Tucked Away

3/27/18

I don't know about anyone else, I can only speak for myself.  I  tuck away memories, like little pieces of paper, inside the crevices of my mind, the dark shelves far from my normal view. corners where I try to stay away ;from try to forget. Then I have good memories, some of those somehow got tucked back there too.  Sometimes those crevices get full and I have to clean them out and start over.  I ran into my jr high school teacher. here I am in my middle 50's and when I saw her I instantly  recognized her. Or something inside me did. I remembered her kindness, her ability to put me at ease in the strange world called jr high. I can remember being such a wall flower. I cringed when anyone talked to me. I was a fly in a sea of milk.  I went up to her and asked if if she was so and so and she did that hesitated ' yes?" I told her who I was and how I knew her. And remembered her. She said "that was so long ago, the things you must of seen". I've seen her since and I still think of her as teacher.  Sometimes those little pieces of paper coming floating down, and a memory long forgot suddenly slaps me in the face. A moment of fear, embarrassment, a feeling of feeling lost. Those are not as frequent as they used to be, I like to think they have been in the shadows of my mind for such a long time, they have become mostly dust, unable to see the pictures the words, see the tears on the fragile paper.

And sometimes I remember it as kindness, others don't remember it at all or think it was something else. I was pretty much the same way in college. I went to class, rarely answered. Never initiated conversations. When I tell people now how shy I was, they can't believe it, there are times I can't either, but something inside me allowed me to speak my truth, let other's hear my voice and I haven't stopped since. 

 I started working out at local Planet Fitness and recognized a face of someone from my college days. One day I went up to him and said hello and told him how I remembered him and he thought for a moment and said that was 30 years ago! I saw the moment his eyes opened wide , I said well yes it was. he said something like how we've changed and walked away. It did not occur to me, that he thought maybe we had gotten together and he didn't remember and oh crap she did. I sat in my car and laughed. Again I remembered his kindness, his help in the classroom, something so small as to help with an answer or try to include me in conversations. He never returned to the same times I worked out, and I do seem him still around town, but all I can do is smile and leave it as is. Without those memories, without those little hidden treasures, I don't think I would be the person I am today, for the kindness of strangers and how they carried me through.