P is for Past

Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. George Santayana

Does the past shape us? Or maybe the better question is to what extent does the past shape us?
I used to love holding my grandmother’s hands. I always felt that by touching her hands I was touching the past, reaching directly back into history. My grandmother died when she was 101 and I loved all the history that she held in those hands…history that belonged to me, especially when her hand was in mine.

In my life I have two very opposing perspectives on the role the past plays in our present. My husband believes we are solely responsible for our present, more specifically he believes that we are solely responsible for our behavior in the present. Our past makes for good and sometimes not so good memories but memories don’t define us nor control our behavior unless we let them. He believes that as adults we know right from wrong, even if we weren’t taught some of those lessons in our youth and that blaming our youth for poor decisions is simply a cop out.  On the other hand is my best friend. She believes that our past is 100% responsible for our present and that unless we closely examine our past and heal old wounds we can never fully grow up and live in the present.

I am somewhere in the middle. I know that my past shapes who I am.  I carry all those experiences of my childhood, youth and all the years through yesterday into my today.  Those experiences influence my beliefs, my hopes, what weighs me down and yes, even at times influences my behavior. And I actually love knowing that.  Some of those experiences in my childhood were difficult. I was bullied when I was in the sixth grade and think that experience led me to be a bit of a bully myself at times. Nothing I am proud of.  Thinking about those times when I was bullied still makes my stomach knot but I can choose not to be a bully despite that pain (and I am succeeding).  But not being a bully did require a bit of thinking about my past to determine what may have been pushing my buttons in my present.  The difference between me and my best friend is that I don’t dwell in the past.  I don’t think every decision I make today is controlled by my past nor do I believe that every childhood hurt has to somehow be healed before I can move on. The difference between me and my husband is that I acknowledge how the past does influence my present, actions included, and that at times, that’s really a good thing.

Another aspect of the past that I love thinking about is my family’s past…my ancestry.  My mother grew up very close to her cousins so I grew up very close to my grand aunts and uncles as well as my second cousins.  I never knew my great grandparents but I heard some of their stories, stories of hardship and stories of love. When we were in Sicily, my mother and I went to my great grandparent’s church in the little town of Sambuca (not the town famous for the liquor).  I loved touching the pews where they may have sat, touching the past, my past.   I loved knowing that somehow I was connected to that church, to that town.  I think of my ancestry as this amazing group of people standing just behind me, people whose strength is my strength, whose story is my story.  One of my sister-in-laws is especially good at instilling a gratitude for the past in her children. They bake things their grandparents and great grandparents baked; they celebrate holidays with some traditions pasted down from long gone relatives.

When people ask where I come from I still say Brooklyn even though I have lived away from that city for more years than I actually lived in it.  But it IS where I am from even if it is part of my past.  I think each of us carry our past into our present, the good, the bad, and everything in between. It’s what we do with it that matters. And just maybe taking a look at our past will open new possibilities for our future.

M is for Mend

M is for Mend…I am on the Mend! Last week I was felled by a wicked stomach virus. I was truly knocked out. Is there anything worse than stomach stuff? Well of course, but seems like not when you are in the throes of such an illness.  My poor husband got it the week before while I was out of town. The illness is why I skipped the letter L in this meme series and hopped onto M.  We think the culprit was one of our peanut sized grand-nieces who came over one evening and promptly informed us that the night before she “spitted up a lot!” Thanks for sharing Dani!

For as miserable as I felt ( I am not a good sickie, just ask my husband), the feeling of joy was even greater at the moment when I realized I had turned the corner, when I reached that point in time when I realized that I was in fact  on-the-mend! With a little help from a prescription my wretched stomach had calmed itself enough to begin the process of mending. I couldn’t have been happier though tired, wiped out even, but indeed grateful that the worst was now behind me.  I was on the mend to being made whole again.

We spend a lot of time as human beings on-the-mend, though I am not sure we realize it. We spend much of our time healing from the small and not small tears in the fabric of our well-being. Those scrapes and bruises that come from daily contact with other human beings.  We bristle at the coworker’s indifference, get irate at being cut off on the highway, frustrated by the young person’s teenage eye rolls, or whatever happens to get under our skin. For the most part we are able to release these things and not even realize that our bodies processed pain, released it, then, even on a cellular level, began to repair the damage that the stress has caused. We are in a state of constant mending.

Marriage is filled with times of being on the mend. Not major events of some consequence but rather moments filled with simple opportunities to mend. We tick each other off only to realize that  we were wrong, by our action, inaction, or reaction, then apologize and begin the mending process. A simple heartfelt apology sets in motion momentous mending.  Most often it’s something so inconsequential that it doesn’t even warrant a discussion but the mending process is no less real. 

Marriage isn’t a series of negotiations but rather an ongoing recognition of the need to mend. It’s the recognition that both partners are fragile, easily torn but that with each tear, the person and the marriage become stronger by the opportunity to strengthen the binding. Of course some of the tears are deep, but fortunately rarely so permanent that love’s binding qualities can’t repair. I am not saying the repairs are always instantaneous; the tear may stay torn for awhile. No doubt about, we are not perfect, just people on-the-mend.

This Palm Sunday (actually every Palm Sunday) the Passion was read. At the moment of Christ’s death we learn that the curtain in the temple is torn in two, from top to bottom. This is the curtain which separated the Holiest section of the temple from the rest of the sanctuary. Prior to this only the High Priest was allowed to enter this area and he only once a year.   The tear of course symbolizes the end of the old ways of keeping the people from accessing God. Christ’s death opens a pathway to the Father. HE IS the pathway. Although it is symbolized as a tear, Christ’s death and resurrection actually heals, binds, mends.  His resurrection sets in motion the process by which we continually seek healing from our often self inflicted tears because we are people always on the mend. Fortunately, we believe in the great tailor who is capable of mending whatever shredded garments we bring His way.