Re-post because the trick is always love

“There is a trick to flying. The angels told me." He smiled at my wide-eyed awe. "You need to forget everything you know as a human being. When you are human, you discover that there is great power in hating the earth. And it can almost make you fly. But it never will."

I frowned, not quite understanding him. "So, what's the trick?"

"Love the sky.”

—Anne Fortier, Juliet

Photo: My husband and my son, York's Beach, Antigua 1992

Too much

I can't talk about Tamir Rice. Such a child. I can't take it in.

Motherhood

"Listen to this," my son said, reading from his phone. It was something he found on the inter webs: "One day your parents put you down and never picked you up again." For some reason, contemplating this made me brood. My son won't let me take pictures of him. The one above is months old. Usually, he grimaces and scowls when I raise my camera so I point the lens  at him less and less. He walks through the house in all his sleek crackling athletic glory and I snap a photo with my mind's eye. It will have to do. I go back and try to find the moment in mothering him that makes him so prickly with me sometimes. Down that path, I find a multitude of moments I wish I could do over. But that's like wishing I could still pick him up and carry him in my arms.

My daughter's glory is if another sort, radiant, laughing, light pouring off her. Perhaps she is simply more forgiving of her mother or maybe it's that we don't at this moment live together because she's away at school most of the time. Besides, our children's personalities are distinct, there from the time they were born. My girl and two friends since seventh grade and the Oliver Scholars summer immersion program met up with some fellow scholars last night. They're all 21 now. The nightlife of the city has finally opened up to them. My daughter lets me take pictures of her. I try and try to capture what I see when she walks into a room but I always come up short. Still, I'm grateful for how good natured she is with my attempts. Here's a snap from last evening, a little blurry, but so her.

Sunday after Christmas

Christmas was quiet. We barely got dressed for the day. We opened gifts, then dawdled and dozed and finally tidied ourselves, went to the store, and cooked the feast. We ate at close to 10 pm, just the four of us and a friend of my son's. We ate turkey and stuffing, honey ham and a corn and cheese soufflé, the plates balanced on our knees. My daughter made a caramel apple pie, the crust flaky and perfect. We drank port, which made me sleepy. Earlier, I'd worked on an editing job that's due this week, which made it, really, just like any other day. I tried not to think about it being Christmas, the first without my mother. I called my aunts, my brother, cousins.

This morning, I woke with relief that the dreams I'd entertained all night faded to vapors in the daylight. Still, the vapors clung. Then came the news from my husband's brother that one of their aunts had died on Christmas day. Our elders are taking their leave, reuniting with beloveds on the other side. I walk slowly and breathe mindfully. I sit at the dining table scrutinizing puzzle pieces to quiet my churning brain. My daughter joins me and we have a chatty and companionable time showing the puzzle that no matter how it tries to hide its connections, we will persevere. 

This was what it looked like at about 9 a.m. on Christmas morning. The vibe didn't change much throughout the day, which made my husband happy. He said the laid-back pace was just the day he needed. On Boxing Day, we sent a happy birthday video to my niece in Jamaica and my cousin from Trinidad arrived to spend the rest of the holidays with us. Her mother died when she was in her early 20s; she said that every Christmas since then has been melancholy. Now I know how she feels. But we go on. After all, we can't stay under the covers and pretend the day is not happening. We do our best for our loved ones. We find our joy, in them.

Wrapping Gifts

My loves

“I hope you will have a wonderful year, that you'll dream dangerously and outrageously, that you'll make something that didn't exist before you made it, that you will be loved and that you will be liked, and that you will have people to love and to like in return. And, most importantly (because I think there should be more kindness and more wisdom in the world right now), that you will, when you need to be, be wise, and that you will always be kind.” 

―Neil Gaiman

There is no try

That's a truck I saw on the street. Make a difference. 

I'm trying.

Do. Or do not. There is no try. 

The wisdom of Yoda.

Until I looked it up I thought it was said by Mr. Myagi in The Karate Kid.

I'm churning this morning. On the outside I look and sound normal but inside I'm unsettled. Christmas is days away and as always, I have the odd sense that I'm failing at it, failing to create the tinsel decorated, egg nog and cookie Christmas I see in the movies, and quite frankly, saw in my own home when I was growing up. I am completely flummoxed by the gift giving aspect of things this year. I cannot think of anything truly perfect (with one possible exception) for my loved ones, and a part of me wants to climb under the covers and whimper is it January yet?

I've realized in recent years that I have entertaining anxiety, because my mother was such a perfect hostess, so elegant and sure, but the run up to the event itself was always a mad flurry of getting the details just right.

I just got tired writing this post.

