part iii: in trust we trust
On trust as faith in the endurance of memory
My mother tells me that our ancestors watch over us. That there is value in knowing that we not alone in the world. She recalls that ancestors are the keepers of our individual and collective memory. She recollects how thinking of others and being thought of makes us all custodians of memory. Photographs impress upon us the simultaneous tangibility and intangibility of our capacity to remember the past in any consistent fashion. My mother knows the rhythms of memory and is attuned to the ways in which her legacy is safeguarded not only by herself but others, including those she holds dear. She leaps with joy in remembrance, considering what has passed and what is yet to come. She finds shelter in a culture that has retained its youth and vibrancy for centuries upon centuries.
My mother spends her days contemplating love as a form of remembering. She remembers, therefore, she loves. She loves and trusts, therefore, she is. One day in the distant future, she too will join the ranks of our ancestors and hold me in her memory. My mother breathes in consolations of the preservation of her individual and cultural identity, knowing, always knowing that memory is far more than just an individual experience, but a communal undertaking. Her consciousness reaches out and spreads out to God who heeds the intercession of ancestral spirits young and old, saying memory is always already eternal. In the final analysis, it rests with God and my mother tells me that God never forgets a soul or a life. Through Him and in Him, we endure long after we have passed. My mother is a spirit dancing, always dancing to visions of another tomorrow.
***
I yearn as everyone yearns, leaving etchings and markings on distressed paper, beckoning the coming of a legacy sitting on the tip of my tongue in unnameable anticipation. I yearn to proceed through the annals of time immemorial, hoping yet doubtful that my memory will endure throughout the unfolding of history. The memory of me is housed in the hearts and minds of those visitors who frequent the halls and corridors of my heart. It sits on the few shoulders that have been cleared to house my expanding body with its growing expectations and wide open arms. There is fear within me, that should our paths diverge and farewells bade, then my memory will evaporate. These loved ones are repositories of who I am, sculptors helping to shape the contours of my self-understanding. They speak of me, uttering retellings of my life and replaying the sound of my voice to listeners here and there and those who are neither here nor there.
I am held and strengthened, revitalised and shared, transmitted through voice and thought, and woven throughout the fabric of my loved ones’ minds and lives. To be spoken of, no matter the manner and spirit, is to be rehearsed in the minds of others. It is to be summoned no matter the distortions such acts of recollection may undergo. I yearn to be celebrated by others long after I have passed, and to celebrate and preserve myself. I wish to be embalmed in the hearts and minds of generations to come. Still, what is there to preserve in the myth of a constant and enduring self as it grinds to an unforgiving halt? My mother speaks of memory as transcending the self and collective. She summons God and trusts that she is a participant in divine memory, eternally protected and so much more than an echo in the disordered mind of the Other. I wonder about this yearning and the stories we tell. Grasping, always grasping after eternity.
***
My partner tells me that memory is a tale. A kind of oral fixation where humanity is compelled to speak, opening our collective mouth to speak ourselves into being. We chew on experiences, suckling on the teat of our past and drinking at the fountain of tomorrow. He observes that we narrativise our lives as a means of imbuing them with meaning. Making sense of making sense of memories past and present. Story as steadfast, enduring, compelling. Each of us, both individually and collectively, is a compelling narrative whose retelling and composition has the potential to persist and move volcanic waters leaving indentations carved upon the earth. My partner speaks of story as the saving grace of the fragility of our individual capacity to recollect the past and ourselves, as in the vagaries of old age. For my partner, we all trust each other with the telling of our story and may have very little comprehension of the wider legacies and stories of which we are part.
I wonder about the stories that are lost as I witness my partner’s efforts to track down films that are out of circulation. Those obscure rarities whose discovery ignites indescribable joy in him. Such stories, fictional or otherwise are all but lost to most whose love of cinema pales in comparison to my beloved’s. I wonder about the average man and woman throughout history and whose lineages, lives and experiences were neither written nor spoken loud enough to endure. Here, it is no consolation to remember that we all belong to a single, though heterogenous, human race. My partner speaks of grand narratives and our penchant thereof. He speaks of how they obscure and obfuscate that which is already intangible. Still, grand narratives are borne out of trust, that we can and will endure, as evidenced by the proliferation of many an artform. I pause, wondering about my own heritage and the grand narratives that have animated it. I ponder the orality of this legacy, pursing my lips as I struggle to find my footing in traditions and customs I have been known to shun. I remember that we are branches reaching, always reaching out to another dawn.
***
I am a daughter of the soil born inside the house of stone. Ancient structures stand as testimonies of the greatness of a former Zimbabwe crying out, “I am here and I have never left.” I cling to reassurances that the country may yet restore its former glory to the echoes of proud racists denying the historicity of Shona people. These echoes burn and deride the pride of blacks who look upon the Great Zimbabwe ruins and see themselves reflected on the stone surfaces. I amongst them dancing to the sound of the mbira or the ‘telephone to the spirits’ seeking solace in the great and enduring culture of the Shona who have long turned to music to commune with ancestral spirits, pleading with them not to be forgotten. Pleas that echo throughout the generations. Where stone structures stand erect inviting scrutiny about their architects and builders, music withstands scrutiny. It is not static and can be transmitted more easily than stone.
Through music, Shona people have invoked the memory of ancestors who serve as a bridge between humanity and God. Ancestors as saints interceding with God as the bearer and keeper of the memory of a people. Wistful for the return of great ancestors of old. I am compelled to recognise that memory is fourfold. First, it relates to our individual capacity to recollect the past. Secondly, to others’ recollection of us. Thirdly, ancestral memory. Fourthly, God’s custodianship over our lives and living memory. This, I learn from the musical traditions of the Shona. Memory as always already living and incapable of death. Here, individual and collective memory can never be truly eroded or erased as in the banning of the mbira by whites when Zimbabwe was still Rhodesia. The instrument represented the possibility of black unity, and a sustained challenge to white minority rule. Still, the negation of human life can never completely destroy the memory of a people, grave though it is.
Memory is dialectical. It is a dialogue and necessary form of communion in which we all participate. Memory is inherently spiritual as we recollect ourselves in relation to those who are still living, those who have passed and, for those who believe, God. All of this is packaged in the grand narratives we construct about ourselves, others, and the broader environment we inhabit. I remember Great Zimbabwe and the dreams of today and yesteryear. I think of speaking and singing a people’s memory into being. The footsteps and the dancing with feet that cling to the soil from whence they came. That first and prior realisation that we are children of the soil, tilling the land of memory. For we are all custodians of more than just our memory, stewards of history and tomorrow. Our voices are always grasping and refuse to let go long after our individual songs have ceased. These are instruments that weep and rejoice and dance, sounding notes laden with the bittersweetness of sorrow. Tick, tick, the clock chimes to the passing of another soul whose memory will endure long after time has ceased.
***
My mother tells me that when her time comes, she too will watch over me. For now, she will relive memories of old, joyful that the time to make new memories abounds. While we have time here and now, we will laugh and cry and bicker as mothers and daughters are prone to do. We will eat and embrace and smile to the ring, ring, ring of the telephone. We will celebrate birthdays as we mark the passage of time. We promise each other tomorrow as I gaze upon my slumbering partner. I recall my brother who has recently celebrated a birthday, hopeful for another orbit around the sun. And what of my father, working, always working for a better tomorrow. Memory as eternal trust. Trust in the endurance of the human spirit, that we are all participants in the same story with its nuances and hopes and dreams. Memory as assurance that no one and nothing will be left behind. Memory as promise, promising, always promising, that our story will continue, told and retold for eternity to come.