Once upon a time there was a perfect little family. Well perhaps not always perfect but full of love and completeness. And in this family was a woman who thought herself ordinary; a mother who thought life frantic and chaotic at times, but mostly endearing and sweet.
“In family life, love is the oil that eases friction, the cement that binds closer together, and the music that brings harmony.” –Friedrich Nietzsche
Oh my dear ones, this is not a fairy tale but rather a story of remembering.
Places hold memories. Stored like the most fragile of paper in the oldest of archives. Memories that are timeless, a touchstone of who we were in the past before we changed.
With every glance, a hazy image of a towheaded baby boy follows. The distant giggles and faint words of “mommy” directs the woman’s gaze to the shadowed images of a young boy learning to ride a two-wheeler, roller blades and scooters. The bruised knees and ruffled feelings that demanded immediate kisses.
As she wanders through, she feels the slight tugging on her arm, showing the pool where he first learned to dive and the excited cries as he swam underwater to come up with expelled breaths.
The quiet determination as he sat on the shore netting fish. The sun dipping in the sky before he left his perch.Everywhere she goes, she sees happiness and long forgotten memories, now bittersweet to her heavy heart.
She would cry to the heavens and ask why? Where did it all go astray? But she has known for a long time that answers are not hers to own.
The only left is the remembering.
And that is not an insignificant thing.