My dad once told me a story about dinnertime in his house when he was a child. He was the middle child in a family with two brothers, always into something, always causing trouble. Nonetheless, my dad's mom used to cook every meal for her family, ensuring those three boys were always fed well. My dad remembers his mom always making him and his brothers wash up before dinner every night. According to my dad, she would always tell the boys to "go wash behind your neckid ears" before they were allowed to come to the dinner table. When my dad tells the story, he depicts a boy-version of himself huddled over the sink in the single bathroom in their house in Poteau washing his ears like his mother told him. He never questioned this seemingly weird directive. He never wondered why she referred to his ears as "neckid" (the country version of "naked" by the way). He just did what she said because that's what kids do.
Years later when my dad was home from college, my grandmother jokingly told him to "go wash behind his neck and ears," just like she had told him before meals as a child. My dad was obviously misunderstanding what his mother was saying, and in turn spent years and years of his life washing only behind his "neckid" ears before dinnertime, blindly following the directions of his mother, never questioning what he believed her to be saying.
I turned twenty-seven years old a few weeks ago. A few weeks before that I had surgery to remove a cyst from my ovary and severe scarring on my reproductive organs. Before that I was scheduling out each month in an attempt to get pregnant, because years ago I decided that at twenty-seven years old I would have my first child, because it isn't too young and it isn't too old. I sort of feel like just recently I started understanding my current situation much better. It's like the past few months my life has been on a loop as I slowly hear the words a little clearer each time around. Twenty-seven looks nothing like I thought it would. Twenty-six proved to sound clearer than any other year I've experienced. I sort of feel like I just recently listened to my favorite song from years ago, only to realize I'd been singing it wrong all along.
The good in realizing that the certain things in this world aren't necessarily so is the opportunity to get to find the new things in this world that are true for me now. Sometimes you need moments of clarity to allow you to quit washing behind your neckid ears.
