I’m Forever Blowing Bubbles...
Photograph: © Colwyn Murphy
One of my fondest memories of childhood was holiday visits from my grandparents. While the treats, stories and memories they brought with them are too many to speak of, it is the experience of my grandmother blowing enormous soap bubbles through cupped hands with the character of a twisted old Olive tree that is etched in cellular memory.
So deeply ingrained that for years I ached when the ritual repeated. I ached, when my mother sat down to do the same with my children. And I ached just a few months ago when my daughter proudly showed me that she could do the same.
I ached because I could hear the song that hung in the air with those bubbles.
John William Kallette’s 1918 piece, I’m Forever Blowing Bubbles.
My 5 (or so) year-old self could not comprehend why anyone would take something as beautiful as bubbles and sing a song about them fading and dying like your dreams. The hopelessness was something I simply refused to accept. On some level it haunted me that my grandmother left this world believing this in some way.
The other morning, however, her energy visited me. As I opened my shampoo bottle, an enormous bubble floated out and I smiled, feeling her presence, knowing immediately what this was about. What I heard was: “You’re right. They don’t die” and went on to confirm what my child-self knew and has never given up on - the reality that a dream, once dreamt simply cannot die. You can make the choice to give up on it, but it can never die. Where does it go? That is one of the beautiful great mysteries of the earthly experience. Do they go to Never Never Land? When the bubble bursts, do they float on the aether, the Akash, as whispers waiting to be breathed back into life by another aligned soul, or the original dreamer if they haven’t let go? Are they rippling within the amniotic waters of la mer waiting to be gently woven into the flesh and bones of the new? Dreams waiting to be unpacked, waiting to be breathed back into life.
As I stood there in the waters of my shower I felt the shift that comes when you know another layer of healing has occurred and growth has happened, not just in yourself, but across generations and across timelines.
Ancestral healing and inner child healing (perhaps they are in fact one and the same) is an achingly beautiful thing. It brings with it the deep awareness of the evolution of life and the fallacy that anyone or anything is ever gone. To do it is to understand the gift, the honour and the responsibility of being here in this moment. It is to understand that you are, as many have said: The answer to The prayers and dreams of your Ancestors. You are question they couldn't answer, the puzzle piece they were looking for.
There are many people who believe that 7.9 billion people on the planet right now is a physical problem. I’m feeling it differently. I see 7.9 billion dreams, and the very reason that number is what it is is because there are a lot of questions, a lot of questions that we, on some neglected level (a symptom of the ideologies that have dominated our society for centuries) were too scared to consider, let alone ask, and are only finding the courage to do so now.
Answers to dreams and questions waiting to land or bubble up (like the bubbles spiralling from the great whales the ancestors say are the libraries of the akashic record), in my case, a message in a bubble in the shower.
And every dream I actualize or unanswered question I make peace with for those who came before me is one less question or burst dream my children have to chase. They are free in that moment to live out greater ones that I might never have imagined.