Week Two — The Memorial Shelf — Part 2
The Memorial Shelf — Part One:
Week Twenty-Seven of 52-Week Writing Challenge
Before discovering the so-called New Age beliefs, when I was still in my previous marriage, my husband and I gave shelter to a runaway teenage girl, originally from Honduras, who escaped a violent father and ended up in our city living with two college students I knew. She would eventually become our legal daughter. Soon after, I left my marriage and my home, and my daughter moved with me.
I left an all-white, mostly-redneck* life and was quickly thrust into a new world of Hondurans, Argentinians, Colombians, Puerto Ricans, Salvadorans, Peruvians, Venezuelans, Spaniards, Chileans, Nicaraguans, Ecuadorans, Brazilians, Dominicans, and Mexicans.
- The term redneck is used here without negative connotations. Most of my ex-in-laws and all of my rural neighbors proudly call themselves rednecks. The term is used locally for people living in the rural areas surrounding my city. It does, however, carry many preconceived connotations about the political and social opinions of this loosely-defined class of people. Many of those connotations — conservative, racist, homophobic, etc. — are true or partially true for many self-proclaimed rednecks and are, to my despair, proudly embraced by many of the people in my “previous life”. Yet, I also know people who live in rural areas who call themselves “the other rednecks” — they accept certain definitions of “redneck” regarding rural lifestyles, self-efficiency, and hard-work but shun the political and social leanings of many who live near and around them. I was a flaming-liberal, as a long-time client calls me, in a sea of rednecks. Even my friends, in-laws, and neighbors who loved me, chastised and teased me for my liberal political and social leanings.
My life took a hard turn in a different direction, requiring much adjustment and resulting in an education that changed me to the core. It would also lead to a new relationship with the Argentinian man who is my now my husband.
I experienced new foods — tortillas, fideos a la manteca, polenta, empanadas, pasta flora, flan, buñuelos, black beans and rice, plantains, baleadas, enchiladas, horchata, arroz con leche, tamales, tres leches cake, and tostones.
I experienced new music — tango, salsa, chamamé, bolero, cumbia, samba, bacahata, merengue, mariachi, and many others.
I wondered why my life took such a turn. There had to be a reason.
My daughter and her Puerto Rican husband had two children — a son and a daughter — making me a non-blood grandmother. Motherhood and grandmotherhood were never part of my life plan and here I am experiencing both.
I watched in wonderment as my grandson emerged from his mother’s body. After all the necessary cleaning and examinations, after his father held him and placed a red mal de ojo bracelet on his tiny wrist to protect him from evil, he was placed in my arms.
When I was a child, I read a book from which I only remember one thing — a baby was born in the story and the cultural belief of those people (and I don’t recall which culture that was) held that the first thought that came into your head when you looked in the eyes of a newborn was a message the child brought to you from the “other world”.
At the moment I peered into my grandson’s eyes that story, which I hadn’t thought about in decades, popped into my head. At the same moment, I heard a whisper — a clear, distinct whisper — in my head or my heart or my soul that said: I came back.
I came back.
My skin tingled. I shivered. I was overcome with emotion. Not only from holding my grandson but from the otherworldly message that he brought to me: I came back.
What did it mean?
From his first hours of life, it was clear that my grandson and I had a special bond. Everyone noticed and commented about it.
Less than two years later, my granddaughter was born. As her father placed her in my arms, I remembered the message from my grandson the first time I held him and wondered if this tiny girl had a message for me. She did. Her message was:
I missed you.
The same whisper deep inside my being. The same tingling and shivering.
I missed you.
Shortly after the birth of my grandchildren, my son-in-law packed up the family and moved them to Puerto Rico. During the first few months they were gone, I suffered greatly and went to a spiritual therapist to help me deal with the intense feelings of loss I was experiencing. Knowing that my mother died when I was an infant, she was sure that I was having a type of regression to the loss I felt then. She had me lie quietly and concentrate on the loss I felt — letting myself sink into the emotion as a foot does in mud. “Let the feeling of loss ooze around you,” she suggested. “Sink into it. Let it cover you until you feel like you’re drowning in it.”
I did. The feeling was immense and tortuous. My breath became shallow as my heart raced. Tears ran from my closed eyes.
Then, it stopped. The pain of the loss evaporated like rain in the hot sun.
The face of my grandson appeared before me, fading in and out, coming back into focus looking different, looking like — Michael.
He looked like my brother, Michael!
My skin tingled. I shivered. I remembered the words: I came back.
The image disappeared and a fuzzy image of my granddaughter took it’s place. They moved shortly after her birth so her face was not engraved in my memory as my grandson’s was. I knew it was her but her face was blurry. Then I heard: I missed you. Just as I had after she was born.
As the words “I missed you” faded, my mother’s face appeared. The same face in the photo on my Memorial Shelf but a little older, more lines around her eyes. Her eyes were prominent as though spotlighted. They faded and my granddaughter’s eyes appeared. Again, I heard, “I missed you.”
It was then that I started believing in reincarnation. It was then I realized all these changes came into my life to provide a path for my brother and my mother to return to me.
