My mother’s voice floated into my bedroom as she sauntered by in the hallway. “Wake uuuu-uup!” she crooned towards my sister and I, both pleasantly face-planted in our pillows. For a split second - after waking up but before opening my eyes - I was a younger version of myself immersed in the comfort of home. I could have been five years old, about to get up and wriggle into my mom-made dress and patent leather shoes for church on this Sunday morning. I could have been fifteen years old, about to get up and slip into a Speedo for an early morning swim meet. I could have been any Kate, but this morning, after a few forceful blinks and exaggerated body stretches and bone-cracking, I remembered that I was merely passing through home, once again, and would soon be on my way back to Washington, DC.
I Amtraked home for about 24 hours this weekend to celebrate a few occasions: the return of my sister from a school trip to Egypt, the shared one-year anniversary of my reaching the top of Mt. Kilimanjaro and of my father quitting smoking, and the general desire to be away from the DC vibe for a bit. I lingered in bed and only my eyes moved around, body entirely exhausted from the previous night's John Mayer concert with the siblings. Seeing that it was still dark outside, I remembered we had a task at hand and jumped out of bed!
Last week I had proposed an adventure to my father: in honor of my climbed mountain and of his kicked habit, why don’t we take a sunrise hike to the top of Diamond Hill, the highest point in Cumberland? Not quite comparable to Uhuru Peak, but an acceptable local equivalent!
And as per usual, the entire Otto crew was up for such a random celebration. So at 4:45 AM Dad was waiting downstairs in his tangerine and tropical flowered Hawaiian button up shirt, sporting the Vodacom cap I brought him home from Arusha last summer. In his celebration he is subtle and not all at once. Mom is ready to go, sleeves rolled up on one of her many oversized tye-dye swim meet shirts, emanating, “This is nothing for me!”, as a woman who wakes up every morning to walk at 5:00 AM. Diana and I tumble downstairs in our mismatched pajamas, without a thought of brushing teeth or hair, and we groggily, but loyally, lace up our sneakers and hop in the minivan to get to the park.
The air is crisp and cool as we march up the hill, the terrain deserted except for our motley crew. No one actually knows “the” way (although I believe there rarely every is one) and we keep walking uphill finding narrow, pebble ridden trails weaving through the long grass and clustered trees. At just about 5:30 the sun emerged a fiery orange orb from behind a horizon full of crowded black clouds, and we squinted as her rays broke through the massive crisscross of branches atop the hill. We watched her rise, and then as nonchalantly as we trudged up, we descended together, dad stopping every minute to test us on tree identification, Diana interrupting with ridiculous jokes, Mom and I laughing helplessly at the entertainment (one of many ways I’m turning into her!) An informal yet deliberate recognition of our reasons to celebrate, unannounced yet obvious ceremonial action.
The night prior, before the Mayer concert, I spent some time sifting through old albums with my mother in search of some material for my Tuesday night Truman presentation. Curled on in the comfort of my parents’ queen size bed, we flipped through photo after photo of moment and memories from my childhood, most of which I would never remember otherwise. But some of the photos, though I forgot they happened, were not particularly surprising. The three oldest munchkins ruthlessly burying a toddler Andrew in the sand, lovingly mischievous grins on our faces. A photo of me in a sparkly, bright ballet outfit, eyes wide, enormous smile agape, staring brightly in the camera, mid-dance-move, tiny arms reaching out wide. I know we always teased Andrew. I know I have always been a dancing fool.
But part of me was upset that I otherwise would never have remembered that trip to the beach, or that impromptu dance recital. There are so many moments I have never recorded in any medium! I felt angst from the part of me that requires an understanding of the past before I can move forward.
Because it’s not just good memories I want to remember, it’s the bad ones too. Another friend at the House of Compassion, the AIDS home at which I have been volunteering since high school, passed away last week. Frank. I haven’t reacted as strongly as I did to Patrick’s recent death but part of me was infuriated that another person has been lost to HIV/AIDS who will probably never be remembered. How do we honor his memory? Or those of the thousands more worldwide who perish everyday from a disease we know how to treat and prevent? How do we properly remember the past, with or without physical evidence that anything actually happened?
On our simple sunrise hike this morning we were celebrating two monumental occasions, yet this subtle and simple action seemed to suffice as recognition of how much my father and I had both accomplished in attempting the feats we had set out before us. A celebration of grandeur would have seemed insincere and distracting. Besides the loud Hawaiian tee, it was just another walk in the park, yet meant so much more.
I think memory is a lot about incorporating heavier memories into lots of little pieces in our everyday lives. I have my little tricks to keep important moments fresh – my blackberry and laptop desktops are photos are people of phenomenal importance to me, one a KCA child and one my grandfather. I keep small cards in my wallet of every funeral or wake I have ever been to. And there are the reminders I don’t ask for – at least one e-mail a week from friends in Ghana or Tanzania, asking me to fund a college education or help rebuild a burnt down orphanage. Little reminders that sneak into my everyday life - my wallet, my desktop, my inbox - that keep concepts otherwise too immense fresh and light and omnipresent.
But it's got to be more than things, than photos and video clips and physical reminders. I think real memory is an ability to act on the past. So that my actions – whether a trek up Diamond Hill or an attempt to publish a thesis on HIV/AIDS - allow me to memorialize a person or an experience. And so I think even harder now about what it is I am doing here in DC...really 'doing'... and whether or not that sits soundly with what my past, my experiences, and my memories, tell me is the right thing to be doing.