I have nothing to write, really. I'm feeling very ...  quiet.

Yuletide week

Going to dinner tonight with longtime friends to celebrate the season. Two generations, pot luck, and a couple of significant others thrown into the mix. Our kids are growing up.

I am happy to be here with all of you.

Coach

My son's ultimate goal (in addition to being a paramedic-firefighter with the FDNY) is to coach the USA track and field Olympic team. This week he took the first of a three stage certification course with the organization. The coach who taught the course began talking about the nation's number one high school long jumper who last year was clearing 24 feet 6 inches. The instructor was saying his success was as much about native talent as about creative coaching.

What the instructor didn't know was that my son was this athlete's coach! At the break, my son went up to the instructor and said, "I just want to introduce myself, my name is ______ and I'm the jumps coach for Xavier." The instructor clapped him on the arm and said, "So you're that guy!" and then told him, "Whatever you're doing, man, just keep doing it because you're doing amazing work."

My son loves coaching. I can see how lit up he is just entertaining the possibility of being on the inner Olympic field. Could be he was born to do this.

Bae = Before Anyone Else

My niece is in Zanzibar with her bae, after a stopover in Dubai where they rode camels and she wore a burkah. She captioned that photo "Playing in the sandbox." My daughter just arrived home from college for the winter break, and my son and I are chill. All three are in relationships with such lovely people that I suspect their grandmother must be pulling strings from heaven. Meanwhile my lovely man, my bae, is in full on Christmas mode—the tree, gift glee, egg nog, the Christmas dinner menu—and I have no plans at all but to watch the Survivor finale with my girl.

My husband asked me the other night, "What does bae mean?" I told him it's an acronym for "Before Anyone Else," even though it's really slang for "babe" but when you're too lazy to say the whole word. I like the acronym definition better.

All my baes are in a good place, which means I am in a good place.

It really is just that simple.

Glory, Gloria

Our choral group sang our holiday concert yesterday, on an unseasonably warm 60 degree day with Santa Con happening all over the city. Santa Con is when people dress up in Santa outfits and drink themselves silly at bars across town. You can't walk two steps without seeing the red-suited throngs. In the midst of this, family and friends came to our concert and applauded us generously. Here's a cell phone video my sweet man made of one of our songs, "Gloria in Excelsis." In my head and heart, I dedicated this one to my mom, Gloria, who I imagined was listening from whatever realm she now graces. It's a poor sound recording, not well balanced, so please don't judge our little choir by this clip. We actually sounded pretty good for a bunch of amateurs.

Consequence

What is it about December, or it is me? I'm so sad lately, so close to tears all the time, and I think it must have to do with this being my first Christmas without my mom. I've been thinking about her a lot, and also my mother-in-law, Aunt Winnie and Aunt Maisy, all the elder women powerhouses of wisdom, humor and perseverance, no longer on this side. The void they left is an ache that never leaves. I wish I could talk to my mom right now, get her gentle insight.

I am stupid and prideful sometimes. I allow things to matter that maybe shouldn't, and in the moment nothing can convince me that this thing that is upsetting me is really of very little consequence in the grand scheme. And then when the dust clears, I wonder why I bothered to speak on it. Except at the time my feelings were hurt and I thought I had to stand up for myself. And now, it's just not worth the estrangement that has followed in its wake.

It's just my husband and me here most evenings, and that is companionable and good, a steady center in the midst of the internal storm. Could Christmas really be coming around the bend in two shorts weeks? Soon my girl will be home for the holidays, and that will be good, too.

But all the rest of it? Well, I feel lost. I have no heart for the unresolved. I want to sleep through it all. I am having the hardest time getting out of bed in the morning. My body aches and aches and I suspect it's not purely physical.

My curser's been acting weird in blogger lately. It's disappears so I don't know where I am on the page. Anyone else having that issue? Maybe it's a metaphor.

My phone is out of storage. Time to back up those thousands of photos on my computer.

The photo up top is from our road trip to Ithaca last weekend. The mood seems right for this post.

I have nothing of any consequence to say.

Life as it is

Just be okay.

Just be okay with whatever it is.

This situation that is making you sad, that sits like a rock at the center of your chest, let it be what it is. Even if it never changes, never gets better. Just be okay with it.

Hold the sadness. Look for the thing it is trying to teach you. Breathe out your acceptance of things as they are, people as they are, life as it is.

Every moment is new. Even the ones in which you are filled with longing for things to be different than in the moment before.

Do what is in front of you to do. You can only manage yourself.

Let everything else be what it is.

Just be okay with all of it. Tears in the quiet, encumbered breaths, the places prickled with wishing.

This is life.

This is life.

Be okay.

