A Memory Comes

"It felt like a shockwave....It moved fast, made me feel disquieted & nauseous, & then almost disappeared. Like reaching for the tail of a running tiger, I grasped at it with great urgency."

I had just left my house in the dark of night and power-walked my way around my Old Town neighborhood. I was having a panic attack and needed to get away from something. I didn’t know what. I didn’t know where safety was to be found, but perhaps if I kept walking, I’d find it. Rain began to fall, but I wore a heavy jacket with a hood, so I marched onward.

Then I found myself leaving the realm of homes and entering a place of quietude: the bluffy shores of the Guemes Channel. I hoped there weren’t any people down the dark path doing things that would put me in a pickle. To my delight, at the end of the trail, I found no one but myself.

I saw a wall of raspberry bramble, and I lay down at its rooted feet. I curled into a ball and pulled my jacket in close. That’s when I heard the rhythmic beat of heavy drops of rain on my hood. A delicate sea mist had lightly dusted my sweat pants, and I fully accepted that I was going to get wet.

With my eyes closed, I listened to the Guemes Island Ferry engine roar to life in the distance and leave the dock. I counted the waves hitting the rocky shore nearby, and my fingers lightly strummed the moss bed I used as a pillow. A thorn jabbed at my pant leg, but after unsuccessfully batting it away, I abandoned my effort and returned to listening to the sea meet the shore.

I honed in on the drops of rain hitting my hood, and it sounded like the tick-tock of my grandma’s pocket watch that I used to tuck under my pillow. It was 1989. My mom and stepdad had recently high-tailed it to Canada, and she had moved into our tiny mobile home to supervise me in their absence. I was 15.

She scrubbed the brown smudges from the tub, replaced the carpets, and hung clean curtains. The old drabness of the trailer I had once shared with my mom, stepdad, and sister became whiter and lighter with every day that she cleaned.

When I lay my head down on my pillow at the end of those odd days after they left, I felt uneasy. I desired to be soothed by something. I didn’t know what.

Grandma had a pocket watch, and in the newly silent trailer, it played a soft, rhythmic sound from its place on her dresser. One night, I put it under my pillow, and its tick-tocking lulled me into a troubled sleep.

As I lay there under the raspberry bramble, remembering the pocket watch and how Grandma came to live with me in the mobile home, I listened to raindrops dripping onto my hood from the bare woody branches above.

Tick tock.

Drip drop.

I lay there like that for a long while listening to their percussions, the waves gently rolling over the sand, and the ferry coming and going. My heart settled. My muscles let go of their bones. And I finally felt a release from the fear that had sent me out into the rainy night.

That’s when the other memory came.

It felt like a shockwave went through my body. It moved fast, made me feel disquieted and nauseous, and then almost disappeared. Like reaching for the tail of a running tiger, I grasped at it with great urgency.

Come back here, Memory. Where are you from? Tell me your secrets.

Then I remembered.

Oh my god, I’ve done this before- just before Grandma came to live with me in the trailer.

In this new memory, I lay in a gutter alongside Harrison Road in Selah, Washington. Cars sped by, but I was unseen there in the dark dirt depression that ran alongside the country road. I was out of breath from

• the fight I had with Mom before she ran off with the gun

• averting the ill intentions of the fat stranger in our living room

• using a screwdriver to silently chip away the glue from my sealed bedroom windows

• jumping from the small, high window

• climbing over countless barbed wire fences

• running across pastures

• & swimming through a canal.

I was also full of dopamine at the fact that I had successfully escaped the danger in that mobile home.

Then an epiphany came.

Is this why I run? Is this why I feel compelled to hide? When I feel threatened? Because my brain learned in a big way that running and hiding paid off? It kept me safe?

I considered the present-day threat that had told my 51-year-old body to run out the door into the dark, rainy night: my husband has a terminal illness.

Then I had a great insight: My brain thinks running and hiding will keep me safe from this horribly frightening situation that Doug and I are in.

I suddenly felt released from my bed of moss there on the wet bluff and stood up to walk home.

As I took my first steps across the old, mossy sidewalk, I hadn’t yet come up with any way to tell my brain that we wouldn’t be successful in running and hiding from this one.