i thank You God for most this amazing- e.e. cummings
day:for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky;and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes
(i who have died am alive again today,
and this is the sun's birthday;this is the birth
day of life and love and wings:and of the gay
great happening illimitably earth)
how should tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing any-lifted from the no
of all nothing-human merely being
doubt unimaginable You?
(now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened)
I spent much of my life trying to leave the past behind. I pushed it long and far, sending it on ships to go on vacation and never come back. Stay on your deserted island, I would say, but as soon as I thought it was gone - I would step out onto the beach and find my shore cluttered with artifacts I could not ignore. An old song, a poem, a photo, a drawing, a note, or even a glint of light in the corner of my eye; something that brought it all back to the surface. Sometimes it hurts, sometimes it makes me laugh, sometimes it makes me cry, but the one thing that is true, I can't forget. I will never forget. Everything swept under the carpet comes out sometime, and rarely is it in better form than it was when you carelessly threw it into hiding.
It took years of soul searching, panic attacks, medication, therapy, and questions without answers for me to come to terms with this. All I could understand was that images were flashing in my mind that I never wanted to see again, and they were making me sick. And who doesn't want an easy cure? I wanted so badly to wake up one morning and feel normal, feel wonderful again, but I didn't. Memory still loomed. I seriously thought that one day the images would just stop, and I would be able to forget and live a happy life, but it doesn't work like that.
The sea of my life is bittersweet. Everything I had ever experienced was both wonderful and horrible at the same time. There are some days that the same memory could make me laugh or cry. The ocean washes up my brothers and my time in Hanson. Bitter: Holding back, rewritten, 20-hour days, ravenous fans, no sleep, jetlag, and no sense of time or place. Sweet: love, the fans, the wonder of being able to play music in front of millions of people, the rush, the adrenaline, the most fucking wonderful feeling I've ever felt, and the world at my feet. Annissa, Alexis, my father, my mother, my children, my sickness, my health, my life, my death. Bitter, sweet. I'm surrounded by these things, and every day I tried to capture the good times in my mind, place all the sunspots and spring days in a little bottle. One day, I thought, all of the shadows and ghosts would be squeezed out.
Watching my children grow filled my life with such wonder and joy, a joy that I never really thought I would, or could feel. Becoming a parent is such an enlightening and wonderful experience. Watching childbirth and knowing that you had a part in creating someone, something that will live and thrive and learn is a joy that cannot compare to anything, not even watching the album closest to your heart go multi-platinum. In creating life, I was touching lives in a way that was suddenly different, suddenly pure. Slowly the memories came in and out, being tossed around and pushed back by happy memories of my children that occupied my mind. At first I thought they could replace the old ones, the unwanted ones, but slowly I got older, and I could still remember how it felt to be twenty two.
Soon my own children were becoming teenagers, and getting cars, and preparing for life on their own. They had lived such a normal life. They didn't think so, but they could hardly know. When I could embrace my past was when I could tell my children about it. I couldn't have ever told this story years ago. The words would have never come to my lips, and if they did I would have tried to run away. It is natural to run away from your fears, but you never overcome, or learn, by running. But sitting on my shores, watching the ocean of my emotion stir, it came to me. How could I embrace good memories, and not the bad? How could I only wish to see glimpses of Theo laughing when I didn't want to think about Zac? I needed to pick up the parts, and build a whole, and perhaps, let the ocean sweep me away into its dark depths, just this once.
When I stopped running, I looked back, and I realized how far I had run from home, and I realized, that all along, the past was right in front of me, a constant two steps ahead, and that I could have never caught up. Turning back was the only way. It was only then that we could go our separate ways, the sweat rolling down my back as the winter storm continued due north.
I was exhausted, but the haze lifted and soon, all of the colors began to look more intense, and all of the words began to look okay. At my heels I could hear Theodore laughing at one of my jokes, and Rachel kissing her mother goodnight. I could see Anabelle on stage, singing in her most beautiful voice, and feel Catherine's arms around me. Alex laughed because, with her, we could only produce girls, but I knew there was a reason God gave me those girls after granting me the right of fathering Theo. Rachel knew she was my little princess, and the younger two were heirs to the throne. With Theo, I talked about the band, and his father, and music, but with Rachel, I went on about everything. The two of us shopping, drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes (though, I was displeased to find out she had picked up the habit behind my back), we were the same emotions, same color, same shade of gray. I couldn't have known anyone better.
When I think about it, I almost have to laugh at how right my Mom was, always was. When we were younger we used to stand around her and asked her which one she loved the best. She said none, and we'd all accuse her of lying.
"No, no." She'd say. "I love all of you the same amount, just in different ways, because you are all different."
I thought she just said it to humor us and get us off of her back. Not that I really thought there was one of us she loved more than the rest, but now, after watching my kids grow, I can see.
When I was fourteen, someone quoted me wise when I told someone that "Everything changes." At fourteen I said words that you can never really understand until you are much older. Time marched on, my children grew up. All of our children obtained the telltale Hanson blonde hair, except Anabelle, who had a shade of red hair that was unlike anything else I had ever seen naturally on someone. Rachel had my blue eyes and face, and the other two girls seemed to have a delicate balance of collected features - their eye colors varying between blue-green shades of the most phenomenal varieties. When I looked at them - I saw both Alex and I, but when I looked at Theo I only saw Zac.
