It’s been a chaotic week but one that’s brought me an abundance of moments where I’ve just stopped and grabbed time, shook it and kept it in my heart’s brain. Yes, your heart has a brain – think about it. That’s why what you call your brain and your heart tussle so often. We all know that little tango.
Anyway, I’m sitting here in the quiet, with my iTunes doing it’s random “okay, I’m going to spin up eighty five different songs that are guaranteed to make Cath cry” attitude and…I remembered something. I used to blog this stuff. So I will.
A new-old friend (new because we’ve just become acquainted with each other and old because we already have this whole internal language that makes me smile) reminded me of so many little instances that make up the texture of me from years ago, and – I fear – a part of me I have neglected recently. We came across each other quite by accident (ah, life, you’re lovely!) and immediately unleashed an intense, garrulous commonality that is, well, she says it best.
I am so grateful for this connection. It’s reminded me of so much. Thank you, my friend.
It’s the intensity that Sheena speaks of, and I worry that I’ve neglected that bit of me. It’s hard to, because it really is what I am about. I am – horrifyingly sometimes – intense. I’m a hopaboutonmyfoot intense type. When I have a question, I want it answered. I battle with patience, but I have learnt it, and I will grit my teeth through it. I am, at times, a petulant child. Some things have not changed in over 30 years.
Anyway, I’m very grateful for my new-old friend, for he’s reminded me to uncover playlists and songs and things I have filed away for a long time, keeping them for a rainy day when I have time to myself, perhaps.
Sometimes I’m a little shocked by all the stuff I’ve kept. In the files and files I’ve stashed in specific places around our home, I forget that they’re there. Some of them scribbled with codes to myself about what they were from (hah!). I’ve often wondered why I keep “this stuff” and have manyatime thought about just throwing it all away. This evening I remembered about them and took a little peek.
I found reams of utterly crap poetry (mine. Oh may that never find its way to the Internet. I would be ruined) that dates back to the early nineties, song lyrics, posters I had stuck on the wall of my childhood home, movie tickets dating back to hellsIdontevenknow and I realised right then…these files chronicle so much of my life.
When I started making these files, I never realised anyone would ever even look at them, except for me. But, ah, I was wrong. For, one day, my daughter might want to. That thought has never hit me until this evening.
Yes, I’ve written letters to her, for years now. But to tell her everything, about my life and evolution? I’d probably skip past things because of my ridiculous memory…but this. I’ve resolved to start keeping mementos again. Not just the Instagram photos and blogposts, but the movie tickets and the random bits of paper I seemed to have loved collecting once upon a time. One day, she might find a sense of comfort in them? I do, when I dig through the mementos and pieces of life that my mother and father kept.
I hope you like them, sweetheart. Oh, and ignore everything that’s marked with an asterisk. That’s a funny code we will never, ever talk about 😉