"Out of the everywhere into the here"

One of the reasons that I didn’t update this blog for the last 6 days is that George and I have been very busy working to organize ourselves into our two new places that we are moving into, one in New Jersey and the other here at the beach. We expect to have the moves complete by the beginning of November.

That means lots of packing and going through things deciding which to keep and which to do away with. While going through an old box of some of my things, I came across this...

I had forgotten all about this thing so when I opened the little box that it was contained in, it brought me to a stop while a floodgate of emotions and memory opened in my mind.

I picked up the tiny bracelet and swung it around my finger amazed that such a wee delicate thing could have ever been worn around my wrist. Attached to it by an old safety pin, is the ID wristband worn by my mother while she was in the hospital giving birth to me (she died of complications of breast cancer in 1989 when she was in her early 50’s).

I wish I could describe the delicate and beautiful thoughts and sensations that I felt when holding these items in my now large and adult male hands but I'm not sure that I can do them justice. It was almost as if I were holding a tiny fragile baby bird that had fallen from it’s nest, but the bird was actually myself, my past.

It made me wish to be able to travel back in time, now as I am, and watch my mother holding me for the first time. I would take her hand and she would recognize me - she would know that I was the baby in her arms visiting from 40 years in the future. I could tell her how much I love her and that I was going to be just fine - that I could make it, at least this far.

I have only seen this bracelet on a few occasions. Once, obviously, when I wore it as a newborn and was much too young to remember. Then once again, as a child when my mother showed it to me and with wistful eyes she told me the story of my birth. We both laughed at the size of the little thing. And then again, after my father died and I was going through the house for the last time with my siblings trying to process a houseful and a lifetime of memories. That’s when I must have added it to my collection of items to take with me.

And now. It reappears again - “out of the everywhere and into the here”.


David B. Sprouse: 1937- 2001
Maureen Veronica O'Brien Sprouse: 1936 - 1989