My Inspirations

My teacher Dana Flynn asked us to portray what inspires us. She emphasized thinking about what inspires us today, rather than yesterday or tomorrow.

Since breath is literal inspiration, I realized that I am currently being held up and pushed forward by things having to do with the movement of air. I wrote all this down more freely than I often do, letting my thoughts motivate and my fingers follow.

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 "Can you give me a knockout / I'll turn it inside out."
--Air Waves

"Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Willing is not enough; we must do."
--Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

"Come as you are / As you were / As I want you to be."
--Nirvana

Kickboxing. (Gineen and Vlad and Emmanuel have helped me direct my breath and movement to a more badass place than I thought possible. They've given me a place to put my anger, and reasons to see past the things I thought I couldn't do and turn them into daily habits.) I can now put my old selves and my current self toward the same brave purpose, and there I find my eternal self.

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"Jailhouse gets empty."
--Sublime

"I am always doing that which I cannot do, in order that I may learn how to do it."
--Pablo Picasso

"I'm not afraid."
--Eminem

Forearm stand. (Because of Dana and Sheri and Mary Dana, I am flying up the wall daily, and I am awestruck at my own ability to push aside the boundaries I've built for myself. I love this feeling.) I'm more free than I thought I could be.

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"Take my hand 'cause I know what you're going through / At the time I had no way of knowing"
--Cut Copy

"Nothing contributes so much to tranquilize the mind as a steady purpose--a point on which the soul may fix its intellectual eye."
--Mary Shelley

"He walked in circles till he was crazy and he lived that way forever"
--Neko Case 

The unseen. (Ali and Emily have opened my eyes to the subtle body and its powers.) I breathe into what I don't know and can't touch, and I'm suddenly aware of the energy that pulses through me and around me, and the things I can do to direct it into different physical and mental places.

* * 

"I love you 'cause you tell me things I want to know."
--The Beatles

"Find out who you are and do it on purpose."
--Dolly Parton

"And just where you are might be the right place / might be that sweet space / you don't know." 
--Blind Pilot

And, of course, my mother, the one who gave me breath in the first place, and held me through all life's difficulties, and and taught me to think as openly as possible. She is here with me as I breathe now, tracing her finger down the bridge of my nose like she did to calm me when I was a baby. Her baby. Her breath.

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 "And who believes that my wildest dreams and craziest schemes will come true?"
--The Turtles

"Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you have imagined."
--Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Today is the greatest day I've ever known / Can't live for tomorrow"
--Smashing Pumpkins

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.

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.