Remember, remember...

New research project for how does the brain pick and choose what it gives back to you. why does vanilla remind me of longing for the hot guy in the locker beside me in Grade 12 to pay attention to me as opposed to baking one thousand times with my grandmother?

Other research project, acquiring one of these: Pygmy goats. Holy cow do I want one.

Before 6 years old, all my memories are of my soul sister (no offence, brother) - pulling all the linens out of the closet for the Barbie condo (apologies to My Aunt K), running into the street without looking (sorry to the dude who had a heart attack thinking he' run over little girls) painting the walls with my moms new makeup (isn't enough time in the world to apologize to my mom) except for the time I got caught stealing jelly beans from the reward jar on my kindergarten teacher's desk. Which happens to be the first memory in my ingrained habit of pushing and testing boundaries. I had figured out long before that my teacher went out everyday for 3rd recess (ah, the perks of youth) which coincided with nap time. Nap time paling in comparison to those brightly coloured, sugar infused sirens. They never crossed the threshold of my house. How about a piece of fruit? Disdain and loathing. My teacher would barely close the door before I'd be elbow deep in the coveted reward. Turns out it took me longer to pilfer than it took her to write Wednesday, December something something. Foiled again. Although, to be honest, I am unjustifiably smug about it having gone on so long and probably should feel something shame-like for being an instinctual thief so early in life.  
Stealing bottles of tabasco in University. I can hear my bff saying, 'Fools!,' everytime one came to the table with the cap on. Honestly, I can feel the world go silent around me when there is something I want to take. There is always something I want to take. If I have been in your house, trust, you are lucky to still have everything. Something would have caught my eye with an inaudible Take me! 
My personal precepts dictate I don't steal from friends but sometimes, I gotta scratch the itch. Typically, it's moist towelettes from restaurants. I am a goddamn squirrel with those things, I need more. It's like I think I'm Frodo with the ring on and no one can see or hear me. I'm betwixt worlds going for my precious. 
Honestly though, moist towelette are like crack for me and then more smugness! when someone is all, 'Jeez, my hands are so sticky IF ONLY I had a method to clean this up.' Then like a super sexy, non-maternal Mary Poppins I brandish my plunder with relish (smugness)  to then affect humility - No, no it's my pleasure to do this for you, I only live to ameliorate the lives of my fellow person. When really, there's self congratulations, mental self high fives and a wafer of superiority. Fuck yeah, moist towelettes.

I remember Ali coming over in Grade 4 when my grandparents got hardwood flooring installed and Baka paid us one. whole. cent. per book to move them from where they had been stacked in the living room back into the library. We each made just over $4 and took our bounty to the corner store and got little brown bags full of sugary loot. There is a picture of us arms slung around one another (with me wearing a beauteous tied dyed, hella oversized t-shirt - glamour) beaming with joy as our popsicles (banana FTW!) melt in the summer sun. Bet we coulda used a moist towelette. It was the fleeting moments of innocent friendship before such a thing as popularity and pecking order became things we were aware of.

High school is goddamn blank. My best friend is often shaking her head at me when she starts with remember..? something about someone from those pithy years and I toss off - I have no idea who that is. I never met them. Yes you did, remember when we... Oh. that time. 
I DO remember, however, the OAC retreat. Teaching the BFF to play Euchre - tangent! I am goddamn Euchre champion, I'm honestly magical at it. Brushing dirt off  my shoulders - and truly my first drinking experience. Mostly I remember stumbling around in the dark (was not high up on the pecking order, thus, much alone time) going back to my cabin, having one, sweet rational thought that drinking to excess seemed a bit ridiculous in purposefully losing control whilst watching other Noobs barf their guts out in the shower. 

Again, a toast to a blend of Scottish and Croatian roots - keeping me alive in foolish times. Which continue to present day. 

Anyhoo, it was the slip and slide that got me on the track to being the loquacious, fun magnet envied by many today. 

I started reading a new book - Tell the Wolves I'm Home, Carol Rifka Brunt - and there is a passage where a character is reliving a conversation with her Uncle about an item he wanted to give her:

"And promise me you'll only serve the best people from it." His voice was cracking, splintering up. "Only the very best, Okay?"... I promised. Then he squeezed my hand and pulled away from me and smiled.

"That's what I want for you," he said. "I want you to know only the very best people."