Theo, whom I had always felt a strange affinity for, shared a relationship and position in our family that was like no other relationship I had ever had. Not only because he was the only boy, but also because he was brought into my life in the worst situations. Theo and I were connected in a way that was completely separate from his sisters, and although Rachel and I could gab on and on all afternoon about everything and nothing all at once, Theo knew my secrets. For a long time I thought that by talking to Theo, I was somehow channeling Zac, but as he angrily pointed out to me one day as a teenager, I couldn't try and make him someone else forever. When I had nightmares at night, I went to Theo's room and held him until I could get back to sleep. As he got older, sometimes I just slept in his bed, or on the floor. By the time he was a teenager, he was used to it, sometimes almost expected it - once a month on the nose I'd come rolling into his bedroom crying and shaking. Even then, he'd sigh and let me in bed with him, but the older he got, the more irreverent.
It was in those late night visits, though, where Theo and I were connected. He knew he could not ask me to leave. The things I told him as I tried to calm myself down, little stories about places I'd been, things I'd seen, were things that only the two of us could share. When he was younger he would ask about France, and the Eiffel Tower... but as he grew older, he would have rather ignored me. I knew why, and I can't imagine I would have liked it much either, he was growing older, and it was time for me to move on as well. But I still felt a loss when he was 18 and ready to move out for college. I felt a separation that seemed much larger than it was, but when I caught Alex crying that night, I felt that it must be only natural. It was then that I caught my first dosage of real change. For years I depended on Theo, but when my next panic attack came and I glided into his room to an empty bed I felt at a complete loss. The waves took me under, I had to reassess or I would drown.
Theo went to school for music, something that I had never done, and he pursued a highly successful career in the field. He sang on Broadway and played piano in some bands. He told the newspapers he had me to thank for making him sing when he was very small. He told me on the phone that he went to see the Eiffel Tower, and that he liked how I described it better. He wanted me to tell him again.
Rachel went into stage production, and for a long time worked at a big time theatre near where we lived. I would drop in to see her at work, and she would be hanging from the scaffolding with a cigarette in her mouth shouting instructions to the people below. She would float down like the angel she always was and say hello to me. When I told her how special she was she only laughed and changed the subject. I watched every show she ever did at that theatre.
Anabelle was most known for her singing ability and she was the only one of my children who found their place where I once was. She had put together a band of her friends from music school. When she did her first show, on stage playing guitar and singing all by herself, I told her not to expect anything. When she put together her band, I told her that she shouldn't wish for something that might not happen, but the act took off. When she got signed I was unhappy. I never told her, but I just hated that she chose to immerse herself in the industry, the epitome of corruption, as far as I was concerned. But when she emerged, unscathed by industry dirt, dressing as herself, representing herself, my mind rest a little easier. When I saw her for the first time on TV talking in an interview I was filled with pride. The only advice I gave her when she went away for the first time to tour with her band was to remember, always, who she was and where she came from. I told her what my father told me once, "It's your family that keeps you grounded, not your money, or your fame, or your success. We are here through thick and thinner, don't walk away from me and come back a different person. Do not let them change you." She took it all with a smile, and never came back with a frown.
Catherine was the only one that chose not to go into some facet of glittery entertainment. She decided to write books. She wrote fictional stories that emphasized the small things, the little things that made everything. They were astounding.
When she was 24 she asked me if she could write a book about me. I asked her why, and she told me that it was because I was the only person that would swing her around by her elbows. She took out her tape recorder and set it on the table. Seeing no way out of this situation, this is what I told her:
"My life began like yours did. I was squirming, blue, and probably crying. It moved forward, presenting me with trials, tests and changes that were almost too much to bear. I started much too young, and almost lost it when I was 18. It can be a nightmare sometimes, but life truly is a blessing. That's what I learned, you know, after nearly throwing it away myself a few times. When I read my brother's eulogy I collapsed and I never got up again. I just lie there and let everything be what it was. Cigarettes burning my skin, guilt all around me spreading like wildfire, making me too scared to run to the police when I should have sacrificed everything. I never stopped loving Ani. I was 22 when Theo was born, did you know that? Your mother was 19. Things always change, never forget that, but memories are there forever. Never abandon the memories, but don't live in them. They're there for reference, like a dictionary, but do not burn your skin, and stand up when you fall down. We all have an ocean, we all have uncertainty, and we all become overwhelmed, but there is a door. There is a way out. Always."
Then when she looked at me, expecting more, I took her into my bedroom and I dug out boxes from underneath my bed. In them were every journal I had ever written, every picture I ever kept; all of the good's and the bad's. She looked through my relics with a smile. They were the little details that she so adored, pictures taken by Rachel when she was way too young to use a camera properly, baby photos, newspaper cutouts of my brothers and I when we were young kids playing around Tulsa, tour journals, set lists, date books, girls I dated once, and in the corner wedged between a box of trinkets and a bundle of ticket stubs was a small shoe box labeled, "When Annissa Smiles." Inside were all of the things I had hidden from myself for so long. I handed it all to her, and told her to read it all, even if it wasn't right, or it didn't make sense. When she said nothing ever makes sense, I said, it does. It just takes a long time to put the pieces together.
This is my life. This is how I learned.
End.