How We Remember

It's funny how we remember or how we want to remember people. There's this idea that we make stories about the people in our lives and from that, we react the way we expert things to happen. I've been trying to be more positive lately, shoving aside my usual self. And I think it's working.

I started the master cleanse yesterday as a way to transition into eating healthier and having more energy. I'm trying not to have negative expectations but not eating for ten days to clear out my system seems a little daunting. I'm trying hard to imagine the positive effects it's going to have on my life.

And in the end, it's all in the way you remember it. My sister, hiding her fruit rollup on the roof of her mouth so that I thought I took longer to eat mine because I wanted to have something that was mine. Or the note my brother left me when I cried all night and slept on my parents floor when he left for college early the next morning. Or my friend, sitting in the office in Boston during her first day, tea being wrapped around by bright colored gloves. Or in trading shoes over a first, exciting conversation in a black button-up shirt. My cousin, showing us how to do yoga in the living room that we never lived in (except on Christmas morning). My grandma and her hands, showing us how to make paper dolls before she forgot how to do it altogether.

And my mom, in her bathrobe on Christmas morning making coffee, my dad still asleep (it's the only day of the year he sleeps in). Conversations at the top of the hill in the hot summer Virginia nights, fall coming in on us. Or you and her sitting at the lunch table, clear and empty of what used to be your friends when you decided being popular was overrated and she agreed. A drunken dive into an overhead light when the Boss comes on and the rest of it on the porch surrounded by mountains and cigarette smoke. My grandma, hanging out in her white underwear when we came to visit, reminding us that she didn't give a shit what people thought about her. Those hot summer nights in D.C. where you were displaced and going to the movies and having a couple of drinks was enough to electrify the air between us.

It's all about the context. Whether you are surrounded by beautiful mountains, green and lush, or out in the desert of Las Vegas, some kind of peace can be found. That's the way I like to remember it.