from broken and holding, chapter
22 from
bird dreams, riding hope
- sometimes a fable, weaving
our connections to birds,
meandering rivers and dragons,
fermenting miso and
consciousness,
wetlands, our extended kin and
ancestors,
our mentors, and Wisdom.
Inspired by actual events
and a sense of place and
belonging
by a woman who addresses the
reader
on behalf of the earth
(coming to a kindle near
you)
I’m sitting at my desk squeezing
the coils of my brain for any memories of dragons before one came into my
skull. Nothing’s coming. I keep whatever is currently a part of my writing life
and focus on the bookshelf that hangs over my desk. I have an old wooden box
with a hook and eye that separates two groups of books and files on the shelf.
I can’t remember where I acquired this. It has faint white block letters on it
that I can’t make out. Inside, I keep the broken pieces of my mother’s favorite
Johnson Bros. rose chintz (made in England). This china arrived at our home
when I was a kid. It made such an impression on me because my mother fussed
over it so much. There wasn’t much that we had by way of fine and I never knew
her to care about such things. The Johnson Bros. rose pattern changed all that.
Every piece of it has become a memory hologram bringing my mom back to me.
There’s an artform in Japan about joining broken pieces of pottery with lacquer
embedded with gold dust so that the joints appear to be gold when they are
connected. This is gold joinery. Part of this art is about embracing flaws.
I sit with pieces of my mother’s
china. My mother, who brought schmatas down a notch through her redesign of the
sleeves to sleeveless with her terrible sewing job made worse by her really bad
eyesight. Schmatas, literally rags in Yiddish, were the house dresses she wore
all the time. It was her signature look. She would tear off the sleeve or even
partial sleeve the schmata came with and sew a very large baste stitch around
the arm holes. She had to cut out the
little bit of sleeve because they made her too hot. She toiled in the kitchen a
lot. She schvitzed if the schmata had arms. Cut the arms and sew the sleeve like
Dr. Frankenstein’s monster, why don’t ya, Lena? That was my mom, transforming
house dresses back to the rags they once were. Frankenstein’s sew job. Not rose
chintz. But then there is the evidence that she too loved fine things. I have
tried to find ways to join my memories and keep those I miss in my life. These
memories are some of the fine things I have now. I love the Johnson china. Like
everyone I suppose, I reengage with memories when something wakes them up. They
change as I change. It might be true that memory is a river. It should achieve
personhood as well. Time is the gold that ties memories together. Sometimes
they fit and the bowl or the cup look like they can hold water again.
Sometimes, seeing the break and where I glued them, although I have not put
gold in the glue, reminds me even more so of my mother. It’s her schmatas that
I understand more than her china. But both belong to her.
