Love

Love always wins. You can't drive it out. You can't wipe it away. You can pulverize it and it will regroup. You can tear it and scatter it and its pieces will find each other. 

You have to fight for it, and those battles take time, and they aren't completely won yet, but we will win them. Love will keep winning.

It really is all you need.

Thank you, SCOTUS majority.

On Grammar, the Uterus, and Free Will

Wendy Davis and Letticia Van der Putte are my heroines. They stood (literally) and spoke and were wholly present for a cause that should be close to the hearts of every human with free will and the desire to control their own body. Others have written far more eloquently than I on why that matters and why their fight needs to be upheld and why Texas women should not be messed with. I'm interested in my own gravitation toward the word "heroine" here. I generally support the use of non-gendered language - I wouldn't say "poetesses" - so why am I not saying "heroes"?

It probably comes down in some respects to the beauty of the word. It just looks strong. HEROINE. If you avoid thinking about the drug name contained within it, it's a pretty interesting assemblage of letters, with the O anchoring it all.

Maybe the "-ess" is problematic. What I like about heroine is that it's not as obviously derivative of hero (even though it is derivative, in point of fact). The "-ine" is less frequently used, and it shifts the word's pronuncitation, to make it a new thing. A heroine has free will. She isn't just a suffixed word. She has her own (vowel) sound.

I'm on a bus with no wifi other than on my phone, so I can't look up research on this that would bolster my flimsy argument, but I like thinking about this. If anyone knows of any citations that might be helpful, please send them my way!

Untitled

I have a recurring dream that I have lost my voice. I am sobbing for Mom, and sometimes I am screaming at someone about how unfair it is, and I can’t scream loudly enough. My voice chokes in my throat, and I scream without sound. When I wake, I don’t need much dream theory to suggest that this relates to the depth of my grief, and how it isn’t fully exorcisable, how it will always live in my chest along with my love for my mother. For the rest of my life, I will love and miss her. I will be only so happy. My happiness will always be laced with sadness - and yet I have to try to be twice as happy, for her, and for the happiness she embodied that she can no longer give to others. She gives it in memory, of course, and that is going to have to be enough - except it isn’t enough. It just is.

I hear a car on the avenue outside my window and I think it is my mother’s car pulling into the driveway of my childhood home. I think this for two full seconds, and then I remember. I travel back through grief and memory along the tow rope of the Way My Life is Now, Without Her, and I am back in Brooklyn, back in my pajamas, back writing about a mother who should be still alive but wasn’t given that chance. I should not be writing a eulogy. I should be planning to take her to Hawaii. I should be trying to convince her to visit, to hug her grandcat (a word I didn’t feel comfortable with her using until she got sick), to hug ME. I should be arguing with her over why I should take the couch and she should take my bed, with my discounted high thread count sheets. We should agree that they are not as luxurious as they should be, and we should then discuss that part of the appeal of hotels is the fact that you don’t have to do your own laundry. We should be making fun of my ex boyfriend together, and she should be meeting the dear friends of mine that she never got to meet. We should be visiting my aunt together.

I have done and will do all of these things. I have done some with her in life, and I will do all with her in death - in After Life, I guess I should say. To me, the After of her Life is togetherness with me. She is on my shoulder, in my heart, in my DNA, in my smile, in my eyes, in every breath, in every beat of my heart. I am without her, and she is within me. And it’s not enough. It just is.

Every Day Mothers' Day

This Fathers' Day (and every day), I celebrated my mom. She was a superparent. She raised me with little help, lots of love, and the kind of boundless energy and attention that I aspire to show a child someday. She made me inquisitive, brave, and sensitive. She challenged the boundaries I set for myself. She skipped down the street with me. She gave the best hugs. She listened, always. She worried about me. She reveled in my joys. She fought with steely, warm strength to stay alive, and she told me it was for me - I don't think I will ever receive a greater gift, nor be loved so hard. Her spirit sits on my shoulder, and her voice rings in my ears. I miss her with my whole self, and I am steeped in gratefulness for her love, her example, and the precious time that we had. Every new thing I do and every old thing I cherish is in her name. My Mama Nancy.

I also celebrated my auntie. She is my Mom Person now - more than an aunt. She is a best friend, a confidante, a tv watching buddy, a jokester, a good shoulder for tears, a tower of strength, a model of generosity. She has been dealt some jaggedly painful blows, two in just this year, and she honors the memory of our loved ones with her grace and generosity and bravery. I am so lucky to have her in my corner, and I will always be in hers. With my cousin and his wife, we are a little family that leaves room for the presences of our loved ones. Just try to pull us apart. You aren't strong enough. I love, you, famdamily.

Kaddish

I can't imagine a year harder or more laced with grief than this one. My mom is my primary loss, the most gaping of the holes in my life. I'd rather hear her voice than any other sound. I remember the sheen on the skin on her hands and the sympathy sound she made if I stubbed my toe and her sneeze and her brilliance. Last year, my friend A died of complications from diabetes, and a few months after Mom, my friend J was found dead in her apartment. My uncle died in April. And now my friend D has taken her own life. Sometimes it feels like I can't handle any more, and then it happens again.

This post isn't about me, though. It's about D. She was one of the quirkiest, most infuriating, strongest people I know. Her story is inspiring - too much so to put into words now. She did a lot of hard work and got to a place where she knew herself better as a twenty-something than some people do in a lifetime. I was so proud of her. She shone.

The circumstances of her death are awful, and I don't want to put them here, either. I'm wishing she had sought more help, or that the hell she did seek had left her feeling like more things were possible. I'm crying. I'm watching the rain. I'm remembering her jokes, her style, her wit, her words. I'm sending so much love to her spirit. I'm hoping that she is at peace.

Brooklyn Weekend Moments

I stepped in the cat's auxiliary water dish. In my apartment, its presence is one of the ways you know that it's summer. The air conditioner won't get dragged out until the next time I have friends over.

I gave the cat a deep tissue fur massage while she purred on my abs. She shifted to tuck her little feet against my hip.

After years of eschewing them almost constantly in Gchat messages and Facebook statuses, I have realized that I love capital letters again.

I put sunscreen on for a cloudy rain, and then the sun came out. On my way out, I ran into my downstairs neighbor by the flagstoned nook that holds the trash cans and chatted - she said she'd let me go "because we'll stand here talking all day." (She's right.)

Outside the library, I realized that I was running in place in salsa steps.

Norwegian black metal is fitting for a grey day run. The sun peeked out. Should I switch to Letters to Cleo or something to encourage it?

It's amazing what a shower, a pretty dress, and a little makeup does for a grey mood.

Realization during a lovely reunion with a high school friend: things happen at their own time, and you are who you are because of them. Sometimes things happen when they need to.

I snagged two framed Van Gogh prints on my block from the detritus of one of the billion stoop sales today. I asked how much they were, and the dude said that anyone who could carry them could have them for free. I staggered along with one under each arm, and nobody laughed. When I got to my building, my neighbor leaped up from his spot on the stairs to open up for me.

On my run home from kickboxing, I passed a fuzzy dachshund trying to bring its owners into the pet stuff store.

Denizens of my neighborhood are not shying away from the heat, and they are scantily clad. (I passed a small child holding up her dress to show her undies.)

Sometimes the small moments are the most important ones to notice.