Unforgotten
written by: Kathleen Chamberlin
I breathe deeply with closed eyes
And find myself a child again, small and insignificant,
Wandering in a world of adult voices
Carrying on conversations above my head, literally and figuratively.
Sliding through my memories, I pause at age three or four,
In the Astoria apartment my parents had,
On the first floor, at the end of a dark hallway
In the town where they, and I, and my brother were all born.
The kitchen’s deep, white farmhouse sink doubled as my bathtub.
While my mother scrubbed my back and washed my hair,
I listened to someone read the comic strips over the radio:
Dick Tracy and the Katzenjammer Kids, Prince Valiant and Blondie
Transporting me beyond the small walls of the ordinary.
The bedroom was crowded,
Our two cribs bracketing our parents’ bed.
Our grandmother babysat us,
And once my brother and I refused to go to sleep.
She threatened to leave us alone if we didn’t stop talking.
We didn’t. She did.
Or so it seemed.
We heard her footsteps
We heard the door open and close.
My brother began to cry. I didn’t.
I wasn’t yet old enough to understand abandonment.
That would come later.
Discipline was different then.
Traumatized children wasn’t even a remote concept.
I don’t remember many things but I have seen the photographs
Black and white and gray and glossy
The surroundings match my memories.
I animate those stagnant images,
Imbue them with the sounds and smells,
Some faint, some vivid
I recall my grandmother’s voice, calling me to dry the dishes,
My grandfather singing along with the radio,
Conversations filled with laughter
I recall the smells of food simmering on the stove,
And window shopping on Sunday after eating
Walking along Steinway Street, the stores all closed
With my eyes turned inward, I can almost revive a life that was,
Almost recapture what time has erased or left behind.
On quiet evenings amid summer’s soft breezes or winter’s shrill howl,
Something will remind me of what was,
Resurrecting the “used to be” that lingers somewhere
In an incomprehensible universe,
Where Time may loop continuously,
Where my family lives in the places I remember,
And those dear voices, silenced for decades,
Still laugh and speak and sing.
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