Packing My Baggage and Tossing It Aside

We are born and as we travel through life, we collect baggage. Some of it we leave littered along the highway as we travel along, some of it we carry with us through life. Sometimes we think we discarded it in Montana, only to see it tailing us in Washington. I have some baggage, and it is what makes this a difficult time for me. I don’t usually talk about my baggage, but here goes.

First of all, I need to say that sometimes it is our reality of what events were, not what was really happening at the time. My reality has affected my relationships even though my logical mind has forgiven and accepts events. And also let me say I had the most magnificent childhood, surrounded by people who truly loved me and wanted the best for me. Reality was their wanting the best for me. My reality saw it and felt something differently. It’s my reality that has become my baggage.

My Mom was barely 16 the day I was born at a time when young unwed teenage moms were uncommon. She was a wild woman, full of life. You can see it in her eyes and the flowing red locks. When I was three, I moved in with my grandparents (I vaguely remember standing on the cement steps waving goodbye to a mom, a mom I would rarely see over the next few years). Everyone claims it was my choice to stay behind as my mother moved to Florida. Perhaps it was my three year old choice, perhaps one of my smarter life choices. My grandma who couldn’t go to the hospital the day I was born out of embarrassment, fell in love with me. Some say I was her favorite. All I know is that I felt her love in every ounce of my being. She was strong and tough, a woman before her time. She’d send me to school in pants in an age when girls were supposed to wear dresses. She tried to teach me to stand my ground when, as one of the few white girls at a Native American school, they would beat me daily. She gave me my strength. She helped shape my very essence.

I remember visiting my mom when I was about 13. She had slaved away on a bunny coconut cake for my birthday. I remember thinking how ironic that she didn’t know how much I despised coconut but yet I know, in my teenage mind, that she had spent alot of time on that cake and it was made with love. It’s funny what memories stay with us through the years. Become our baggage to toss out along the highway.