Popcorn Garlands with Cranberry Dreams

I remember cranberry staining my fingers; the needle seemed so large as I carefully centered it to pierce each bright berry, followed by creamy white kernals of popcorn. The popcorn often breaking in two and falling onto my lap, where greedily I would pluck them up and contentedly chew on their fractured forms. The hint of cranberry juice on my tongue as I licked my fingers clean before trying again with another kernal.

I remember cartoons playing before us with brightly colored scenes, all red, green, silver and gold as the characters we knew and loved so well did their remembered movements across the screen. The nostalgia of it all sinking in deep, as warming to the soul as hot chocolate after a snow-filled day of sledding.

I remember those garlands we made wrapping around our tree: the heady green scent of the pine entertwined with the sawdust from it's freshly-cut trunk. Those strands of red, red berries and fluffy white popcorn that would be hung outside for the birds once the holidays were over and done.

I remember laying in bed, so excited for Santa to come, yet my eyes heavy with sleep the moment my head touched the pillow: my security blanket firmly grasped in hand, it's warm woolen scent filling my nose as I drifted off to sleep, my dreams filled with prancing horses and hopes that Santa would bring me new books.

I remember the excitement of stockings, filled with oranges and peppermint sticks and, one year, pretty new barrettes; my brother playing with new Matchbox cars and zooming them around the floor.

I remember the year when the fantasy broke, the truth about Santa told to me by another child, and my mother sadly confirming it as truth. I remember how hard it was to keep pretending so my brother could enjoy the magic for one more year.

And through those years, new strands of cranberry red and the popcorn white bore silent witness to it all.

I miss those days, or at least I think I do. Many of those holidays have blurred over the years, so who can say for sure. I remember a lot of pain and loneliness around my childhood; things I would rather not go through again. But Christmas... I think I would love to have just one childhood Christmas again.

As we decorate our tree this year I will hang garlands of cranberry glory and popcorn puff: not strung by my hands, but rather fabricated in some far off country before crossing ocean, mountains and desert to reach my Christmas tree.

I wonder if it will bring memories of Christmases long past, or will it be just another gaudy decoration for a plastic tree. The freshly cut pine of my youth now a fabricated scent trying, in vain I think, to be reminiscent of trees long ago

My wish for this year?

More memories from my childhood, please. Even if they would best be left alone. Just one dream-filled night of Christmases past, my brother and I still with heads filled with possibilities and anticipation. Those days I would love to recapture. If it isn't asking too much, maybe dreams of summers running free, swimming at the river, the scent of hot pine sap as the temperatures climb. The sound of the wind in the trees around me and the scent of woodsmoke in the air as autumn comes around.

How precious those times are, now that I am growing older. Why couldn't I have recognized that back then? I don't believe that youth is wasted on the young, for only the young are carefree enough to openly wonder and hope and dream where so many possibilities are open. I warm myself in the memories of standing by the woodstove, carefully toasting homemade bread with it's cheerful warmth. I remember so much of the good, as well as the bad- how I wish I could have told that younger me that the good will always balance out in the end.

But she is there and I am here, and the blur of time and forgotten memories lie between who I was and who I now am.

And I am grateful, so very grateful, for who I am and to finally know my worth.

But still, Dearest Santa, if you read the letter of this good little girl now all grown up- would one Christmas dream be alright?

Pieces of Me

I leave pieces of me everywhere I go; molecules connected to the places I once was, was loved, and even some to those places I never want to see again. Some are locations I can no longer go, lost to time and tide, like keys to a door I can no longer access as the locks have changed, preventing me from revisiting where I once played, breathed and dreamed. A past I was too young to recognize as swift and fleeting.

I can't help but wonder of those pieces of me left behind. Do they quietly watch the passage of time, noting the changing seasons and years passing but wishing I could return, and if I did, would they even recognize me as the person I am now?

How strange to picture the breaths I exhaled and the pieces of my heart left sprinkled across the landscape of my life. Are those very breaths still being carried on the wind? If I searched would I find my heart and flesh embedded into the very soil I loved and trod across barefoot as a child?

Are traces of my heart buried in the sediment and layered in time like some ossified skeleton of ancient beasts for a future scholar to find? And what must that stranger think, breathng in the breaths of me through time?

Are these scents that trigger a memory merely the adult I am now rebreathing past exhalations, holding them warm and fluttering within my chest to wrap me in nostalgia like a forgotten but much-loved comfortable sweater?

What a Pandora's box of desire to wish these keys that invisibly tie me to my past, present and future cannot be taken from a pocket and used whenever I would like. To take a peek at what will inevitably become my past or to linger in a distant memory of splashing through puddles and bathing in the scent of a long-forgotten storm stirring in the wind and making the trees shiver and sigh.

