Mirrors and Windows

Listening to public radio the other day, I heard a writer say that every story should have both a mirror and a window.  The concept that we should be able to see something of ourselves in every story and also have the opportunity to see outside ourselves and learn about others as well resonated for me and I wanted to note that down before it becomes buried under the minutiae of the million things my life brings me. 

Why am I here?

Has it been a hundred years since I have been here... Intellectually I know it cannot have been a hundred years but emotionally I am an infinity away from where I was since I last visited here.  I had literally forgotten the name of my blog, or how to get there or what the password was.  A chapter of my life not forgotten, but misplaced.  

I look at my last post of how the work I do with children seems to suck the energy from me, steal the words from my heart.  And now, oddly here I am searching through the lost files of my past searching for that something I had misplaced at a time when I am a few weeks removed from the soul sapping rage of broken children.

As an aging only child of very aged parents there has been the inevitable fall, terrifying broken bones and complete disability for my father and now I am care taker of my sweetly forgetful mother.  And the care of aging parents leaves me with time to think and time to feel and the urge to put this life down in words once again.

I sit in a quiet room with my sweet ancient mother, just existing in her world so that she will not feel alone as my even older and fragile father struggles to heal bones and strengthen muscles.  Three weeks in the rehab center and now, tomorrow he will be brought home, with a bewildering array of walkers, wheelchairs, hospital beds and all the other things that someone who cannot walk needs to function. We have moved into a lovely assisted care elder community.  There will be all the help in the world to teach us how to do all this stuff and people to help with the hard stuff.  There will be a million questions, but I trust there will be a million answers. 

But that is tomorrow, and today it is quiet and I am here to be with my mother to answer the same questions over and over.  She loves to wonder... "Who invented glass?"  "Tell me again where your father is." "Why are you here?"  She sees me with my computer in my lap and asks, "Can I have one of those?  How much do they cost?"  Forgetting that I already bought her one... every time she sees it, it is new and mysterious. She cannot learn to use it, she cannot even remember she has it.  For she lives in the land of forgetting.  And that is why I am here, to help her find herself, because she is still there, just misplaced in time and space.

And perhaps that is why I am here, to finally have the time to find myself.  And find myself once again full of words... and tears.  I find myself remembering, a chapter a hundred years ago, a place to put my words and tears, to sort things out.