cacophony

The sun is rising. I remember the fist time I saw an actual sunrise; rather, I should say the first actual sunrise that I remember watching. I was young — I think younger than ten years old — and it was the dead of winter. We were in Grandmother and Boom’s house in Jackson, and Daddy was taking me duck hunting. Not the first time, not the last, but a time that remains vividly in my memory. Hunting in the Delta always involved getting up unbearably early — the only time I’ve seen Daddy get up cheerfully at an early hour — long before the sun came up. I remember sitting at the breakfast table in Grandmother’s kitchen, still mostly asleep, waiting for Daddy to get ready. I wasn’t being useful or helpful — just waiting. I have no idea what Daddy was wearing, but I had on jeans and a black turtleneck with wide rainbow stripes. Not exactly hunting clothes, but I have to expect that I was going to put on a camo coverall once we actually got ready to hunt. I remember it was COLD — duck hunting was the only time in my childhood I was really exposed to cold weather. We got in the car, and I remember trying to sleep (without much luck; even then, I had no ability to sleep in a vehicle) in the backseat. At some point, Daddy told me, “Carrie Lea, turn around and look behind us.” I did, and was treated to the very first sunrise I remember seeing. I was, predictably, awed. The colors, the intensity — the magic.

In spite of all my knowledge of how and why the sunrise happens, it is still in my mind a moment of pure magic. The sky on fire, an astounding canvas of color and intensity, abstraction in the most powerful sense, and then suddenly — the sun is there. The promise of warmth, the promise of light, of life — and even at such a young age, it was indescribable. Astounding. Powerful. My love affair with the Earth, the natural world, had begun even then. I remember then, watching the sun be born that morning, again, as it is every day, I had tears on my cheeks and I didn’t even understand why.

I understand now.

I do not watch enough sunrises — or for that matter, sunsets — in my life now. Just do not. There is no reason to allow myself to get away with that, no reason at all. How sad for me. How sad that I have let myself get here.

I get up early enough. What is to prevent me from taking my chair, my cup of coffee, my camera, and my “book” outside to greet the day, to contemplate the promise that it brings. To revel in the magic that is sunrise. One day, the reality is that I will not be able to do that anymore. I don’t know what that day will be, or when it will come, but one day sitting outside to greet the day just won’t be feasible for me anymore. I have no way to know what day I’ll realize that the last possible morning I have that I could sit outside and watch the sunrise has slipped away. I can assume that it will be years and years and years from now, but the reality is that I don’tknow. How sad would it be if that day slipped by without me even noticing, without me even bothering? Heartbreaking. I don’t want to take that chance. I want to watch the sunrise. Wake up, Carrie. Be here.

But the phrase “the sun is rising” has a very powerful non-literal meaning for me too. I tend to think of depression as a place of unbearable, unrelenting darkness. Thanks to my recognition and treatment of that darkness, I am back in a place — finally, it seems like it’s been so long — where the sun is rising. The darkness is fading and more and more of my reality is being kissed by light and not shadows. I haven’t reached that truly magic point yet — the point where the sun is suddenly there and the day has arrived with all it’s pregnant promise. But I see the gradual lightening, the lessening of the dark — I’m in that in-between place . Out of the bottomless darkness but not quite — just not quite — into the light yet. I’m starting to have confidence, though, that I’ll get there.

The kitchen table that lives in my house now is the same kitchen table that I grew up with, at least from the time I was a preteen. The brown one, with the carved-back chairs. I remember the kitchen table we had before that was black and very heavy — visually and physically. That’s the kitchen table I sat on, wrapped in a blanket eating grapes, while Mama was on the phone (I assume with the doctor) after I split my head wide open while riding the 3-wheeler with Daddy. But that big, black table is not the kitchen table that is sitting in my house right now. The table in my kitchen is oval (rather than rectangular) and brown (rather than black) and lighter than the black table could ever have imagined being.

I like the kitchen table that we have. I remember sitting around it as a faimly — and as a much extended family — for so many every night dinners, and so many holiday festivities. What I remember the most about being around that kitchen table is laughing. So many dinners where we were at the table forever — forever! — just laughing, even after the food was long gone, everyone long finished eating. I want that for my son. And I think — I really think — that he needs to have siblings for him to really experience that.

I remember folding load after load after LOAD of laundry at that table — until it was piled high with stacks of clothing. I remember — after the family dinners had, somehow, become more of a thing of the past than a thing of the present — those piles of clothes staying on the table for so long, and how somehow it aggravated me, made me angry. Only now do I realize that anger was because I was reminded that we didn’t have the laughing family dinners anymore.

I remember coloring maps that were spread out all over that table — trying to earn a little extra cash from Daddy. I remember doing homework projects there, and study groups, and tutoring. The nights I spent with the few friends I had, and many more acquaintances, crowded around that kitchen table trying to learn about English literature — and I remember laughing, again. Hours and hours of laughter.

And now that kitchen table sits in my house. It gets covered by a tablecloth — which never happened in my mother’s house — and sometimes it gets piled high with junk (though never laundry). And more and more often, as Nate gets older, it holds our family dinners — the three of us, together, sharing our meals, our days, and our lives.

This brings me a great feeling of contentment. I hope — though I know we will probably someday replace it with a new kitchen table — that Nate (and any siblings he ends up with) will have the same treasured memories that I have of the kitchen table.