But then those keys that would open up old dreams also lead to the nightmares that are best left buried in the moments they belong, no longer haunting me with the pain they inflicted and the ghost of old torments, like a spiderweb touching your face as you stumble in the dark. Can you really have one without the other? Likely not.

So here I sit in quiet reflection as a treasured moment of time caught up with me, marveling at its clarity, though I am sure that the golden edges rimming them now were not present at the time they were formed.

Maybe keys are not needed after all...especially if they keep the hurt at bay.

Its the dilemna, isn't it: if you give a mouse a cookie? Well, if you hand this girl a set of keys please be sure to have them carefully labelled or provide a map. There is too much idle curiosity in me to resist taking a peek and getting caught in the mire as it all escapes across the scattered landscape. possibly to be lost forever.

Is there some ancient bloodhound who can track the course of my time upon this earth, snuffling its way from memory to memory? Perhaps he can pause in his course puzzling out what caused yet another piece of my heart to be left behind or so many tears to fall and help to collect the tangled remains.

Unanswered

Hello?

Am I the only one who feels stuck while the rest of the world rushes by my window?

There they go: busy...capable...full of life...bursting with energy and oozing with possibilities.

I stumble where others move on undaunted, unhindered, unfettered and unconcerned.

My days are unchanging; without drama and the bits that make for amusing stories. In the Book of Living I would not even merit a footnote; boring even to myself.

I want to fill my days with the fire I once enjoyed, but I struggle to lift my arms, my camera, my pen or my book.

...but in my dreams I dance among the tall grasses.

I am wandering over distant green hills and discover hidden glades of bluebells, and the woods reveal the secluded, dappled meadows that hide within their depths.

I listen to the wind as it caresses the leafy treetops; sharing secrets to the Robin nesting there.

Do you only live through dreams now too?

Will you please answer me?

...hello?

Worse than things going bump in the night....

Image courtesy of http://www.ceviu.com.br

I’ve been putting off this subject post for a long time now, seeing as how nightmares are a rather personal thing.  I feel that it is somewhat appropriate though that I post this today, seeing as this is my youngest sister Lucie’s birthday. 

Lucie is a fan of horror movies and I am not.  Luckily we have enough in common to compensate for this when we get together and want to watch something.  There are times, however, that she asks for something horror themed and I know that I am in for that creepy feeling as I walk to my car to head for home.  

You see, Lucie’s taste in horror is more along the lines of demons, ghosties and human possession rather than your average serial killer chopping up hitchhikers type of fare.  This is a bother for me in that I truly believe that there is more out there than what is easily seen, and I do believe that you can invite the wrong sort of feeling into your home when you embrace that kind of thing.

But I digress.  I wasn’t actually going to speak about horror movies today.

You would think that with my aversion to horror flicks that my nightmares would be tinted with ghouls and menacing figures, but most often they are not.  I rarely have nightmares, but when I do they are things that linger long afterwards.  You see my nightmares are of loss: the loss of my family, the loss of my friends… the loss of the people that matter most to me.

I know people will probably think heaps about my psyche and about how I have abandonment issues or some such garbage (I firmly do not believe in dream interpretation).  Rather, I believe it is because my family means everything to me, and it is precious.  It is something that I would fight to protect, so a dream where I am helpless to do anything is truly the worst horror that I can come up with.

Or so I thought...

So what does this have to do with my sister?  Well, I was 20 when she was born.  I watched my mom (who was in her 40’s at the time) struggle with health issues related to the pregnancy.  Mom had already lost a child in a previous pregnancy and there was of course that worry added to everything else.  The worst nightmares I ever had were during this period of time and one still haunts me even now, decades later.

In the dream I am faced by my mother and she is accusing me.  I am sobbing and trying in vain to apologize and find myself saying “it was an accident”.  In the dream I am responsible for the death of my brother, the child that in real life was stillborn (I won’t go into details because it isn’t important and also because it is very disturbing), but it was a highly detailed dream that carried over into the waking world, for when I awoke I was filled with the horror that I had actually committed murder.  

Needless to say I was up for the rest of the night….

I still find myself waking on occasion shaking and crying and filled with a conviction that I truly have killed someone; a feeling so real that I have to get up and walk away from the bed.  It takes time for reality to sink back in and allow me to calm down and reassure myself that it was only a dream and that I am not some horrible monster who has carelessly destroyed the life of an innocent baby and ripped a family apart in grief.

I have a good idea of what triggered this dream (something quite innocent actually) but it is something that I wish I could lose. To be haunted by something that has never happened is a terrible feeling. The fact that it has morphed over the years into something I wake up from only to find that I am still being accused (and realize upon waking for real that I only dreamt I had awoken) is just one more cruel twist of the knife.

Who knows, maybe it has served to make me a little more cautious than I would have been, but I can’t help but wonder if my mind could have come up with a nicer way of going about it.

Something involving prancing pastel ponies and orchards full of candy corn trees perhaps?