Winter dance

The man and I are upstate, where our girl will be performing with her dance troupe tonight. We came to be in the audience. We drove the four hours north chatting and listening to Jessye Norman and Kathleen Battle sing Christmas carols exquisitely. It's a quick overnight trip. Short and very sweet.

Thanksgiving 2015

Thanksgiving was epic. We fell over each other in too small a space and loved it. There were 23 of us in all on the day itself, and 10 of us who slept overnight for the long weekend. Couch sleeping and floor space were involved. We went to see The Hunger Games en masse at one point, and the younger folks went Black Friday shopping and we also started a 2000 piece puzzle on Friday afternoon that aggressively challenged us, but with a combination of stubbornness and indignation and sheer gut level commitment we finished it by the time everyone left to go home on Sunday. My husband and son noticed that I had altogether less anxiety about everything this year. One clue was the fact that when my husband sliced the ham and piled it artlessly onto the serving plate and then put it directly on the table, I looked at it and contemplated taking it back to the kitchen to arrange the slices in an pleasing whorl, garnished with cherries, but decided to leave it be. I had rearranged the living room furniture for better flow before everyone got up, and tidied the house, and then I made my one dish, corn and cheese soufflé, and my son made his one dish, candied yams, and my cousin made the potato salad, and my darling husband made everything else, turkey, ham, mac and cheese, broccoli, stuffing, gravy, cranberry sauce, and our neighbors brought sweet plantain and the rest of our guests brought wine and spirits and pie and other yummy desserts, and it was all highly entertaining with just the right mix of energies, which I think is why Thanksgiving is my family's favorite holiday. Everybody is just super chill. But now it's Monday and I have lots to get to, so I'm going to put up a photo album of Thanksgiving 2015 and just leave it at that. I hope your weekend was mostly good and mostly soul-restoring, as mine was, and may the rest of the season unfold for us all in much the same way.

My niece and her best friend from childhood (who has become a Thanksgiving regular), were the last to leave on Sunday, and they refused to make the five-hour drive back to D.C., where they both now live, until that puzzle was completed. I observed to my husband that they have the ornery streak that is present in most of us born and raised in Jamaica. They refused to let that puzzle beat them. And that, I believe, is the mark of a Jamaican education, that can-do spirit, which is less can do than will do, Goddammit! It serves us well.

My girl is home

My girl arrived last night, bringing a friend from school. Oh, it was good to hug my girl. She has such a calming, bright energy. I marvel at it every time I experience it anew.

Her friend, a girl dear to my daughter since the very first day of freshman orientation (they are now seniors), has this cool hipster vibe that has everyone asking her if she's from Brooklyn. If fact, she's from Phoenix, Arizona, by way of Chicago, Kansas and California. She's as easy and chill as a houseguest can be.

Meanwhile my cousin and her two daughters are at this very moment on the road from Maryland, and they arrive this afternoon, while my niece and a friend of hers from Jamaica will get here tonight. We're hosting 23 people for Thanksgiving this year, though not all of them are staying over. There will be a mere 10 of us resting our heads here come evening. The whole swirl of people shoulder to shoulder and flurry of cooking makes this my husband and children's favorite holiday. Let the party begin!

Happening now

Turned in the full draft of the book I ghostwrote for the 97 year old doctor, whose name is Ellamae.

Hired a copyeditor slash fact checker who is also going to format my endnotes.

Hired a cover designer. Got clear on a cover direction.

Wrote the jacket copy, front cover, back cover, inside flaps.

Rewrote the jacket copy based on my writer friend urging me to put on a marketing hat and use some over the top superlative adjectives, like "riveting" and "an extraordinary life."

Decided on a publisher.

Dreamed last night about Ellamae. She was holding the finished book in her hands.

Still much to do but it's happening.

In some other dimension, it's already happened.

Everywhere

Kenyan-born Somali-British poet Warsan Shire, who was recently named London's Young Poet Laureate, is writing verse about the state of the world that captures what I cannot find words to say. This poem of hers has been making the rounds on Facebook, shared and shared again, no doubt because it scalds us with its truth. Thank God for the artists like Warsan because most of the politicians "popping off" right now sound hateful and crazy and devoid of all sense and humanity.

what they did yesterday afternoon

They set my aunt's house on fire
I cried the way women on tv do
folding at the middle
like a five pound note.
I called the boy who used to love me
tried to 'okay' my voice
I said hello
he said Warsan, what's wrong, what's happened?

I've been praying,
and these are what my prayers look like:
dear god
I come from two countries
one is thirsty
the other is on fire
both need water.

later that night
I held an atlas in my lap
ran my fingers across the whole world
and whispered
where does it hurt?

it answered
everywhere
everywhere
everywhere.

