Letting Go - Melody Cryns

No matter where I go or what I do, no matter what path I travel in my life, memories of my mother surround me and envelop me – they never go away. She appears in my dream wearing that flannel nightgown she always wore, telling me that it’s time to unpack those boxes. Bookcases stuffed with books surround me in the bedroom where I sleep – some of them old books filled with memories, hopes and dreams, magic and imagination. I can never let go of the books. I lug them with me everywhere no matter how many times we move. And we’ve moved a lot of times.

I want to tell my little grandson when he arrives about my mother, who would have been “Great Grandma Mary,” when he arrives in July – I want to take baby Jeremiah, who will also be named after my grandfather, my mother’s father whom she loved so much, on the same paths in Golden Gate Park I’d traveled on with my mother and then again with my own kids. I’ll show him the rhodenderon gardens and the Japanese Tea Garden, and forget that the old museums have been torn down in favor of the new – only the wall of the old Academy of Sciences remain, but the green park benches can still be found, thank heavens – and the trails, the paths we walked on, still remain. If you walk down the trail, you can forget that the changes ever even happened. You can find lovely lakes and the old electric boats and row boats still glide around Stow Lake, the brown lake with Strawberry Island in the middle. If you listen closely, you might hear a bunch of kids yelling and playing – me and all my friends in the neighborhood.

At the end of the day, when the shadows get bigger and the sky becomes a little darker, we all head close to home – because when our Moms go out on to the stoop to yell for us, we’d better be able to hear them.

And, sure enough, like clockwork – because we could tell what time it was just by where the sun was – no one ever wore a watch or anything. Our moms really had no idea where we were even – all they could do was tell us, “Don’t go to Whiskey Hill, it’s dangerous!” But we knew that as long as we were within hearing shot at the end of the day, then all would be well.


I can still hear my mother’s loud, dramatic voice yelling, “Mary, Michael, Jennifer!” over and over again like a mantra. Then we’d hear other mothers, not as loud and distinct, but still ringing through the air. “David, Barry, time to come in!” their mother would shout with her distinct Irish brogue. Other moms would yell names too, and soon they all became blended in with one another, but our mom’s voice was always the loudest and most distinct – at least to us.

Mom and me fell in love with the Beatles together, and would often sing songs while walking down the street, embarrassing the heck out of my brother and sister. That was when she felt loose and free on the weekends, letting her hair down instead of wearing it up. Friday nights were always the best because we’d always go out to eat – either we’d go to Top’s Doughnuts on Irving Street where they served really good hamburgers or to that Fish n’ Chips place on Haight Street where we’d get fish and chips with vinegar sprinkled on it, wrap them in newspaper and bring them to that little lake on Stanyan and Haight Street where we’d all sit on a park bench and eat and Mom would tell us that the English people also used newspaper to wrap their fish and chips in – now I can’t even imagine eating food with newspaper ink anywhere near it!

But even now as I sit at home surrounded by some of the books that surrounded me throughout my childhood, I know that I will never be able to let go.