I have no will to sort through the swirl of events that dissolve, kaleidoscopic, into one configuration after another, before we can grasp the shape and consequence of any one thing, all of it harrowing, exhausting, soul-crushing, until I retreat into numbness, seeking sanity. But hey, Zohran Mamdani won mayor of New York City on election night, and across the nation, the map turned blue in race after race, suggesting that the country is waking up, people get it, the current regime isn't really upholding the government's imperative to uplift, care for, and serve—how's that for radical understatement?
Jamaica is in a bad way, I can't even wrap my mind around how devastated the western two-thirds of the country is. I'm sure you've seen the images. My immediate family is safe, as they were in Kingston, the capital, which was mostly spared, and now they are all involved in relief efforts, coordinating with relatives abroad. This photo of Lacovia St. Thomas Anglican Church, which my parents attended when they lived in Santa Cruz in the parish of St. Elizabeth in the year I was born, is emblematic of the wreckage my poor little island is trying to come back from.
The night Hurricane Melissa ravaged Jamaica, coming ashore in the town of Hope, my New York family was together in our apartment to mark my husband's birthday. Distracted by updates from back home, I forgot to gather the gang for a group photo, but my daughter took this picture of my husband and me just before she left. My son had plied his dad with a few cups of fancy warm sake that he had brought him, and my man was feeling quite mellow. I think we look kinda cute.
My lovely daughter in law also had a birthday this month, another one of my October people. By far the majority of my family members are born in October—my husband, son, dad, mother in law, daughter in law, closest cousin who is like my sister, the list goes on. Here is a photo my son took of my bonus daughter and me, at my daughter's wedding last year. Happy birthday, my darling girl, who called me Mom from the first day we met, the sound as natural in the ear as if our souls had known one another forever, and were simply reuniting after a brief time apart. We're all so glad our son found you, and that you chose him, too.
After a couple of weeks of not knowing what to do with myself—I'm not built for leisure, I keep saying—I finally have work again, editing a manuscript for a wonderful writer who has been a champion of mine, whose work has garnered every award going, not even kidding. It is always a privilege to edit her, her writing is so clean, her lines so lyrical. Meanwhile, the magazine I edit for is laying people off, as it's reducing its publication schedule to quarterly issues next year. I haven't yet received any notice of separation, and I'm praying I get to keep that pocket change. It's not much, but it's steady, especially compared to book money, for which pay increments can be spread a year or more apart.
Imagine me right now at that window, about to turn back to editing a manuscript in the season when the light in my house starts weaving all kinds of extra magic, with a shimmer of autumn gold. And look at that. It just started snowing.