A gentle corner

Last night, amid the terrible news coming out of Paris, I attended my friend's art showing. The artist is Janice Movson. Her ceramic sculptures are beautiful and haunting, the figures seeming to hold the ache of the world. Everyone was shelled shocked by what was happening overseas, but for a couple of hours we allowed ourselves to be enveloped in a communal art space, a gentle corner away from the horrors unfolding elsewhere.

The two young women are lifelong friends of my daughter, girls I love dearly, who went to school with my girl from childhood on. The artist whose work was being shown was our children's art teacher for 10 years. The young women were there taking coats and bags for Janice, because the bonds formed at that sweet little school have endured. I love that all these connections have lasted. I'm sentimental. I hold on.

Learning as we go

My friend, the artist Janice Movson, is having a show and sale of her work this week and next. Check out her Facebook page for more of her exquisite sculptures. She also makes wonderful bowls, plates and clay utensils. It's fascinating to see her living room being transformed into a breathtaking art space. She's building the display shelves herself and figuring it all out as she goes.

I've been swamped with meeting my own creative imperatives. It's always nice to have work. I also came back from California last weekend with a sense of urgency to get Dr. Simmons' manuscript edited, published and bound. Her health has slipped quite a bit since the summer, which I suppose can happen when you're high up in your nineties, but I want to make sure she can enjoy the culmination of her lifelong dream to write her story. The manuscript is now being copyedited and I have hired a wonderful designer to do the dust jacket for the hardcover. I have written the jacket copy and now need to wade through the good doctor's photographs to choose 20 that represent her life to be included in the book. I do wish we had time to shop the work to a mainstream publisher, who could write more scintillating cover copy, edit the work more deeply, the whole nine, but there is no time anymore to think like that. Dr. Simmons needs to hold her book in her hands, and I'm the one she asked to help her do it.

I'm dithering about which self-publishing outfit to use, as they all have both good and scathing reviews online. There is not a single self-publishing company I have come across that gets the gold star every time. I'm contemplating going with Bookbaby, as they have a very short turnaround time and a reputation for a handsome, professional looking product. And their intake person was excellent on the phone. I've seen reviews online that say their print books work out better than their e-books, which might be okay for me, as the doctor wants a printed book and couldn't care less about an e-book. Some reviewers also complained about their back end reporting of sales, so I need to investigate that more. They also only do the interior design and printing; I have to find my own editorial services but I do know lots of editors. Bookbaby will do covers, but I'm going with the tried and true designer who did the cover of my very first book project. He won a design award for that cover. Can't wait to see what he comes up with this time. 

Anyone out there have any experience with Bookbaby? Or perhaps you might have another self-publishing company to suggest?

A certain age

It is disconcerting to look in the hotel room mirror in the mornings, before eyeliner, and see my father's face, see my brother's face, and know that face is mine.

My dear Ellamae, the sweet warrior spirit I have been writing about, is not as robust as she was in the summer. Not nearly. Then we sat at her dining room table, next to the window, the sunlight pouring over her Shona sculptures on the terrace beside us. She was always smartly dressed, with large interesting pieces of jewelry at her neck, around her capable looking wrists. Now she stays in bed, propped on pillows, wearing lovely pinstriped pajamas with lace piping. Her body is giving out. She can no longer ride the exercise bike or do yoga in the afternoons. She is thinner. When she goes to the bathroom, she moves much as I remember my mother moving in the time before the end, her legs uncertain, the caregiver coaching her on. "Come on, Doctor, next foot now, next foot."

I sit at her bedside and read her life story to her, and sometimes she catches my hand and brings it to her cheek, her way of saying thank you.

She will be 98 in March.

I have grown to love her so.

Rhyme and Reason

I'm traveling again this week, to Oakland this time, to read the second half of her manuscript to the 97-year-old doyenne of medicine who hired me as her ghostwriter. I'm always full of happy anticipation when I know I'm going to see her. I also have two other editing projects to finish this week, so in between spending time with the good doctor at her retirement home I'm going to be working fiercely in my hotel room. I wish everything hadn't arrived on my plate at the same time, but that's just the way it worked out. How can I complain?

Here are photos of where we stayed last week, that too-cool-for-school bed and breakfast we love, Argos Inn, co-created by the son of the lovely Susan Landry, our blogger pal here. There's the chandelier in the blue air, and the King Slate room with its skylight, through which the full moon found us in the deep of night. Here also are photos from the gorge and waterfall we visited, the selfie we took, and some swipes of beloveds from Halloween weekend, too. No real rhyme or reason for any of it. Just pictures. Put here for the memories. For the love.