About a month ago (February 20th) I wrote a personal narrative essay for my English 101 class. I worked on it for a long time and through grueling edits and rereading, it was finally all polished and shiny and I finally got an A on it. I was so happy on how it turned out; I decided to post it here. Plus with my recent theme of The Beatles, it fit even more, since the title is a Beatles song.
The title for this essay was a metaphor I made for my thoughts, memories, and personality; and coincidently it was that of the same name as the Beatles ‘song and the lyrics fit perfectly, so I incorporated t into the essay.
So across my universe we go!
Across the Universe
On my journey of self reflection, I found it difficult to find which memories to focus on. Which story of my life should I tell? Which galaxy out of my universe of memories and thoughts should I explore with more precision? For I found that I am constantly wearing my space suit in my infinite universe of memories; I am always floating in this space. I do not take trips to my memory universe; I am merely gliding in it, passing by each galaxy in it in my daily life. I am constantly using my memory and am revisiting it on a daily basis, regarding its relevance and sometimes irrelevance of my current place on earth. This leads me once again to my voyage of self reflection, of who I am and what is a part of me; what early life experiences shaped me? With that question in mind I went across my universe to revisit those times.
My first memory of structure was the birth of my sister. I base this as the birth of my rational memory and the rest as a wilderness of untamed memories. I was two at the time, about to turn three in the next two months, and I was at Kaiser Permanente Fontana Hospital. I was wearing my thick, plastic, poofy, neon blue jacket. A bright neon blue, the popular overly neon bright color that would make even a glow stick envious of its brightness; that majority of people were wearing in the early 90’s; which was a reminiscent of 80s fashion. I was with my aunts, uncle, dad, and mom with my semi-newly born sister in the tiny, dimly-lit dusty-colored room. I could barely see anyone around me except for my mother, who had a overhead lamp over by her head. I was extremely excited, as I had been anxiously waiting my sister’s arrival. I always get excited very easily over the tiniest of pleasures or discoveries, like a puppy, that sees its owner picking up its leash. I was happily talking to my family, mainly my mother, asking every question I could possibly think of at the time, when the nurse tells the standing adults that visiting hours are over. Now, I didn’t understand that my mom could not come home with us that evening and because of my deep attachment to her I cried, not wanting to leave. I had never been without my mother for a night and had no understanding of the situation. Fear came out of my childhood ignorance and I tried to dash back into my mother’s room. I pulled away from my father’s firm grip, to no avail; I was only making a short scene. I finally left when I was comforted by my mother and father’s reassurance that it was going to be fine. Still sobbing with my breathing heavy and irregular, I walked through the narrow and bland hallway.
The bright yellow afternoon light is filtering through the long thin white blinds of the sliding glass door, making a pattern of striped light shining down on the light brown carpet. I am sitting by that pattern of light on the floor in a t-shirt and stretchy cotton pants with my Shamu stuffed animal in hand. I am pretending the strip of luminous light was water and my Shamu plushy is swimming through this current of light. My arms were moving the black fuzzy dome-shaped stuffed animal with the bead eyes and red felt smile up and down in a wavy motion. I stand up and walk around the living room occasionally to cover more area for my whale to explore, but I always return to my point of origin. Drawn by the gleaming shimmer of lights occasionally dancing on the ground from the shift of clouds in the sky, I stare at it idealistically. My imagination was running wild with many ideas. This imprint embedded in my mind is prominent in my universe for unknown reasons. I cannot even recall my age at the time or if it was before or after my sister’s birth. I merely know the beauty of that light and my feelings for it. Perhaps it is a reflection of my outlook on life and the world around me, or the beginning of the awareness of my perception.
I awoke to the bright sun in my eyes, the morning light straining into my parents’ bedroom. The queen-size bed was empty except for me and my Skipper doll. Skipper was the younger teenage sister of Barbie, whom was discontinued in the late nineties. I awoke calmly surprised that the bed was empty, and my half-closed blurry eyes looked around in astonishment of the vacant space, the apartment oddly silent. I got up in search of my mother’s whereabouts. I walked bare-footed with my hair disheveled into the living room. I saw my dad sitting on the couch watching the soft cooing of the TV. He had the same untidy look as me, with squinty, half-asleep eyes. I stood at the edge of the couch and asked him where mom was. He replied in a sluggish tone that she was at the doctor’s; that was all I got out of him, despite me asking more questions. I paused for a moment then went to sit down next to my father, who was already fast asleep. I began to watch TV. I was four years old.
