Remembering

"Snapshots are shields--
What we remember in some way protects us"
-- Sylvia Curbelo, Photograph from berlin

She's so right. Memories have an amazing power to protect.

Today was an overwhelming day, for reasons too complicated to go into. So was yesterday, actually, what with all those long conversations about an issue so close to my heart... each chat was important but also draining. And so, when I woke up this morning, I had an overwhelming need to go back to memories.

I dug through my "memory bag"-- a collection of odds and ends, letters and cards, and all kinds of other stuff from people I've been close to in all my different lives in different places. First I dug out a Mexican pulsera-- how many meanings simple hand-woven bracelets came to have during my stay in Mexico. Symbols of solidarity-- Mauro made sure we all had one, and I remember buying one after the amazing conference at Huehuetla, and another at the women's cooperative near Cuetzalan, just to remind myself of the promises i made on each occasion. But now, it's a symbol of more than that. It's a symbol of the Mexico Summer Project, and thereby a symbol of synergy, of inner strength, of being able to do far more than I sometimes think I can. And of the friendship and the love and the support I received from the coordination, the people who believed in me more than I did sometimes. It also makes me laugh when I remember Mauro with his millions of pulseras, on both arms, and even on his legs! It also makes me smile at the memory of our parting in Mexico city, again so centered around a pulsera (sort of doubling as a rakhi) and a necklace... he still calls me his little sister. How much meaning in a simple few strands of string woven together.

Today, all those associations kept me going. I've tied this pulsera tightly to my wrist, and I'm wearing it until it simply falls off because i need to be reminded of these things. As I take on yet another set of impossible tasks, I need the reminder that I've done it before, successfully, meaningfully. I also need the reminder that I have this amazing international support group and network of friends-- from PhD students in the USA to far-from-wealthy farmers in Mexico-- who believe in many of the same things as I do and whom I can always count on.

My memory bag also revealed, somewhat ironically, the program of poetry I had prepared along with K on the theme of remembrance. I remembered his favorite lines from Wordsworth:

We will grieve not, rather find
strength in what remains behind,
In the primal sympathy
that having been will ever be
In the soothing thoughts that spring
out of human suffering.

In light of how things turned out, how ironic that those were lines I rehearsed with him so many times before our speech event, that he and I together prepared a beautiful program of poetry about the love of the remembered and the remembrance of love. That we talked endlessly about the strength that one gets from being able to remember even the things that didn't work out-- for him it had to do with his mother, for me, it now has to do with him. In a weird way, I have found "strength in what remains behind" and learned to be truly grateful for that short but incredibly meaningful friendship.

Yes, how grateful I am for friendship. Saurabh called from Bombay today, and it was simply wonderful to talk again to the person who probably knows and understands me better than anyone else does. 15 minutes of long-distance laughter with my best friend... and suddenly, all the day's fatigue vanished. On another continent, Megan is helping me put together the package for work on disability sensitization, while Diana is sending me a poster I loved but cannot find anymore, while Wendy offers me critique on an important piece of writing that only she would be able to critique for me. With all of that going for me, how can I not sail through?