As I sign off my Keep a Child Alive e-mails with a deliberately customized signature,
"Action expresses priorities." -mohandas gandhi
I Amtraked home for about 24 hours this weekend to celebrate a few occasions: the return of my sister from a school trip to Egypt, the shared one-year anniversary of my reaching the top of Mt. Kilimanjaro and of my father quitting smoking, and the general desire to be away from the DC vibe for a bit. I lingered in bed and only my eyes moved around, body entirely exhausted from the previous night's John Mayer concert with the siblings. Seeing that it was still dark outside, I remembered we had a task at hand and jumped out of bed!
Last week I had proposed an adventure to my father: in honor of my climbed mountain and of his kicked habit, why don’t we take a sunrise hike to the top of Diamond Hill, the highest point in Cumberland? Not quite comparable to Uhuru Peak, but an acceptable local equivalent!
And as per usual, the entire Otto crew was up for such a random celebration. So at 4:45 AM Dad was waiting downstairs in his tangerine and tropical flowered Hawaiian button up shirt, sporting the Vodacom cap I brought him home from Arusha last summer. In his celebration he is subtle and not all at once. Mom is ready to go, sleeves rolled up on one of her many oversized tye-dye swim meet shirts, emanating, “This is nothing for me!”, as a woman who wakes up every morning to walk at 5:00 AM. Diana and I tumble downstairs in our mismatched pajamas, without a thought of brushing teeth or hair, and we groggily, but loyally, lace up our sneakers and hop in the minivan to get to the park.
The air is crisp and cool as we march up the hill, the terrain deserted except for our motley crew. No one actually knows “the” way (although I believe there rarely every is one) and we keep walking uphill finding narrow, pebble ridden trails weaving through the long grass and clustered trees. At just about 5:30 the sun emerged a fiery orange orb from behind a horizon full of crowded black clouds, and we squinted as her rays broke through the massive crisscross of branches atop the hill. We watched her rise, and then as nonchalantly as we trudged up, we descended together, dad stopping every minute to test us on tree identification, Diana interrupting with ridiculous jokes, Mom and I laughing helplessly at the entertainment (one of many ways I’m turning into her!) An informal yet deliberate recognition of our reasons to celebrate, unannounced yet obvious ceremonial action.
The night prior, before the Mayer concert, I spent some time sifting through old albums with my mother in search of some material for my Tuesday night Truman presentation. Curled on in the comfort of my parents’ queen size bed, we flipped through photo after photo of moment and memories from my childhood, most of which I would never remember otherwise. But some of the photos, though I forgot they happened, were not particularly surprising. The three oldest munchkins ruthlessly burying a toddler Andrew in the sand, lovingly mischievous grins on our faces. A photo of me in a sparkly, bright ballet outfit, eyes wide, enormous smile agape, staring brightly in the camera, mid-dance-move, tiny arms reaching out wide. I know we always teased Andrew. I know I have always been a dancing fool.
But part of me was upset that I otherwise would never have remembered that trip to the beach, or that impromptu dance recital. There are so many moments I have never recorded in any medium! I felt angst from the part of me that requires an understanding of the past before I can move forward.
Because it’s not just good memories I want to remember, it’s the bad ones too. Another friend at the House of Compassion, the AIDS home at which I have been volunteering since high school, passed away last week. Frank. I haven’t reacted as strongly as I did to Patrick’s recent death but part of me was infuriated that another person has been lost to HIV/AIDS who will probably never be remembered. How do we honor his memory? Or those of the thousands more worldwide who perish everyday from a disease we know how to treat and prevent? How do we properly remember the past, with or without physical evidence that anything actually happened?
On our simple sunrise hike this morning we were celebrating two monumental occasions, yet this subtle and simple action seemed to suffice as recognition of how much my father and I had both accomplished in attempting the feats we had set out before us. A celebration of grandeur would have seemed insincere and distracting. Besides the loud Hawaiian tee, it was just another walk in the park, yet meant so much more.
I think memory is a lot about incorporating heavier memories into lots of little pieces in our everyday lives. I have my little tricks to keep important moments fresh – my blackberry and laptop desktops are photos are people of phenomenal importance to me, one a KCA child and one my grandfather. I keep small cards in my wallet of every funeral or wake I have ever been to. And there are the reminders I don’t ask for – at least one e-mail a week from friends in Ghana or Tanzania, asking me to fund a college education or help rebuild a burnt down orphanage. Little reminders that sneak into my everyday life - my wallet, my desktop, my inbox - that keep concepts otherwise too immense fresh and light and omnipresent.
But it's got to be more than things, than photos and video clips and physical reminders. I think real memory is an ability to act on the past. So that my actions – whether a trek up Diamond Hill or an attempt to publish a thesis on HIV/AIDS - allow me to memorialize a person or an experience. And so I think even harder now about what it is I am doing here in DC...really 'doing'... and whether or not that sits soundly with what my past, my experiences, and my memories, tell me is the right thing to be doing.
As I sign off my Keep a Child Alive e-mails with a deliberately customized signature,
"Action expresses priorities." -mohandas gandhi
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