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Posted: August 30th, 2007 at 1:41am By: Anne E. Ulvestad
For it is in the remembering that we stay put, and it is in belonging that we join in the oneness of life. I ended last week's column with these words. I would like to continue. The past few days I have spent helping my 80-year-old mother pack up her house of 47 years. A lot of remembering was going on.
"This desk was built by your great-grandfather," Mom said. I remembered. The desk had been mine at one point growing up. It has a secret compartment that now holds the memories of treasures I once collected and cherished. The desk is too big for my house, so my cousin will take it. She didn't grow up knowing its secrets, but now belongs to the ranks of those who know.
My brother took Dad's cigarette case. Mom had his initials engraved on it when she gave it to him the first Christmas after they were married. No matter that my dad quit smoking shortly after that. No matter that my brother never smoked. Having something to remember Dad by, something that belonged to him, was what was important.
My parents bought this house in the Catskill Mountains in 1961. I was 8 years old, and I spent every summer there until I was 16 and old enough to get a job in the city. I spent hours, days roaming the hills and woods. Sometimes I'd take a book with me, climb a tree and read all day. Every day after lunch Mom would pack us into the car and head for the lake to swim, not returning until dinnertime.
These memories are the roots that bind me to the land, that give my "born and raised in the city" soul the depth and breadth it needed to survive. Remembering my roots gave me the consciousness to look up and see the sky. I realized one day, when talking to a friend, that when I think of the city, I think of the sky. I remember the sky in Manhattan with its blood-red sunsets; New Orleans' sky with its black thunderclouds rolling in at a moment's notice; the night sky in Boston with a hundred million points of brilliance that took my breath away.
I listened to my friend talking to her son before she left to go back to Korea. She was leaving him behind in America to go to high school. She said, "When you get lonely, go outside and find a cloud. That cloud is in the same sky that I will be looking at. Pretty soon that cloud will have drifted over the sea to find me, and my cloud will have found you. And when it rains, the drops will be drops of joy binding us together under the same embracing heaven."
She was creating a memory, consciously, deliberately. With a clear intention that said this separation is not a bad thing. She told her son that this experience would give them a remembering, rooting them to a place, and yet connecting them to each other across the oceans. This was a new way to belong, now under the same vast sky.
I believe that it is these memories that make us truly human. That remembering our family connections unites us beyond the family. Lives founded in love are lives reaching outward, tracing the web of community that spirals beyond the human into the heavens.
Living in fear of separation creates a memory of isolation, and we belong to no one and nothing. In that reality we must fight to survive. Having the good fortune to live in the country every summer implanted the idea that to survive I must be rooted in a place that could be as small as a pebble on the beach, or as limitless as the sky above. It is the memories that create the connections, and the connections that create the cooperation and participation that help us grow and change and create a better tomorrow.
We had our goodbye dinner, and I stood one more time on the stone steps leading up to the 150-year-old farmhouse. I breathed in the fresh scent of rich soil and warm grass. I listened to the leaves rustling and the crickets chirping. It was a sacred moment — and timeless. Eventually I moved, leaving that spot open for another to stand on the same step and experience the delight of belonging.
— — —
Anne E. Ulvestad is a free-lance writer residing in Maryland. She has her masters in earth literacy, and is available for public lectures and group presentations and rituals on Spirituality and the Environment. Anne can be reached at {email anne@ourplaceintheuniverse.com}anne@ourplaceintheuniverse.com{/email}. © Copyright 2007 by Anne E. Ulvestad.
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For it is in the remembering that we stay put, and it is in belonging that we join in the oneness of life. I ended last week's column with these words. I would like to continue. The past few days I have spent helping my 80-year-old mother pack up her house of 47 years. A lot of remembering was going on.
"This desk was built by your great-grandfather," Mom said. I remembered. The desk had been mine at one point growing up. It has a secret compartment that now holds the memories of treasures I once collected and cherished. The desk is too big for my house, so my cousin will take it. She didn't grow up knowing its secrets, but now belongs to the ranks of those who know.
My brother took Dad's cigarette case. Mom had his initials engraved on it when she gave it to him the first Christmas after they were married. No matter that my dad quit smoking shortly after that. No matter that my brother never smoked. Having something to remember Dad by, something that belonged to him, was what was important.
My parents bought this house in the Catskill Mountains in 1961. I was 8 years old, and I spent every summer there until I was 16 and old enough to get a job in the city. I spent hours, days roaming the hills and woods. Sometimes I'd take a book with me, climb a tree and read all day. Every day after lunch Mom would pack us into the car and head for the lake to swim, not returning until dinnertime.
These memories are the roots that bind me to the land, that give my "born and raised in the city" soul the depth and breadth it needed to survive. Remembering my roots gave me the consciousness to look up and see the sky. I realized one day, when talking to a friend, that when I think of the city, I think of the sky. I remember the sky in Manhattan with its blood-red sunsets; New Orleans' sky with its black thunderclouds rolling in at a moment's notice; the night sky in Boston with a hundred million points of brilliance that took my breath away.
I listened to my friend talking to her son before she left to go back to Korea. She was leaving him behind in America to go to high school. She said, "When you get lonely, go outside and find a cloud. That cloud is in the same sky that I will be looking at. Pretty soon that cloud will have drifted over the sea to find me, and my cloud will have found you. And when it rains, the drops will be drops of joy binding us together under the same embracing heaven."
She was creating a memory, consciously, deliberately. With a clear intention that said this separation is not a bad thing. She told her son that this experience would give them a remembering, rooting them to a place, and yet connecting them to each other across the oceans. This was a new way to belong, now under the same vast sky.
I believe that it is these memories that make us truly human. That remembering our family connections unites us beyond the family. Lives founded in love are lives reaching outward, tracing the web of community that spirals beyond the human into the heavens.
Living in fear of separation creates a memory of isolation, and we belong to no one and nothing. In that reality we must fight to survive. Having the good fortune to live in the country every summer implanted the idea that to survive I must be rooted in a place that could be as small as a pebble on the beach, or as limitless as the sky above. It is the memories that create the connections, and the connections that create the cooperation and participation that help us grow and change and create a better tomorrow.
We had our goodbye dinner, and I stood one more time on the stone steps leading up to the 150-year-old farmhouse. I breathed in the fresh scent of rich soil and warm grass. I listened to the leaves rustling and the crickets chirping. It was a sacred moment — and timeless. Eventually I moved, leaving that spot open for another to stand on the same step and experience the delight of belonging.
— — —
Anne E. Ulvestad is a free-lance writer residing in Maryland. She has her masters in earth literacy, and is available for public lectures and group presentations and rituals on Spirituality and the Environment. Anne can be reached at {email anne@ourplaceintheuniverse.com}anne@ourplaceintheuniverse.com{/email}. © Copyright 2007 by Anne E. Ulvestad.
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