That's when I broke down and cried, because I already knew the very best people. Finn was the very best person I knew. 

I'm on a plane reading this and I am immediately back in Gareth's living room, sitting on the edge of his gurney and he is asking me what I want. What do I want him to will me. I reply, I want more time with you and we both recoil from my statement. It was out of my mouth without thought. It was the truth but it hurt us both more than I expected as we had both been masters of dancing around the truth. Since I'm already crying, in public - I hate that, my mind takes me to the most beautiful spring day. I am soon to leave Vancouver and my best friend and I were graciously donated our friends' place which is in a valley surrounded by mountains and magical. Now she's crying recalling one night where mentally, emotionally I crashed and burned, with a vengeance. I was awesome at keeping going then. Thinking in 12 hour rotations and ignoring anything that didn't support him boldly crushing cancer beneath his heel. I had gone to his house, inebriated, and somehow ended up in an argument - which I cannot recall at all, completely have blacked it out. Incredibly we never fought, ninjas at avoiding one another's emotional landmines - and I took off into a PISSING rainy night, scream crying my way over the Georgia Street viaduct, the walk home probably taking me around 45 minutes. When I got home I remember her shell shocked face and her low tones trying to get the wild animal calmed down. She led me into the shower and pressed a mug of hot tea into my hands while I just stood and cried under the spray. That was one of the only times I actually broke while he was still here. I never thought about it from her perspective until we are in paradise and she is apologizing for not knowing what to do. I just about died with love for her in that moment. That someone would suffer seeing someone they love in pain, to rack their brain for a way to make it stop is the kind of love and friendship I want forever. With everyone. For everyone. 

Pro-tip: fungi and emotional upheaval aren't the best mix. 

What's amazing is that time has helped me to not stop in that recollection but see him waiting outside my tent with his last hot chocolate which reminds me of a comment he made on pictures from the BFF roadtip, which reminds me of making goat faces while driving, which reminds me of fleeing in the night from Marathon, Ontario 
Terrible! honestly fleeing! In mid flee, barreling down an unlit road (safe!) a guy steps out of the shadows with a wide brimmed hat pulled low, sloooooooowly extending his hitchin' finger. THEHELLYOUSAY! jump back as no one wants a human stain on the car and ain't nobody stopping this paranoid freight train! 
When we finally stopped the flee, got into a Motel and turned on the TV to calm the hell down MObama was speaking for the first time at the DNC - triumphant fist for for MO, incredible woman. Which makes me think of her get it moving (or something) campaign which OF COURSE makes me think of My Queen 

The times I have been behind the wheel (hahahaha license free!!!) always make me smile, it's often because of shenanigans and tomfoolery (in university - thievery) because I collect people imbued with a presiding modus operandi stemming from why the hell not and of course we should! OF COURSE! Let's try that. Spider hotdogs? Genius! Waterloo to Toronto because it's Thursday? Of course. Remember when I didn't catch that baseball and ended up with two black eyes? Those times the coolest baseball team in the Mabel League donned masks for topless, game interrupting sprints - glorious. 

I'm sitting next to an amazing piece of First Nation art - thanks Corrine Hunt! - which brings to mind the first (only) time I tried lawn bowling for a Friends Helping Friends event that I won for having the most spirit. That means I wore the lowest cut dress, outrageous hat and drank many drinks/was friendly. Was off with one Japswe for herbal refreshment not realizing my firecracker friend was extending out her thank you chat with everyone waiting for me to come back to present it to me. That was a great day. And my tits did look great in that dress. Classy great. I love low cut dresses. 

The greatest benefit of these fanciful trips down memory lane is that it serves to remind me that everything does happen at the right time, for its own reason. F'sho, there are things I would go back and change but that's because I have no idea of the 'why' or what it would change. 

I'ma let my main man Rilke wax poetical on these musings:

I beg you, to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don’t search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.

Well put, homeslice. 

I have a heart melting picture of my sweet nephew on my phone (those cheeks!) but it more often brings my brother's voice calling me Nana to mind. Somehow couldn't say my name so called me Nana instead. The recall, also heart melting. 

I really need to ward off the dementia since the memories are fucking great. They make me so happy for what came before and so excited of what could possibly come next. I never saw anything unfolding the way it did and as much as I am resistant to change and surprise, you're right, Universe. It's more fun this way. 

a haiku:

remember it all
memory shimmers a hint
regret none of it

xo