From "Nightfall" by Jeannie Vanasco
"Are you in the autumn-wood air that rises from the lake?
How was your summer, how is your autumn?
Are there seasons where you are? I have often thought of this.
Here the rain comes and dark strips of land lighten. I cannot explain it. You must see it for yourself.
This evening the sky feels as big as silence, as big as the silence between us, not disquieting but dissolving the day into long threads.
Clouds pass by and by nightfall all thoughts of you pour back into my hands and the rain is pouring now.
Are you thinking of me? I am thinking of you. What strength I give away comes back again. I have already forgotten what to do with it."
__________
This ad was in the Yellow Springs News two weeks ago, and the event was a whole week ago, and my point is...
that between the big CASA award, the book coming out, and the book tour, this could have been a happy year for me, but instead I have these huge gaps in time and memory...
I have no idea how I got through the last year, and I'm not sure how I can get through--or to plan to get through--the next and the one after that...
Worse, I worry that people have been granting me some kind of grief dispensation and will expect me to be more normal when my year of grieving is over. So I may have even less margin to work with.
I can sense, for instance, about Big A a feeling of frustration/desperation/impatience, which I know comes from love and is couched in all the right phrases, but is nevertheless eager for me to be me. But I will never be that person again.
Tennyson talks about the veil between life and death in In Memoriam--I think the veil extends to the people we were before and after loss as well.
I took the next day off. Like really off. If I owed anyone a text or a phone call or an email it just wasn't happening.
I've been spending all my time on summer reading... Finished the new Elizabeth Strout, then finished the new Ann Patchett. Both were lovely. I'd love to read The Things We Never Say with one of my bookclubs where so many are teachers. I'm currently almost through Maggie O'Farrell's Land. I get the charm the comfortable familiarity of stories like those of Strout and Patchett exercise. But give me the excitement of something like Land any day. I'm loving the anti-colonial intrigue, the imaginative recreation of bog people, the random snippet that pirates wore gold earrings so they could be used to pay for their funerals...
I spent a lot of time at the garden center. Also a lot of cash. But it's ok--I shop exclusively in my closet, and have no expensive habits or memberships--I can indulge myself. It was mostly flowers, but if the veggies take off, we/the deer will be grateful.
I had a long and lovely dream about my Amma, sis, and me. We were visiting a fabulous desert palace. (we were supposed to go to Turkey together this year.) We were sitting on a bench holding hands and I was playing a new-to-me song (Niall Horan “Heaven” I bet the title is not a coincidence) because it has some surprising melodic changes in the chorus I thought my mom would like (she did). Then I offered to get my sister ice cream, and my mom said the most her thing possible! "What, Kanna? You’re going to eat ice cream without me?" That's when I woke up.
Pic: I found this hasty scribble from my mom I'd saved. It had been on something she'd sent me via someone who was visiting. A box of sweets, I think. I took it as a good sign for the week.
Then it hit me this morning... I had been looking at our wedding album yesterday... and of course seeing all the pictures of mom must have triggered my grief nausea. (I still have it most mornings, but not in the evenings.)
And then I pictured myself telling her. Except, inexplicably, the words that popped into my head were the ones that Estha uses in The God of Small Things (in the scene that never fails to bring me to tears): "Ammu, feeling vomitty..." he says as the train pulls away from the station. So there I was in the middle of Meijer, crying... Big A holding me to him while I was telling him NOT to look at me.
Pic: A series of her walking hand-in-hand with my stepmom-in-law whom she'd met for the VERY FIRST TIME that weekend. This is so her.
It's Amma's 80th birthday today. I spent quite a long time at the temple. My sister made her a mango cake, I made her a kulfi with pistachios, cardamom, and rosewater. For the past couple of years in the lead up to this big birthday, she'd been joking that I would not make it home for her 80th birthday celebration as I had done for my Dad's 80th. She would set me up, teasing me about loving dad more than her--just so I'd profess my love for her above all else and promise to be there with her today. This turned out to be such a not-funny joke.
For my dad's 80th, I flew to Bangalore to surprise my parents. My mom was also on her way back to Bangalore after visiting my sister who was on assignment in Amsterdam. And... BY SOME AMAZING TWIST OF SERENDIPITY, we were both booked on the *same* flight from Frankfurt to Bangalore on the second leg of our respective journeys . I called the airline and arranged to sit next to her, and I started to moo like a cow (one of our silly joke things) as she approached the row... SHE WAS SO BOWLED OVER when she found me! This picture is us reunited on that plane; She looks a bit dazed from the surprise and has her hand wrapped so tight around my upper arm... What I wouldn't give...
