With Holes and Everything

I remember living in this big, spacious house. There was space to run inside as if the front yard and the backyard weren't enough. Me and my sister, being only one year apart from each other, were often running or dancing or climbing things.

Way before that, when I was two, and my mom was still breastfeeding my sister, she would leave the door to the backyard open, so I could—in her words—explore. She told me once that the first time that this happened, she almost died. My poor mom ran desperately through the door, storming into the backyard to find me wandering around, stopping here and there to look at something or pick something up from the ground.

This is how I remember my childhood most of the time. Always loved the way I was, always on the move, exploring.

But something this week made me remember this one time that I can think of myself standing still: staring at my father's guitar in the wardrobe. I don't know precisely why this particular memory crossed my brain, but I remember what I felt there, and why I felt like I should write this piece.

My father used to play his guitar after dinner; we would sit—my sister and me—on the carpet in the living room to watch it. He'd cross his long legs to rest the guitar on them, his fingers moving in his big hands up and down, and singing with his deep voice. I was just sitting there—fascinated. I loved the sound that the object produced, so beautifully melodic, harmonic. Peaceful.

I thought that everything about the guitar was beautiful: the long arm, the shining strings, and their different thickness, the glossy wood in two different colours, but—why that hole in the middle? That would bother me so much. I couldn't let it go. Why was it there? Was there something inside? I was decided to find out, I would wander around that backyard too.

The next day after school, and with the adults out doing whatever adults do when they are out, and the nanny is busy doing whatever nannies do when they are busy, I seized the opportunity and took off to the guest room that I knew to be the place that I would find the guitar. My racing heart against my ribs, reminded me that I shouldn't be there. I opened the wardrobe, and there it was, leaning against the wardrobe's shelf.

I deposited carefully on the bed, and started to examine it. Why is this hole here? I picked inside it—it was empty. There was nothing that my eyes could see. Empty. Why was it there? My time was running out, and I had to give up my quest. I placed the guitar safe and sound back in the wardrobe and left, hoping the nanny would still be busy doing whatever nannies do when they are busy.

Later, I've learned that the hole is there to allow air to go through it, and because of it, the guitar can sound the way it does. Because of the hole in the middle. A flaw, in my child's head, was the very one thing that would make me love the guitar and everything about it.

How many times did I catch myself hanging on small details, using them as excuses to not see wherever it was being presented right in front of me? How many times did you judge something that you could only see through one perspective, leaving behind all the possibilities locked in a wardrobe to find out ahead that what was missing was, actually, in your eyes?

What can I do to fix that in me? How can I change my perspectives to learn and grow and be the best version of myself—not for anyone, but because I know I can? For me, and for love so that I can be swept off my feet peacefully, fascinated by this welcoming sound of beloved guitars. The racing heart running beside me, my good friend.

I am not one to dwell in the past, you see? Always on the move. Always on the move, I go—We should go. Wasting energy with guilt is nothing comparing to the loving apologies and the light-hearted energy of being present and ready to start all over again. To learn that the holes should not limit us. The holes should not be the thing to set us apart. The holes are part of it now.

As my mother would open the backyard door to the little girl so I could walk away from doing God knows what, because she loved me wholly. Or when I decided to move away, and, with her heartbroken, she loved me and opened the backyard door, this time to the woman that I became—always loving me, entirely.

I wish you could pass through this earth having the chance of being loved completely—by your real friends, some relatives, you're the one, yourself. Loving completely knowing that you are loved back. With holes and everything.