Fragments

– When I was nine, there was darkness. A shadow that has in one way or another shrouded my life. I don’t remember the incident. I wasn’t awake to witness it. All I have are the stories that have helped me piece together the single event in my life that has affected all others and has brought about the circumstances in my life that have led me here, to this moment. Even as I sit here, it is certain that I may not have a story tell if not for the occurrence of this incident.
My own memories of the moments surrounding what happened and what has happened are all faded; latent images still in the process of being developed into some whole. Perhaps when they do if they ever do, my life may make sense and the purpose of it may occur to me. At this moment, I can’t even state with certainty, that I remember being a child. I don’t really. And the question wanders around the neurons and pathways of my mind; do I know what it’s like to be a child? There are scattered impressions of my own exploits of a time in my life that closely resembles childhood, but nothing concrete. Even at nine, after the incident more so, I was searching for what I was and who? Perhaps this is the normal procession of things, the path that we all follow. I don’t know, I only have my scattered recollections and several impressions of what those were. At this moment, they all feel a grasping for something that even now I haven’t quite taken full hold of. And maybe I still don’t know what that is. It simply feels like at that young age, when the darkness came, the bottom dropped out.
I wish I could romanticize it, that moment. Talk about the screeching tires and maybe add some quip about how the falling rain (as I’ve been told it was raining) forewarned of some ominous occurrence yet to come, but as I’ve said already, I wasn’t awake. At that moment, my eyes were closed. It had been a long day, a lot of driving. My lengthy nine year old body was stretched across my parents laps in the backseat of my great uncle’s Chevy Cavalier. We had been everywhere that day, at least it seemed. There had been water splashing as the waves crashed on the San Felipe shore. One of those scattered memories. All I know is I was there at some point. I don’t know if I feared back then, as I do now, the oceans massiveness. A small fragment of a memory associates much of the activities that day, much of the driving to fish. But I can hardly distinguish now if that association really has to do with memory or was created by the many stories I’ve heard since about the day and the incident. And there’s this vague impression of a house and people. Me, sitting bored as the adults, my parents, my uncle and their friends talked. Maybe they laughed. I don’t remember. It had been a long day and I was sleeping. Nine years old across my parents’ laps. I wish I had been awake. Maybe then everything would make more sense. That was the last day before the darkness. That was the last day everything was still unbroken, at least I’d like to think so otherwise the whole of my life has always been broken. I’d like to believe there was some part of my experience that wasn’t simply shards.
I opened my eyes. This is a memory, or if not I claim it as such. The beginning of the second part of my life. I’d like to think I remember this part better, even though it seems a blur in my looking back now. Again, this may be the common experience of everyone who shares in this passing through the years that life wakes us, but again I only have my own experience to inform myself through. It was night. I opened my eyes. I’ll never know why at that moment my eyes opened, but they did. There were bodies around me. All female. Nurses. I don’t know how many but there must have been more than one. They were taking from my body. Pulling what I know now were stitches from my body, from my wrist, from my head. There’s a whisper here, almost a whisper. One of these bodies spoke to me; at least that’s what I think occurred. “Go back to sleep.” I understood and I obeyed. Again closing my eyes. This is the closest impression I have to a memory from those first moments. From what I sometimes think of as my second birth. What I was before and who, remains unclear. Sometimes I wonder what the connections to my pervious me are if any. The whole sequence of events lacks chronology when looking back. And it’s funny that in spite of everything, I don’t recall being lost. Not in the sense that I didn’t understand the people around me or that I didn’t know what would occur. Even when the whisper was spoken, it made sense.
I don’t remember what happened next. I was quiet and unable to walk. There’s this image in my head that plays over and over when I think about my second birth. Long white corridors. Hospital corridors. A movement forward, like a slow dolly shot from a child’s point of view. There is a black woman in this image, in this perhaps, memory. There’s another whisper, “Do you want to go back to your room or keep going?” I don’t see myself, or my reaction but the dolly continues tracking forward. If I was searching for some familiarity, I never found it, no image remains other than these long corridors. My head falling heavy to my left my hand resting under it, a return to its position at my birth. If you were to have looked then, I’m sure my fingers were aligned with the birth mark my fingernails had left nine years before as I entered this world. I was then, much as I am now, pensive and solitary. How many hours did I spend in solitude?
I can only conjecture as to my acceptance of this new life. I simply lived it. I was only at that hospital for two weeks, but in thinking back it feels like so much longer. The wheelchair feels so attached to every one of these memories, though I believe I only used it for a couple of days. And at what point my voice returned, is hard to pinpoint. The impression that feels most honest, is of a voice dislodged during the first phone call I received, in which I recognized the voice at the other end as my mother’s and I only responded with tears and a whimper. It wasn’t long after that phone call my mother appeared, her head half shaven and her steps aided by a walker. I don’t know what that moment was like. It must have been something and I’m sure there were tears, but this isn’t even so much as an impression. Soon after that first appearance, she moved in, a cot on the floor every night, next to my bed. I became like one of those kids, the ones that cry the first day of school and refuse to unwrap their arms from their parent’s leg. Now that I knew I had a mother, I didn’t want to lose her. When she would leave the hospital I would be tortured by the thought that she would not return. She had unveiled my solitude and I couldn’t live with it. I couldn’t sleep unless she was there to hold my hand. It was quite frightening, to be born and be alone.