The Voices

The other day, imagining my mother's response to something I was thinking, I thought about the voices we carry in our heads, the ones that resonate as we go on after our relatives in life.  Sometimes it seems that they could be spectres hovering over us eternally, watching every move, so vividly do their words and gestures, though physically long silenced, interrupt us.

I can't remember at the moment what was in my mind, but I heard her voice loud and clear, that characteristic tsk! arguing that whatever it was wasn't right.  Don't worry!  I wasn't about to commit a crime, except perhaps the sort of act that goes against propriety...a table setting wrong...who taught you that?? a bow tied askew...you're just like your father! a word uttered more publicly than would be seemly...really!  what would your grandmother think? the right way to clean broccoli or grapes...are you just rinsing those??

Some people might say that it's our consciences talking in familiar voices, but I would agree only if "conscience" meant all those anachronisms we had drilled into us by our elders from our infancy on...family first, school from kindergarten to graduate, street mentors, friends and enemies.  (I admit I am stretching the definition of anachronism a bit here, but it's actually what I mean...bear with me.)

There are more voices in my mind than I could count; it would probably appall me to count.  Some are sharp reminders to color inside the lines (so to speak); some tweak the way I would prefer to do things by presenting me suddenly with a vision of the "expert" way;  others simply grimace, elbowing me into considering that my own experience and skills have nothing on theirs, and I might as well give up now.

And yet I...we, I am probably more accurate to say, aren't I?...carry these voices from task to task, thought to thought, at the whim of some ghostly catalyst, begging for deference.

Why?  Well, there are voices that push us along to better things, too...not just a more exact placement of a napkin, but a rise toward challenges for ourselves and for others.  My Aunt Martha, this instant, comes to mind.  I have never heard her tell me anything but wisdom.  Your son needs you now, she wrote me at the precise moment he did.  And she hadn't seen him in decades.

As for the ones dictating from the edge of my paring knife, telling me how to slice mushrooms, I could call them good company, I suppose, and laugh it off.  Or I could admit to failings along their lines, and bow in my dishonor.  Or, I suppose, I could just grow up, nod, and say politely, yes, that's certainly one way to do it.  And then go on my own merry way.  After all, those voices are as much fond memory as anything else, a way of incorporating (almost literally sometimes) the way we are as much born from them as from ourselves as we evolve, hopefully to mature, to mature hopefully.  Not a bad thing, most of the time.

On the other hand, I could include among the voices in my head the young, untrained ones, who grow up around me inspiring with their outgoing minds all sorts of new ways to do (at least until their heads fill with their voices), and enjoy their freedom while we can.

Thank goodness for them