Place-based

During my 16 mile run yesterday I thought a lot about memories attached to spaces and places. At first I was thinking about what a difference changing my route for my long runs made while I was training for the marathon in 2007. I decided to reverse my usual loop so that I would be ending with the part I usually had run first; the part that was the most scenic and the part that I run most frequently. It made a huge difference in my morale and quickened my pace for the last 5 miles of my 16-22 miles runs. It was my memories associated with the place that had somehow influenced my physical ability.

But I do think about more than just running when I’m running.

I started thinking about all the struggles my sister and I had to endure with the terrible lawyer who was the executor of our mother’s estate. The woman was completely unprofessional and despicable, which was reason enough to feel anxious and angry, but it went beyond that. For me personally, my ultimate fear was losing the important spaces in my life: our home and garden - spaces which carried with them the memories of our mom and our lives together. The spaces would turn intangible, fleeting images of my mom into physical memories; the smell of hyacinths blooming in the early spring actually help me hear my mother’s voice in the garden; I can feel my mom’s soft hands when I sit at her old piano and recall her swift, little fingers floating across the ivory keys as she hummed along with the piece she was playing, occasionally leaning in closer to the sheet music to decipher whatever kind of trap Chopin, Debussy, or Schumann attempted to lay for her.

The months after my mom died, all I could think about was Hvar, Croatia. Hvar is an island in the Adriatic where we have a small home and have been lucky enough to visit every summer since we were babies. The place was my mother’s haven. She would talk about it year round, always dreaming of the next summer and sitting on the beach, eating ripe peaches, and smelling the lavender drift down the hillsides. My sister and I always enjoyed our time there, but we never anticipated it like she did. There were instances when going to Croatia almost was burdensome to me – leaving friends (and boyfriends) for an entire month seemed like torture to my teenage self. But when our mom was gone, I physically yearned to be there. It seemed like I would be closest to her, and some of the happiest memories of her, in Croatia. I wanted to be in my mom’s motherland, and feel my grandmother’s arms around me. The first summer after my mom died, I stepped off the ferry and onto the island of Hvar for the first time alone. I looked up at the large stone fort shining bright white in the sunshine, the red tiled roofs on the medieval houses scattered along the hillsides, and the palm trees lining the harbor, and at that moment I understood my mother’s endless desire to be here, and her lifetime love affair with this incredible place. A warm wind hit me and I stood there with my luggage in tow, with tourists passing all around me, and cried.

I think I’m afraid that losing the spaces and places that meant so much to my mom will mean losing my mom all over again. When I was living in North Carolina I felt so far from memories of my mother that I feared losing them entirely. But I’m not quite sure if this was due to distance from important spaces and places, or just the passing of time.

As we saw from the earthquake in Haiti, things can change in a day. In an instant, the physical can be destroyed. And life does in fact continue. So maybe it makes little sense leaning so hard on the physical to preserve the past. But I struggle everyday with trying to hold on so tight to memories of my mother, and they still continue to fade.