When I arrived home, I looked at the photos of my mother and my brother sitting on my Memorial Shelf. My skin tingled. I shivered. The similarities between my brother and my grandson and my mother and my granddaughter were evident.
I delved into books about reincarnation and discovered that young children, until the age of three or four, often recall past lives and may even know their previous name(s).
I visited Puerto Rico a couple of months after my daughter and her family moved there. Alone with my two-year-old grandson, on the balcony of the condo I was renting, I called him Michael, a name that sounds nothing like his name in this life. He turned to me, smiled, replied, “Si, Abuelita?” Or, “Yes, Grandmother?”
I asked him if he knew who Michael was and he replied, “Si, yo.” Or, “Yes, me.”
I asked if he knew me before and he answered, “No, entonces no.” Or, “No, not then.”
Which was true, he died before I was born. My daughter came on the balcony and interrupted us.
My daughter and her children moved back to Florida to live with me fourteen months after my visit to Puerto Rico. My grandson was 3 1/2, my granddaughter 1 1/2.
People commented on how the children looked more like me than they did their parents. Both parents have dark, nearly-black hair, but their children have light brown hair, similar to mine.
Their father has an almost chestnut shade of skin that darkens easily and quickly in the sun. My daughter’s skin is lighter with yellow undertones — a light bronze that gets richer, not darker, in the sun. Their children have lighter skin — almost a sandy color, similar to mine, but they darken easier and quicker in the sun than I do.
Both parents have dark brown eyes. Both children have hazel eyes. My grandson’s eyes are more brown-hazel and my granddaughter’s are more green-hazel. I recall my father telling me years ago that my brother had hazel eyes like mine but they were a little more brown. Babies eyes tend to change. My granddaughter was born with very dark eyes but as time went by they lightened to hazel with a green tinge. My father had said my mother’s eyes looked brown in some light but hazel-green in other light. My daughter’s eyes are a deep brown and her husband’s are even darker brown, nearly black. Yet, their children’s eyes are hazel more like mine, the color that was often repeated in my family.
People who first meet us, not knowing our unusual family connections, immediately assume the children are my natural grandchildren, disbelieving me when I say we are not blood-related. No one ever assumes I gave birth to my daughter, but people always assume my grandchildren are my blood kin.
One day when my granddaughter was five and my grandson was seven, we were dusting the purple shelves. I took down the photos on my Memorial Shelf. My granddaughter picked up the photo of my mother, looked intently at it, and said, “I look like her, don’t you think?” My grandson agreed.
I agreed and let the comment pass. One morning a few days later, my granddaughter crawled into my side of the bed and wiggled close to me as she often did when she had a nightmare. “Bad dream?” I asked.
“No,” she said, “A strange dream. Not scary or anything. Really, sort of nice. I was a grown up and you were a baby. I was holding you. And, then you disappeared. No, I disappeared. I woke up sad. I wanted to be with you.”
We talked about the dream and how she felt, then she shared, “Sometimes I feel like I have always known you. It’s weird. I can’t explain it. I know I love you extra-special because of it.”
That day, I told the children about reincarnation, and that I believe they are my brother and mother who came back to me.
My grandson, a true Catholic at heart, was unnerved by the idea and refused to accept the concept of people returning to live other lives. Anything contrary to what he learns in his parochial school makes him uncomfortable, but he did say that he feels there is something extra-special about me — something more than I am just “a really cool grandmother” — and that he sometimes feels like he knows me better than he knows anyone else.
My granddaughter, on the other hand, embraced the concept of reincarnation, even exclaiming that it explained so many things that she thought were odd. She talked enthusiastically about déjà vu feelings which had frightened her, “Sometimes I go some place I haven’t been before and I know it. I know what’s around the corner; I know the buildings. Sometimes I remember things I know I haven’t seen or done. It used to scare me. I didn’t want to tell anyone. I thought it was bad or people would laugh at me. I dream a lot about you. I keep seeing you as a baby. Sometimes I wake up crying. Now I understand. I was your mother! That is why I love you so extra-special much and that is why I am so scared of losing you. I always worry that you may die. I think if that happened, I would die, too.”
And, so we are a very blended family — in this life and from past lives. This is what I believe. This is what my granddaughter believes. My grandson admits to some strange feelings and memories but has yet to accept reincarnation.
As the children were helping me pack for my recent move, my granddaughter held the photo of my mother and said, “Yep, that was me. I can feel her inside of me.”
My grandson picked up the old, yellowed photo of my brother. “Well, I don’t think I was him but I don’t know for sure. He looks like me. He feels like me. I don’t know what that means exactly. I can feel him, like I knew him. It’s weird. I don’t want to talk about it but I like him. I really like him and I am sad he died and didn’t get to be a kid.”
I smiled and looked at my granddaughter. We both said at the same time, “He’s a kid now.” Then the children yelled, “Jinx! One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten — BLACKOUT!”
After all, kids will be kids.
Even if one was a baby who never got to be a kid and the other was a mother who didn’t get to raise her kid.
