The Sweetest Memory I Never Want To Know

Media Memoir ESSay:

The sweetest memory i never want to know

It’s the Christmas Eve after her 7^th birthday. She can’t control her excitement as she prepares a plate of homemade cookies for Santa that she worked on all day. Her childhood melody plays in the background as she watches her parents get settled on the couch. Her father’s arms are wrapped around her mother in a way that signifies the utmost love and care.  Her mother’s head is nestled into his chest, as she looks so at peace, so calm, and so secure. The young child looks up to see nothing but the epitome of love. It is a memory that after this day will haunt her for the rest of her life. It is the sweetest memory she never wants to know.

This is my memory, a time when music played into the melodies of a life where my childhood Lullaby didn’t mark the end of a happy home. If I were to look back on my life, I would have to say that media, especially music and writing, have been a crucial part of it. Even before I was born I was being exposed to parts of the world that I couldn’t even begin to understand. Growing up, I watched and learned that my parents were masters of expression without words. Throughout their marriage, I found that they would say more without words than they ever could with them.

My father is an extremely lover of music. It was, and still is, his way of communicating with the world. I can remember coming home and being able to tell his mood just by the type of music he was playing. Stevie Wonder’s As If You Read My Mind suggested that he was in a playful mood, while Lookin’ For Another Pure Love was often played in the house after my parents divorce. It seemed that music, for my father, could express the things he couldn’t and display the characteristics and emotions that he wasn’t ready to expose. When I was in the womb, he used to place headphones on my mother’s belly and play Lullaby by Billy Porter ever night. The song speaks about a man begin so in love with a woman that just being in her presence calms his soul. That’s how my father said he felt about me. It’s a love and a bond I still have today, with my father and with music.

Now my mother, she’s a writer. She expresses herself best when she can just sit down and write it out. I remember one time I found her diary; I couldn’t help but imagine why a grown women was attempting to express herself like Anne Frank. I promised myself I would only read the first page, but what I saw absolutely stopped my heart: It was about ME. She was telling the world (or rather herself, I’m sure she had no plans on publishing this into a best seller) how much she loved me. It sounded so eloquent, so thoughtful, and so clear. My mother had told me several times in my life how much she cared about me, but nothing ever compared to what I held in my hands. One day after I came home from a particularly rough day of school, my mother sat me down and asked me “Do you know how much I love you?” Of course, I replied as I had heard my mother tell me she loved me almost every day of my life. She laughed lighted and looked me in my eyes, saying sweetly “more than the poet loves his pen pumpkin.” To this day, her words serve as a reminder of the powerful love between mother and child.

I never really understood until now that I was so blessed, not only with two amazing parents who loved me, but also with an early exposure to major forms of expression. I learned from a very young age that sometimes you don’t have to use your words to express how you feel.

For a very long time, I never truly understood why my early memories of these different mediums stuck with me so much. People listen to music every day, and write in just about aspect of life. I couldn’t understand why certain songs would instantly make me sad, or why seeing someone writing in a journal with a certain intensity would compel my mind to want to ask them if they were okay. For years, I couldn’t figure out why my Christmas memory haunted me. Why it was a bittersweet pain every time I heard Lullaby play on the radio, but how in the same breath it could calm my soul. But one day, after thinking long and hard, it came to me. I knew exactly why it hurt to hear that song, and why regardless I clung to it like a baby bird trying to find its mother in flight. I understood why it mattered that this memory stayed pure, stayed true, and stayed just as young and innocent as I was the day it took place.

The reason that this memory is so deep and vivid for me is because it was the last Christmas my parents spent sleeping in the same bedroom. This is my last memory of a happy home: before my father began listening to Lookin’ For Another Pure Love when my mother wasn’t home, before my mother spent her days drowning herself in the pen and paper she used to say the words that could never leave her lips. This memory holds onto the lost piece of a broken puzzle that I have been carrying all my life. It’s the sweetest memory I never want to know, but can never forget.  

-Submission in Writing Workshop Course