Home

Brooklyn is my home. In just under two years, it has sheltered me and sustained me. It has kept me happily awake and rocked me to sleep. It gives me a small release of stress whenever I come back to it.

My little part of Brooklyn has magic tucked into its corners. Now that I am on bereavement leave, I spend the lion's share of most days here. When I do go into the city, even to see dear friends, it's with a bit of squaring of my shoulders. In my neighborhood, I release.

I remember when it upset my mom that I started to refer to New York as home. It's weird and awful now to think that no home mine will ever have her in it, at least not corporeally. In another way, though, she will travel with me to all of my future homes. She lives in my heart, memories, spirit, and DNA. 

I love you, Mama.

Coffee Shop Thoughts

It's chilly and grey this morning, but I am warm in my sweater, and I do not use wireless here, so I expect to get much done. 

The guy next to me is poring over a graphic novel, arrow-shaped post-it flags at the ready. His accent is vaguely Spanish. 

I think about the time I came here and called Mom after. I think I'm holding on okay, and then I remember that she's dead. I wonder why writing in the present tense feels so right.

This coffee is too strong for me. It feels like it has made contact with my face. 

This weather is a preview of fall, when I will be able to do my homework here. I will be able to continue many of my daytime things (kickboxing, daytime park sitting, writing) around my class schedule.

I have a pillow here in my spot. I recline. I think of my aerie around the corner. 

I somehow switched my keyboard to AZERTY. Turning it off turns it back the way I want it.

The music has stilled. I feel sick, too cold without my sweater and too warm with it on. I am barely into my coffee. I think I need to start ordering tea here. It has kicked me in the face every time I have ordered it.

I watch the rain as it hits the flagstones and try to decide how much of a crush I have on the guy sitting in the window. 

THERE IS A DOG HERE. So much for heading home soon.

Guess Who

Guess the author or the subject. Don't google.

"He was a new beginning and every new beginning returns the world. In him, the rainforests were pristine and the sea had not been blunted. He was a map of clear outlines and unnamed hope. He was time before or time after. Time now had not spoilt him. In the space between chaos and shape there was another chance."

Gerund(ing)

So meta, that title. Sorry.

I've been thinking about gerunds ever since I noticed that one of my mentors says "breathing" instead of "breath," activating (sorry again) the noun. It makes me wonder: are we eliding an important part of certain nouns' nuances by cutting off their -ing (or refusing to add it)?

Spring

An ontological look at this spring leaves a lot of room for confusion. When we were officially in the end of March, the lion hadn't ceded power to the lamb: it was snowing, and was supposed to snow all day. Two days later, it was seventy degrees. What gives?

Now we are in May, and we are gifted with hints of spring, punctuated by grey, mid-fifties days like today. The weather forecast (to which I stay glued) tells me it will be reliably warm within a week - we just have to get through some rainy bursts first.

I think the weather wants to be different things. It struggles against the confines put on it by climate change. It reserves the right to be capricious, like a cat. It laughs, gently, at our obsession with it.

And the sun always returns.

Family: Loss and Love

From where I sit in my aunt's living room, I can almost see the room where my mother died. It's blocked by the bathroom door. One of the surprises of my visit here has been that I am not weirded out by walking through that room. I don't choose to spend time there, or to sit in the places where I often sat when Mom was dying, but I am okay being in the house. I came here because my uncle just died. My aunt lost her baby sister and her husband of forty years within four months of each other. My grief for my mother is deep, and I grieve for my uncle, but I also grieve for my aunt, and the unique and unfair position in which she finds herself.

My cousin and I have always been close, but now we are part of a special club. We have a bond that will never be broken: by losing our parents, we have become even closer. My cousin and my aunt are now my most immediate family. The three of us are a unit - it is now us against the world. We will have new traditions and inside jokes. My aunt will be the grandma to all of our children. Her house will become the family compound for holidays and special occasions. When I lost my mother, I felt the loss of my immediate family, but now I know that that was never true - i just lost the person at the core of it. It's a shattering loss, but not one that leaves me alone.

We have all cried a little on this visit - mostly tearing up. I decided a long time ago that crying is too emotionally and physically taxing to do all the time. My uncle died a week ago yesterday, and my mother died four months ago tomorrow. We have sat in the sun and reminisced. We have looked at family pictures. We have done lots of hugging. We have laughed until we wanted to pee. We have felt my mother and uncle's presences behind our conversations and shared experiences.

Someday I will wrestle small children onto the train along with my bags, and my husband and I will head up north to join the rest of my (now diminished) family here at my aunt's house. My aunt will pick us up at the station, and my cousin and his wife and their children will come out to meet us. We will remember my mom and my uncle, telling as many stories as the children's attention will hold, so that they can feel them as part of our family.