Time We Let Free

Fear is not the only thing that hides in closets. Nor are shadows.

Memories, too, hide in closets—masking as old, worn-out jeans and rumpled t-shirts. Memories we may at some point wanted to deal with, but want no longer. Maybe these memories are in fact fears, or maybe they are romantic imaginings we had in our youths but which we have tucked under our beds at 14 or 15 because we were afraid of some shadows haunting us in the form of ghosts.

We believed in ghosts, then.

But sometimes memories are long and gone, their conception far and before the time that is now our own. Sometimes memories are histories, whether real or imaginary.

And often these histories precede us. They develop in generations different in thought and influence than what we have perceived of as familiar, and have become emblematic of transformations we perhaps once read of in glancing fashion but know very little about. As it were, these histories existed before we knew what was or was not in our closets or under our beds: before we first donned our baby body-suits and our size-zero slippers with teddy-bear patterns; before we knew of girls and boys and crushes and heartbreaks; and before we could consciously be scared of anything, let alone shadows that creep around in the dusty corners of our bedrooms where sunlight is—at best—a casual visitor (intruder?).

Yet they implicate us. These memories bind us. Much like traffic lights do, and systems of governance. Beehives and the instructions manual for kite-flying. (And what to do when your string gets tangled.) The law of gravity and that of cause and effect. Frustrating yet steadfast rules of sport. Baking bread and braiding hair. Skydiving. Tap dancing. Tap water. Snow days.

And love. And hate. And hate out of love. And love of hate. And the kind of hate that really makes us love a person, even when all we want to do is let them go.

Yes, these are memories, too. Perhaps they are learned, but so too is the history of war and the history of peace. So is the history of everything in between.

They are unspoken ghosts—these stories and statutes and smells and smiles of yesteryear. And still, in the closet they lay. And under our beds. Alongside the old notes that we used to pass in class when we first learned the rules of engagement. What was allowed and what was less allowed. Flirting and playing and wishing and dreaming. Alongside the titanium tennis racquet in silver (which no one had seen, but us) and the deflated tennis balls with faded, dying print. Alongside the grade reports and the old CD's. Alongside the children's books and the decks of cards. Alongside our deepest secrets, which the sun told the shadows when they rendezvoused.

It's time we let free. That we learned how to disentangle the kite and let it soar with a wave of the wind—ride the shape of a cloud and maybe kiss a raindrop or two. It's time we faced history, and time we faced ourselves.

No, I'm not only talking about the bad history of the world. Also the good. The happy. The charming. The refreshing and the audaciously creative history.

Like that painting you made one day in 4th grade, came home—through the kitchen, up the stairs, into your room—and threw away for whomever would catch.

Like that moment in elementary, middle, or high school that you wanted everyone to see but which no one was there for.

Like that picture of how it could have been to feel the fountain's water splashing against your face on that immaculate summer day when her friends were playing outside—laughing, living.



But how you dropped it, once, and how it shattered.

And how a new picture, with a new fountain, with a new summer day, and with laughing, and with living, and with water—how that would have set you free, and still can.