Monday Musings - 40

What remains of people are fragments. Mothers who teach long before you will ever need to learn - how to clean the dishes to a sparkling clean. Fathers who tell you long before you will ever care- how not to borrow money. Lovers who teach you long before they leave- how to wash your feet before you let them lie carelessly on white bedspreads. Sisters whose voices echo long after you leave home- how to always laugh indoors. And, friends who teach you long before they know that they won't always be there to carry you through- how to giggle nonchalantly with life. And, at life.

What remains are their memories that unfold in the littlest things - when you make your first chicken curry and know instinctively how to cut the onions right. How to mend your heart when you are alone. How to always love the rain. How to paint your door one day. Teachers, they teach you that in school. And, you remember, even though you think you have long forgotten.

And, slowly the memories come back to you. The little home in London where you learned to dust rooms and wipe tabletops clean. That little town in Indonesia where you learned to buy bread. That lavish home from long ago, where you learned to study art. You share stories now, those stories, with so much meaning. But then, as they happened, they were insignificances. They were moments in passing.

Now, they are so much more. They are the voices in your head. The whispers in the silence. The little truths that unknowingly taught you how to someday live alone. And so, you can still smile when you cook perfect, fluffy white rice. You can still whistle when dust flows in, with the wind. You can still giggle when one Monday, white clothes turn blue. You can still dance when the walls are closing in. And, still laugh when again and again you lose.

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