I am surrounded by a world of innocence who think they know everything if not almost everything about what is around them. I think, then, perhaps there are several of them who truly do. However, how many of those who know so much actually understand all that they know?
My husband, from our earliest years of togetherness, would state how book smart I am, but lack understanding. Well, he isn’t lying. The ego gets bruised a bit upon his words spoken, but his statement is not far from the fact of the matter. Apparently, his noticing was something Papa had forewarned him about me. Papa would be the one to know.
My Papa didn’t really have us listening to anything beyond what one could sneak into our ears through songs played on the radio. I recently shared with my husband that it wasn’t until my friend, Jeanine, in 5th grade, did I even learn dance moves to music being played. There, in Jeanine’s room, in that townhome on Cherry Street, just before her mom would be home, Jeanine and I would dance away to music on the radio shortly before I would head home that one year. Moving to a different school again the next year, Jeanine will never actually know that she would be the one to have taught me the love for music.
We lived a simple life, mainly because of Papa’s beliefs and our daily struggles. From the time we left our home back in the Philippines, if not living in other people’s homes, we found ourselves in apartments, having to respectfully minimize any sound to cause disturbance to neighboring walls. To add, our television didn’t have anything beyond basic channels. Thankfully, I wasn’t much into television binging. Aside from reading the headlines of the front covers of Papa’s newspapers, the outside world never made itself to be interesting.
Though short of influence, I learned from Jeanine that I had a lot of catching up to do with the dancing world. I knew dance music to the extent of listening, but I didn’t obviously know any dance moves that went with them. If not for Jeanine that year, I wouldn’t have understood that your soul could move with your spirit in the rhythm of music.
Since that time, I loved dancing to music so much I would lock myself up in my room in sixth grade after another school I attended just so I could dance all by myself while my siblings were out and about. This time, we were in a rented home which meant more freedom and space to listen to music and dance. To my luck, our neighbors were a laundromat to our left, a private parking lot to the right, and a tavern in the back. They would not have cared or heard any efforts of ruckus I would have tried to make.
For a homebody, aside from writing, music can be all the friend and companion that a growing adolescent like me would need.
I discovered so much joy in listening and dancing to music that by junior high, I learned to catch public transportation just to secretly attend after school dances that I knew Papa would have forbidden me to partake in (as the priest said in my favorite movie, The Count of Monte Cristo, “I’m a priest, not a saint!”).
I knew the music that could take me to lose my mind on dance floors since that very memory of Jeanine and I dancing like crazy little girls in her room while her mom was at work. I never needed any dancing partner. They just sometimes get in the way of your own energy and flow. (Even my husband knows this much too well about me.)
Letting go of such innocence in discovery is to know that you would be losing a part of you if you were ever to just stop and pretend you did not withhold that very piece of you. The unraveling of your soul and spirit is the understanding that this is the very you that need not anyone else- a simple party all on your own with just music to sway you into your own celebrations of life.
All innocence, once a door is opened to a world of curiosity, lead to more than just what we ask for, however. Just when music locked me into its comfortable confines, I learned of its limitless avenues.
Just like one of my sons had confessed to me that even when I told him to protect what goes into his mind, he regretted to tell me that his friends had shared with him a website he fell curious to open. Just as soon as he opened it up, he closed it, regretting all that he briefly saw.
We cannot erase what enters our mind and thus, the greatest punishment is what we end up putting into it that we can never forget. I could not punish my son for his curiosity just the same way I didn’t with my older ones when they had theirs. Curiosity doesn’t necessarily kill the cat; curiosity kills innocence.
Memories are the ball in chains to carry for a lifetime, wanted or unwanted.
It was my senior year on a bus when our cheer team shared a ride with the football players to a game where I came to discover music was more than just for dancing fun. I still recall hearing the lyrics being played in the back, the words that translated into my ears that had me wondering of its true existence. My ears were in amazement of the context being understood. I knew music, but I was trying quietly to myself to explain the very existence of the one playing.
All of a sudden, one of my cheer mates began to recite the lyrics, telling everyone in the back of the bus how she knew all the words to the song. I walked over closely to her to get a closer listen. Upon looking up at me, just a glimpse of her gaze, I still recall just being at quiet awe as I heard her recite the words as she had claimed. She was for sure telling the truth. She knew the words too well.
I hope to have smiled with kindness as I walked up closer to the front of the bus where I had settled myself, feeling behind in times with music at that moment. If my cheer mate knew those words then surely I have been hiding under a shell. The flesh in me just stayed indifferent, as if I wasn’t at all thrown off by such music out there. But, I was. Secretly, I was trying to ignore the fear in me. Deep inside, I knew I had not been ready to have such words enter my ears and my spirit.
My innocence was lessening and I feared to let whatever left go. I just didn’t really understand it then. I just knew I had this feeling of uneasiness for more knowledge the more I began to understand.
Changing darkness to light, although innocence lessened, I knew I grew up a little more from that moment on the bus. I understood that I could use, however, what I learned towards my benefit.
I wrote poetry since I could remember back in junior high. It was at that point in my senior year where I began to understand my words could be expressed deep within music. At that point, I knew I had been introduced to going beyond just dancing with music. I arrived to not just hearing music to dance to, but listening to understand. To my own words. To someone else’s. I’ve been writing since then.
Unless you fear to grow up (which is understandable), there is no escaping the inevitableness of what awaits.
What awaits? Our innocence lessens each day. Does it not? After all, how much of it did we actually have within our control to hold onto? No matter how tiny of a door we open, the other side we enter can be so much bigger than what we anticipated. Yes?
I try and laugh it off as I must wonder at the same time with our children of today. They act and speak with so much energy and force. I remind myself I was there once. I understand too well I no longer will ever be back in that innocence again.
So much knowing of everything around. So little understanding of what everything truly is.
How much would we have held back from doing or getting into if we had seen what we know of ourselves now? Were we aware of our lessening of innocence when we dared exchange offensive words or thoughts with one another amongst our peers? Did we, instead, welcome the transformation? Did we continue to unknowingly welcome things into our realm of understanding as we gathered to know it all?
Growing and knowing coincide, do they not? Thankfully, while we reach a point we stop to grow, knowing is within our control to pursue in vast array of direction. To know is endless. Yet, how much of what we know do we truly understand? And, if we do understand, how much of what we have already understood do we prevent from continuing or happening again?
When do we actually grow up to take accountability of not partaking in what we know is beyond what we want to understand?
Just because we are deemed as adults by law, is our mindset truly mature enough to know our barriers between what to let in and what to keep out?
We want our memories to be filled with what we only have put in. But, then, we smelled with a whiff, opened our eyes, listened with our ears, felt with our touches, tasted with our tongues.
“Once grown, twice a child.” My husband’s grandmother used to tell me this. Perhaps it won’t be so bad to start to forget in our latest years. There are some things not worth remembering. Yes?
And, then, there are those moments where we embrace the knowledge we picked up, either from a friend, a classmate, or just by a simple encounter of exposure.
We open doors to many curiosities. A lot more come in than perhaps invited. We can only hope to be in control of what has found itself in.
Several years ago I purchased that one CD my cheer mate had recollectively recited some of the words to. I didn’t realize what actually made me buy it then. That cheer mate had a promising life, a natural cheerleader that would have surprised no one as to why she made it into a college university cheer team her freshman year.
Something pulled her from that path. I want to remember her innocence instead. That simple gaze she gave me before continuing to flow with words from the music playing. Innocence. Knowing and understanding.
