A golden-sun soap dish with a bird’s soft curves; a coil of silver bracelet raised cobra-like to an amethyst; a gilt jewelry holder made of glass ovals of narrow, etched spokes like stars, held by hammered triangles that touch at a narrow waist, with a lidded glass top in a circlet of gold and hammered designs on the feet, between each a low arch barely seen; a sock monkey, soft and safe in a crib, a bed, a child’s hands—its red mouth the sock’s heel, a little shock of hair, red yarn matching whiskers under the chin.
In spiritual training I am to forget both the good and the bad memories, a direction I’ve paid attention to but interpreted to suit who I am, at least at this time. Recognizing the necessity of living in the present, rather than continuing to carry my past as perennials that bloom each year, I’ve steadily been letting memories be seen as the annuals I grew that bloomed, faded, then withered on the ground.
Living in different housing arrangements before spiritual training and since with changes in life situations, I have kept only what is most important. There are the necessary business papers, then a few books, Rain or Shine, A House for Hermit Crab, and photographs. But not the boxes—those, with their contents, went on to my daughters.
The soap dish was my mother’s, the arm bracelet a gift my dad bought in Greece, the gilt jewelry holder given by Paul’s aunt, the sock monkey sat in my younger daughter’s crib. She keeps certain items from years ago with these still-loved objects on a shelf in her twelve-year-old daughter’s bedroom. Putting them together in a photograph made a good-sized memory.
My realization is, “There is an energy in the nature of our destiny that takes away, but there is also inspiration that balances those losses with new gain.”