Chasing raindrops on the bus window

Today, on the bus, on my way home from work, instead of diving into writing a new blog entry on the laptop or checking Facebook status on my iPhone, I tried belly breathing. Beginner’s meditation. For the first 5 minutes, nothing happened. I was about to abandon it (though my therapists strongly suggested I do it every day – and I strongly resisted doing it). In the next 5 minutes, I noticed rain drops on the window glass. They chased each other, merged, zigzagged to the left, then to the right. There were hundreds of them, playing this game. I never noticed them before, I thought. Or did I. I did. I remembered watching the rain drops when I was little, fascinated by their game. Trying to predict which drop would merge with which. How fat each has to get, to spill out of its spot, to streak down the glass, to stop again, waiting.

I watched the rain drops and forgot where I was, who I was, how old I was. It was only me and them, and the glass between us. I dove into a memory. I was 4, perhaps 5. I had an umbrella, with big pink plastic knobs covering each rib tip. I rode a bus. Or a car, Maybe a car. My father was driving me somewhere. I have not seen him for years, he just came back from Germany, he was a stranger to me, a big bird wit a large beak and full round eyes, mocking. Next to him, my step-mother. She was white, he was black.  A black bird, a white mushroom, and me in the car, all riding into the rainy night. I was scared, I was little, I didn’t know where we drove, I didn’t know either of them. My hands were cold, and I was falling asleep from the warmth in the car. I pinched myself to open the eyes, to stay alert, to make sure that the black bird doesn’t poke me in the arm or the leg with its sharp beak, that the white monster wouldn’t suffocate me with its long blond hair, wouldn’t hug me until I turned blue. But I couldn’t keep my eyes open, I fell asleep. I didn’t remember anything else. This was the first memory that surfaced from a trigger, rain drops, but that wasn’t violent and didn’t lead to an abuse episode. I’m happy – do I get to remember the rest of my childhood, the other moments, the curious moments, the almost beautiful moments?

I tend to remember in images – no sounds, no smells, no talking between people, only pictures. Snapshots. Rain drops on the car window. Yellow ducks on the sides of my little rain boots. Pink knobs on my umbrella rib tips. Long grooves on knit brown cotton tights. Images. From them, I remember my moods. They flood me. The fear from the image of the bird. The happiness from the rain drops. Images mean feelings. I tend to swap out wallpapers on my laptop every day, according to the mood I am in. I tend to look for a particular image, sometimes for hours, to find the one that I feel matches my mood exactly. I never thought of it being therapeutic - flipping through Flickr images in search of a perfect white peony or a rainy landscape. I have a collection of over 50 wallpapers, the ones that I cherish and don’t throw away. I can purchase a photograph on iStockphoto simply because I fell in love with it, to stare at, blown up on the big screen. It gives me peace. Belly breathing is the answer. I will breathe more now. The therapists were right, such a simple little thing. I didn’t think it would be so powerful.