That day was February 28, my parents’ anniversary and one of the turning points in my life. That day, my mother was admitted into the hospital, partially paralyzed with hardly any control of her motor skills. She could barely walk, and clung to walls for support. It still amazes me today how she managed to drive herself all the way to Fontana. She was diagnosed with lupus, an autoimmune disease where there’s an abundance of white blood cells that attack normal cells of the body, resulting in various complications. Much to the doctor’s surprise, she regained her ability to walk along with her other motor skills within less than two months, though she had physical therapy and chemotherapy for a year, and from that point on had several medical conditions and challenges for the rest of her life. She was discharged from the hospital on April 1st, 1994, the day of my fifth birthday.
It was late at night. All was exceedingly quiet in the apartment; the only source of noise was the ticking of the clock and its swinging pendulum. There was only one light, which was enough to illuminate the living room and part of the kitchen/dining room. I was sitting by myself on the couch, slightly slumped over, my hands resting on my knees. It felt as if nobody was in that apartment but me, yet my two cousins were there with me. At that time, I thought I was truly by myself. Then an image appeared I will never forget and still recall it as if I was still there, still as fresh as an oven-baked pie. Still sitting, I looked up at the television screen, expressionless with a glossy grey tint. I saw my reflection and the room’s reflection in it. I stop moving and stared at the screen, with this subtle somber feeling of alienation and isolation. I was just staring, time standing still, gazing into the tinted reflection, looking for answers, and waiting for a silence breaker. Suddenly I am broken out of my trance by the clunky noise of the key unlocking the front door. The door opens, letting the cool evening air in. My mom was in a wheelchair with a colossal box in her arms, a toy playhouse for my fifth birthday. She had it on lay-a-way for months before. I squealed, “Mommy!” and she replied, “Hi baby!” in her gentle soft tone. My dad pushed the wheelchair into the apartment and all was right in the world. I am still that young girl gazing at her reflection in a tinted TV screen. Even though I am no longer five years old, I am still in front of that TV, the same person with the same personality. The puppy has grown into a dog, but it is still a puppy with only a different name due to its age, nothing has changed. I liked to think I have grown, but time is only a mask, an illusion hiding the roots of its origin. Time is also like that, as Nabokov states, “Initially, I was unaware that time, so bondless at first blush, was a prison” (304). That time, with its false impression of change, deceives us once again at a young age, with the promise of change and development, only to find it an entrapment of one’s self.
The lyrics from the Beatles’ song, “Across the Universe”, unexpectedly fit my analogy of my bank of memories and life itself. Additionally, these lyrics not only serve as an accidental complement to my analogy but also a slice of me, a physical souvenir of one of my galaxies, since I am a big Beatles fan. This whole memoir is a map of a few of my galaxies in my vast universe of identity and personality. These galaxies that I have shared are my most prominent and oldest roots of the origin of me: My self-identity as a older sister, my easily excitable emotions, my idealism and imagination, a cryptic glimpse of my life, my fear, the reality of my mother’s second black void, and my constant search for the reassurance of these traits and questioning of my life. Always flowing through them endlessly, despite time’s deceit; the only difference is the awareness of this wool over my eyes called time. Floating and feeling the sensations of sorrow and joy, those too go on endlessly. Life repeating itself in waves that inevitably drifts back to the shore of origin, continuing to meet head on with the rocks of hardship. I have hit those rocks again with the death of my mother last year. My lifejacket or oxygen tank is gone and I am once again thrown in front of the glossy television screen and forced to take a hard look at myself and question why did this happened. Struggling to breathe and to stay afloat, I rapidly think on how to move from here, only to over exhaust myself and give into the current. Me drifting through this vastness of life, still waiting for my silence breaker and knowledge from forever staring at the vacant electronic screen, but maybe I wait in vain. As Agee said, “as one familiar and well-beloved in that home: but will not, oh, will not, not now, not ever; but will not ever tell me who I am”(175). No one, not even loved ones can give me the answers I search for because I and only I hold those answers and have the power to act upon them. Only I can say who I am and travel my universe.
Works Cited
Agee, James. “Knoxville: Summer of 1915.” The Best American Essays of the Century. New
York: Houghton Mifflin, eds. Joyce Carol Oates and Robert Atwan, 171-174.
Nabokov, Vladimir. “Perfect Past.” The Best American Essays of the Century. New
York: Houghton Mifflin, eds. Joyce Carol Oates and Robert Atwan, 303-312
Here is a video containing the song "Across the Universe" by The Beatles, so you know what I was referencing from.Also here is the part of the lyrics I was referencing form too.
"Words are flowing out like endless rain into a paper cup
They slither wildly, they slip away across the universe
Pools of sorrow, Waves of joy
Are drifting through my open mind
Possessing and caressing me
Jai guru deva om
Nothing's gonna change my world"
