Tears Might Be Forgotten When Adrift
With my vision blurred, I look with strained eyes to the ceiling that lies imposingly above me. The world itself is seemingly magnified by unknown multitude, and I can’t help being drawn toward being completely overwhelmed. The room felt as if it closed in on me, encircled by an unknowable enemy from which there was no escape.
The world itself was my foe, and to try to escape is to run headfirst into the fray. I felt so small, a speck in an unending universe out to pull me down to depths by which I could not comprehend. Bewilderment by my minuscule nature in comparison is pure understatement, as I was petrified by both the known and unknown in equal measure.
Frozen as I was by my thoughts, I was but a child lying in bed in a dark room. In my adolescence, while I was certainly prone to succumbing to my own fears and weaknesses, I was never allowed to. For I, like the masses of children throughout mankind’s history, had a lifeline.
Amid my thoughts that late night, I was startled by my door sweeping open. As my eyes adjusted to this abrupt shift in brightness, I focused in on the weathered face of my grandfather. His white goatee seemed almost luminescent in the shadows, but his assured smile brightened my room more than the lit hallway could ever hope to.
In the almost supernatural way of parental figures, he in moments sensed my discomfort. My Poppie asked me what was wrong, trying himself to discern the nature of my emotion before I uttered a word. I was not yet old enough to know secrecy, nor was I a natural at hiding inner truths, so I was quick to respond.
I felt no shame around him, felt the ability to be open with both heart and mind in the way we are only able to with those we most love. Though blurred by the lens of time, I remember my words as the tears welled up in my eyes with an almost remarkable clarity: “why is everything so big?”
He was a steady man, moving forward as if but a breath had a purpose. And yet in the light of those sad, mumbled words, he was taken aback. My grandfather was often measured with his words, treating light conversation as if a grandmaster chess player planning his next move in a tournament of the highest level.
Yet in this moment, as my intense feelings poured through the short sentence I spoke, he seemed determined to calculate his words to an even greater extent. When he answered, I remember through a somber yet comforting tone the answer he put out: “I know the world can feel too big at times. Honestly, it’s probably because it is.
The universe is giant, and so is everything in it. You’ve just got to remember when it feels like too much, that some things are bigger than they seem. While me, you, and everyone else seem small when talking about the world around us, we’re all bigger than we seem. All of us, in lots of different ways. You’re bigger than you seem.”
I remember how he continued when I started lightly tearing up: “Look, you’ve just got to realize how special you are. All this huge stuff is special, but so are you. Humans are pretty cool, and from what I know pretty unique in this big old galaxy. You are bigger than you’ll ever know, and the best way to feel like it is to use that imagination you’ve got to think about what you can do that this boring stuff around you can’t.”
It was my turn to be taken aback, as I was surprised by how he seemingly parsed how I felt so small from just a few words. Then again, I was always a rather transparent child when it came to my thoughts.
While riddled with emotion, I felt an almost naive confidence from his words. In wake of his supportive words, I found the hug that followed to impact just as much. When he asked if I’m okay, I just mumbled that “I don’t know, just don’t want to cry and feel so scared. Or sad. I don’t know.”
When he pulled me to arm’s length to look at me, he said “How about we make you feel better. It’s really dark, how about some night lights to make you see the room clearer? Maybe something to make it all feel smaller.” I softly nodded, and as he left, I remember the way in which he stepped almost excitedly out.
He said a quick I love you, and like that he was gone. He left the door cracked, and as I drifted into dream, I could only imagine me fighting Earth and the other planets. I was massive, and I could almost feel the galactic shockwaves from the punches I threw. The following night, I had almost forgotten the late exchange I had with my Poppie.
As I got into bed, I was delighted to be reminded and to realize that he clearly hadn’t. Stuck to the ceiling above were luminescent shapes, countless glowing stars, and a bright moon right in the middle. In the bright day I had failed to see them, but now they were distinct features of the dark room around me.
In my awe, my preoccupied vision failed to register the shape of a man walking through the doorway. “Do you like them?” my Poppie asked, bathed in the moonlight emanating from the ceiling that had so terrified but a day before. I could not contain my excitement, and exclaimed how much I loved them.
He said “I thought maybe we should make your own little galaxy, since the one out there is a little too much sometimes. When you feel small, just think about how you’ve got your own moon and stars. I love you.” I doubt, on reflection, he ever could’ve recognized the significance of this moment.
Perhaps without knowing but to a partial extent, he had carved me a small corner of the universe that had so terrified me in my youth. He made me feel like a giant. I felt unbeatable, as if a titan of myth but magnified to galactic proportions. I found comfort in the imagination that soared in those nights, restless now not by fear but the prospect of possibility.
In that that artificial moonlight, I found myself. If not in those moments, then I at least certainly began then long journey of inner recognition and self-actualization. How can one feel like they’re not enough, when the very stars are in reach.
My Poppie was a man of great virtue, and inherent flaw that plagues all of us human beings. And yet in a dark world that so imposed itself on the mind of a young child, he planted the light that illuminated the path towards a better future. I often think back to that night, the earliest memory I have of a man so integral to my life.
It possesses a frighteningly clarity, and yet it almost a fever dream by its nature. Now that he is gone, these fleeting memories are at times the only ties I have to him. Most fade away with the sands of time, and yet I have consciously barricaded my memory of the moonlight with relentless intent. Perhaps if only to use it to better understand my relationship with my grandfather, and to parse the countless intricacies that define the interactions between two individuals over a long period of time.
