How the harder parts of your childhood years, added to the richness as you grew up, translated…
“1, 2, 3, 4………DING! We’re here, the FIFTH floor!” Every time the elevators started announcing the floors, the echoes of chasing those dreams, started, sounding off, in our, memories too.
Every day we go home, we could always hear, that crisp, clean, DING! Like how when you make it to the next levels of the video games, how we’d, matched our goals. For over dozens of years, the three of us, mother and daughters, up and down, up and down, up and down, getting, trampled down by the years, passed through the fragile, the tougher parts of, our lives together.
what she’d, felt like, as a child…
From before, I’d always envied my classmates who had the elevators in their buildings, unlike how my older sister and I, had to, climb up those staircases, step, by step, to finally, reach our small nest, wiped out completely. And yet, those layers of steps, had become, this, prominent, part of our, memories.
From when we were younger as children, we’d mostly, feared hearing the three rings that threatened our lives, that meant, that mom’s, waiting for us, downstairs, for us, to help her carry all the “winnings” she’d gotten, from the shopping trip, while my older sister and I, we’d, allowed the packages, to slide up the stairs, slowly as we’d, climbed with them, and always felt, that life will, find a way, that not having enough, not being rich enough, it’d, sparked up more imaginations in our, lives, and, in the sweat and the tears, it’d, made our lives, richer, psychological and emotionally then.
In my memories, my mother would have us, haul up the thrown-away furniture that other families had, disposed of, from the first, to the fifth, floor. And as we’d started, panting like dogs, wanted to quit, my mother would always state, “it would be best, if we have a man in the………house!”, and every time I’d heard that, I’d, shouldered, ALL the weight on me, cried out, “what’s so good about guys? I can do it too!”, and, before I’d heard the end of my own voice echoing, I’d, picked up my feet, and moved on upward. I’d heard my panting, with every single heavy step I took steadily. “One, two, one, two”, I’d felt the heaviness of what I was, carrying, and my own, stubborn will, playing that tug-of-war between my muscles and tendons, while the furniture pieces I was carrying already, left that, redden marking on my skin so deep, that was, the crest of the nation of women, shining bright, on all three of our, arms.
illustration from UDN.com
And now, those memories became an elongated staircase, step by step, growing, and now, it’s as if, I can still hear, the laughter between the panting for breaths, clucking in my memories, while all of these crisp clean laughter, they’d, helped me, weathered through the tougher parts of my own life that came, later.
“One…two…”, my mother once took our tiny hands, step by step, counted the steps on that long staircase, upward, and now, we’re all, riding atop, the results of, those, dreams we once had, safely, returned, back to the safety of our own, fifth story home, in an elevator. The elongated distance now became, a matter of, few short seconds. The way home became, quicker and shorter now, but, the memories seemed to, be amiss.
And I’d, started, missing how: we all counted up the steps upward, the calls, the cries of.
“Hey-Ho, one, two, three, four………FIVE!”
And so, this, is the hard parts of your, growing up, you didn’t have enough money, and you’d, lived in those, older apartments, where there are, only, staircases, and, it became trying as a child for you, to haul all those heavy items that your mother collected, from someone else’s no-longer-needed list, but that’s, trained you, to have what it takes, to weather, through the hard parts of life that came later in your life, and now, you’d, gone through the harder parts, and, it’s, all downhill from here.
Life, the Obstacle Course 