A Little Girl Remembers

Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.
You may give them your love but not your thoughts,
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow,
which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them,
but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.
You are the bows from which your children
as living arrows are sent forth.

Khalil Gibran on Children, The Prophet

Sam and Henry's Daughter--Me!

What are memories? My sister next to me swears her first memory is of being grabbed by hairy hands. My mother told her that the obstetrician was a white man with very hairy arms. Are these memories real? I imagine so.
     My earliest memories are of me playing jacks with my Mom on the broad steps of a building surrounded by lots of trees. I remember my Mom telling me that playing jacks was easy. I remember being captivated by her long fingers, her slim brown hands, tossing the little red ball in the air and then sweeping up the jacks in her palms. The ball would bounce once and she'd catch it, still holding the jacks and I would clap with glee. It is my mother's hands I see in my dreams more than anything. As I got older, I compared my hands, larger than hers, and realized that I was more my father's daughter than hers. I looked like him, was large and tall like him. I wanted to be her, however. For a little while.
     Another memory is of me begging to stay up with my cousins, or what I know now, must be my cousins. My grandmother tells me I am sleepy. "I'm not sleepy, Grandmother. I'm not." She grins. "Okay, but I don't think you'll last." I don't. I remember nothing more than climbing up on her big bed to watch television. I remember feeling safe, if I can describe it like that. I was so happy.
    Another memory is of me sitting in the back of a tan and white car. My mother is in the passenger seat. I don't remember exactly, but I know now that it was my father who was in the driver's seat of the car. I don't remember knowing this, but I do remember vividly my grandmother asking me, "P.K., don't you want to stay with me?" I did my best to open the door and couldn't figure it out. I remember being frightened and wanting more than anything to stay with her, for her to open that door and take me with her.
     These are vivid memories and when I recalled these to my mother (I was about 12), she was astonished. "Why you couldn't have been quite 2 when I took you to school and tried to teach you how to play jacks." School was  in Kansas City. That is where my mother went to get her nursing certificate. When I told her about the memory of my grandmother, she chuckled. She said that I always wanted to follow my cousins around, but that I was too young to keep up with them. However, the other memory made her pause and I don't think she told me how old I was when I first recalled this memory, only saying, "You were pretty young."
     My earliest memories do not include my father.
     I dream a lot. So did my mother. Our dreams gave us hours of conversations over my life. What did they mean? What was the dream's purpose? Sometimes we were clear and those dreams helped us focus. Other times, those dreams were startling and raised a lot of questions. We were dreamers and I think, in many ways, that was a gift she passed on to me. Interestingly, her dreams had many themes running through them and they centered mostly around my father and grandmother. In fact, she would say that sometimes her mother and my dad were interchangeable in her dreams--sometimes the dreams made her weep. Looking back, I think I know why, but we can't have me skipping ahead too far. This story or series of stories in unfolding in my mind, so the only thing I know is that I might start to tell something, but realize that it is not the time. Bear with me, though. After all, this is an experiment of sorts and a journey, too.
     That said, when I was sixteen, my mother and father decided to divorce. Rather my mother decided to divorce my father. I was the only one of my siblings (there are five of us, by the way) that wanted this. I think in many ways, I probably was the catalyst for them getting the divorce (the reasons why will come), but it was during this period that I learned I had been the catalyst for their getting married.
     The day my mother found out she carried me, she couldn't wait to tell my father. My dad taught at the black college in the same city my Mom went to nursing school. They were not married, but she said she thought my father was ecstatic when told about her pregnancy. My mother was 27 years old and finishing up nursing school. She had never been pregnant before. My father asked her to finish up the school semester and he would follow her home (she was from East Texas). He didn't. She thought they would get married. They didn't. A couple of months before I was born, my mother learned that my father had married someone else. What would make him do that?
     Three months later I was born. I didn't meet my father officially until three years later when he married my mom.
     Next: My Mom, My Dad and Me