship is broken, one of the many things we lose is mutual recall.

We all get nostalgic feelings from specific things, perhaps a place, a scent, or a song.  For many of us in my generation, TV theme songs can be a real kick down sentimental memory lane.

Lately, part of my late night routine involves the TV being turned on to Catchy TV, and the show “Newhart” – not the “The Bob Newhart Show”, where Bob Newhart plays a psychiatrist, but “Newhart”, where he plays the owner of a little inn, in Vermont.  For me, there is something very emotional about the theme.

The emotion connects directly with my ex, Elizabeth.  But here is the catch; “Newhart” ran from 1982 to 1990.  I did not meet Elizabeth until 1990.  As such, the bulk of the show ran during a previous – and most unsettling – marriage.  The nostalgic tug of the theme does not bring up any of the negative emotions or associations with the first marriage.  The feelings the theme brings up are tied to Elizabeth.

Elizabeth and I were big fans of “Twin Peaks” when we first met.  I have a very strong emotional response to that theme song.  “Twin Peaks” premiered in 1990.  My memory of it and Elizabeth is crystal clear.  But my memory of Elizabeth and “Newhart” is non-existent.  I have only the emotional tug of the theme to give me a clue.  And when I look at the dates “Newhart” aired, she and I could have only watched the last season together, or perhaps reruns.  That said, I do have a vague recollection of us discussing the college drinking game, “Hello Bob”, where everyone is required to take a drink whenever someone says “Hello, Bob” during “The Bob Newhart Show”.  Likewise, there is a nebulous memory of discussing the fun characters Larry, Darryl and Darryl from “Newhart”, but these memories are so foggy, I could have had those debates with anyone.

Oh, how I wish we could have remained a friendship connection, to email each other or to be able to have a dinner every now and then.  I do send her a happy birthday email every year, and I give her a Christmas gift every year – secretly place by her door around midnight on each Christmas Eve, with the card signed, “ . . .  Santa”.  The three dots represent, “I Love You”.  She knows who “Santa” is, but she does not know what the dots mean.  Fourteen years now, Santa has left his gifts.  Fourteen years, and she has sent me a small gift of her own, sent via my daughter.

In 2023, for the first time in those fourteen years, I did get to see her and talk for a bit.  Her cheer and bubble was as effervescent as ever.  She looked happy, and healthy, and honestly, beautiful.  She had moved into a new house, and had an old family clock from my Dad that she no longer had a place for, and she wanted to return it to me.  I crumbled in the meeting.  I was not emotionally strong enough, but all this is a bit of a digression.

Would that I could ask her, “Did we watch ‘Newhart’ often?”  As a couple, you have more RAM and even more ROM – your hardwired memory is larger, and your randomly accessed recall is greater. When a relationship is broken, we lose so many things.  At times, like my first marriage, the breakup was the beginning of a new life.  I was reborn.  The breakup with Elizabeth has left me feeling old, feeble, and forgetful.

“I want to love and be loved more than anything else in the world.”

— Marilyn Monroe

The Hole Where the Rain Comes In

Originally Written and Posted on 02/22/2013, (edited in 2024)

In the early hours of the day, I floated into a morning dream.  I was in a house.  The house was ours, though separately.  That is to say, we shared it, lived in it, and owned it, but each to our own share.  I was inside and I heard her car pulling up.  I leaned out of the window and applauded, happy for her to be home, happy to see her smiling face through the windshield.  It was she, but with a more tanned and modern look.

She came inside and began complaining, quaintly, about her current assignment.  “Do you know where they sent me?  To Virginia.”  “Virginia?” I queried.  She confirmed her statement and we began talking about why they would send her so far away.  Government cutbacks, reductions and furloughs caused court administration to farm things out to distant states.  I worried about how the current state of government could affect her and hoped it would not.

As we talked, we noticed the sound of water inside the house.  We went to the living room to find that it was literally raining in a section of the room near an outside wall.  A large section of the ceiling was perforated and water was coming in as if it was rain itself.  I said, “I should have checked the attic before we bought the place. I’ll take care of it.”

As I crossed the living room, another spongy area opened up in the ceiling and I walked right through a steady trickle of rain.  I headed up into the attic.  Once there, I could see where pieces of paper towel had been stapled to the underside of the roof, as if a paper towel would soak up all the water.  The paper towel, like tiny squares of toilet paper on a poorly shaven chin, clearly marked where every little hole was.  I affixed a sheet of plastic over the holes, keeping the rain out until some day when I could repair the roof itself, which I hoped was within my abilities to do.

I returned downstairs.  In that dreamlike way, she looked completely different and yet was still herself, her spirit shining through another body.  She was younger, but not young.  She had an air of youthful vitality within her mastered years.  Her hair was beyond blonde, almost white, but not the white of age.  It was the bright blonde of playfulness.  She was thinner, but not merely smaller.  She possessed the shape of activity.  She was clothed in a flirtatious way, but not skimpy and revealing.  Her dress was fun and outgoing.  She was dancing wildly with a coat-rack, almost like a 1920’s flapper as she kicked up her heels and swayed her body.

I stuttered softly, “You know I – I l-love you.”  She turned her back to me in the midst of her flamboyant dance with the coat-rack, and said in an unclear single breath, “I do don’t do that.”  I turned from her to head into another room, saying, “I know,” expressing understanding, yet I did not understand.

I woke.  The dream was clear in my mind.  I could feel my love for her is forever and unchanging.  I was aware I could never give her what she deserved.  I could not understand what she said and meant, “I do don’t do that.”  Did she know I love her, but didn’t want me to say it to her, or did she not want me to love her?  I was detached with no understanding.  All I knew was that I could not fix the hole where the rain comes in.