If I started something new and started looking for results, my mom would often tell me to stick with it for at least 40 days. Because that's how long a mandala--a full cycle of human physiology--is in Ayurvedic practice.
I've been away from journaling here for over 40 days. I don't know if I'm any different than 40 days ago.
I didn't mean to stay away. I was very sad and extremely busy.
I'm still very sad, but am way less busy.
It has been half a year since we lost mom...
The nausea that went away has begun to return again...
Because May is coming and it bears her birthday and Mother's Day.
We should prepare ourselves for May, my sister said.
Yes, of course. But how?
Can I just say how kind everyone has been?!? "Unfailingly" is the word that comes to mind. Family and friends. My community. They have helped me keep the important things going even when other things fell away.
Steph recently noted that I don't seem to be out walking much, and that is so true! I rarely seem to venture out unless it is with someone. That's a far cry from most times in my life and I hope I'll go back to craving my own company.
But also the kindness of everyone who stops by! I think often of Jenny's calendar of grief. And I've saved so many comments of comfort and reassurance in an email file that I open up to reread often. I read Jeanie's when I don't have faith in myself because she seems to and seems to know so much that I don't. So it was a treat to get to spend teatime with her.
Pic: The fabulous Jeanie with Max and Huckie!
Just finished a ton of midterm grading. There was some reminiscing in the answers about funny moments in class like when someone thought the squiggly lines in a document were redactions (Ã la the Epstein Files) and awesome ones when the class got someone to change their mind.
When I write exams, I always worry if the instructions are clear. The only person who didn't get the assignment (as they say) was Big A. Huck has some troubling symptoms that could be a UTI (or something more serious). I went looking for reassurance... "It's not serious, right? It's just a UTI, right?" Big A: "Right. Or it could be bladder cancer." Facepalm. StraightLineFace. We have to collect more puppy pee for tests.
Off to the second half of the semester... summer (break) will be here in seven weeks.
Pic: Sunset with Nu.
Baby sis (whose birthday was in Jan) and I didn't feel we could bear to celebrate our birthdays this year. So we've put them on hold.
Starting Saturday, I'll be spending a week with United Way of Sarasota County (FL) cleaning up after Hurricane Milton as part of a college service break with students. It'll be filthy work all day and bunking at a local church shelter at night.
My mom would be slightly horrified at spending a birthday this way--she so loved luxury and soft things.
But somehow it feels right to me. Not quite a celebration, more as a way of comemorating the gift of this body she birthed.
In any case, it'll be different.
Pic: Mallards on the Red Cedar. Walk with AS last week.
And truly, I'm at a point where I want to move through the world with ease and empathy rather than trying to upgrade myself into some model of efficiency...
If anything, I think I do too much and hold myself to standards only I care about.
This year, I will let myself be playful and curious rather than serious.
Pic: EM's post dinner photo of Nu reading to Max and Huck. Nu was home briefly this weekend to see Hadestown with us. They are reading from a book called Bedtime Stories for Dogs. JN had it sent to me from Thrift Books because I'd told her I was reading to Max and Huck. The book cost all of $1.29, but tells me how rich I am in friendship.
One of my besties sent me an "Emotional Support Prince" doll who's holding a sign that reminds me that we're here to get through this thing called life. What is really says to me of course, is that we should go crazy and reminds me that we shouldn't let the elevator bring us down (maybe we take the stairs?). Ha.
Happy Solstice! Although we didn't mark it this year, I'm so grateful that the days will get longer... I'll cherish every extra glimmer of light.
And in India it's my uncle's birthday. (I actually get my love for Prince from him!) My mom openly and unashamedly loved her only brother more than she did any of her three sisters and he in turn doted on his nieces (us), so today is a special day. I'm extra proud of him this year. At 74, he's just finished law school this semester. He said he got so annoyed with his lawyers who wouldn't take his advice on his real estate cases so he decided to go to school so he could represent himself! Not sure if that's optimal, but I'm in awe of his gumption and imagination. Needless to say, his classmates adored him.
Pic: A close up of my Emotional Support Prince, who's sitting in our Christmas tree for now.
I was cautiously optimistic and am now (way past midnight) heartened by the American decency that is showing up at the polls. All the report...
