Then and Now
If this Pisces full moon is about looking back at the past, I am definitely feeling seeped in old memories at the moment. It’s funny the things we lose that come back to us.
My mother says I used to live in this footstool. Any time she couldn’t find me, she would go look there first. I remember turning it over, filling it with my blankets and pretending it was a boat I could get lost at sea upon. Or hiding inside of it and pretending I was in a cage or in jail—also with soft blankets. My cat doesn’t seem as inclined to these kinds of scenarios however! She prefers to lay beside the footstool on the soft faux rug.
After the family cottage that had been in my mother’s family for four generations blew up when I was 12, I never thought I’d see this footstool again. But as I was helping a new friend clear out her childhood family home last month, there it was! I still can’t fully believe it.
She let me have it, and it feels like a part of my childhood has been returned that I didn’t even realize I had lost. I used to dream about the cottage every year until around the time I turned 30. I would see all the old furniture my grandparents had collected from around the world that no longer exists, and it’s funny that in this corner of my room that’s out of the frame, I have the Asian bar they bought in Chinatown out here in San Francisco in the 1920’s, my stuffed unicorn sitting on the rocking chair my parents’ had made for me when I was born, and now this footstool that used to hold me as I became anything I wanted to be. . .and I guess it still does!
