My Life in 3,500 Words or Less

The following is inspired by an essay by the same title, My Life in 3,500 Words of Less, by the iconic Nora Ephron. Through whose writing I have discovered so much of my own voice.

Until the cows come home. This is how she told me she loved me; this is how she tells me she loves me. A phrase relying heavily on the unlikelihood of our family ever owning cows. I remember a twinge of anxiety as a child. What happens if one day we do own cows? And so, it is only with the illusion of maturity that I realize the anxiety stems from something much deeper, not having a home, no place to return to. Your life is like a movie. I remember thinking this very thought myself. I remember when my friend, a woman I’ve known since I was eight years old, said it to me. We laughed. I remember the time I jumped out of my car and ran to him on Eldridge Street on the Lower East Side. He thought he might be going back to jail. I ran into his arms. I choked down tears and kissed him. His emotions still buried, solitary and confined. The first day I met him my journal reads, it felt like a movie. The last day I saw him, my journal reads, it felt like a movie. The only difference is that one is love-struck, and one is heart-sick. The soundtrack to these scenes could not be more different. Hush little baby. When I think of my father, I think of Marlboro Lights and two by fours. There is something in the mathematics of my memories that does not add up. I am, perhaps ten years old, or maybe I am older. I cannot be sure. My tiny-child of a body, crouching in the corner of the hallway powder room. The wallpaper, I am staring, forest green and gold laced. I hear his faulty footsteps through the garage – drunk – and calling. Into the house, and I hear the baritone of his voice calling out, for whom I cannot be sure. After all I am but ten years old, or not. And my mother is surely in the garden, tangled in liriope and mulch covered hands, always edging. And she does not know that I am hiding. And he does not know that I am hiding. And I do not know why I am hiding. And still, I do not know why. I lay on my left side. My body a changing landscape. I stare out at the custard colored glow of the street lamp below. How many times did I fall asleep like this, my father rubbing my back, his baritone whisper, don’t say a word, I’m going to buy you a mockingbird and me staring out at the cul-de-sac below. And tonight, he comes into my weary white-wall painted room. In his weary white-worn briefs and undershirt, he sits down on my bed. I rise to look at him, slumped shoulders and tired eyes What do I do, what can we do, I don’t know what to do He is, as always, speaking about my brother who is surely sleeping in some drunken dreamscape across the hall. The tears that come dripping from my father’s eyes, different than those that fell that one time I saw him cry while watching Saving Private Ryan; in fact, these are, perhaps, the tears that come when saving, trying to save, your dear son, in private. Hush little baby, we must not disturb the white picket fence. Years later I was walking, alone, down North 7th street in Williamsburg. I had just moved into a new apartment. As I spoke to my father, he seemed surprised that I had measuring cups and plates and mugs. That I, like any person pretending to be an adult, had done my research and figured out what tools building a home entailed. I could not help but laugh at his surprise. After all, he only knows to parent me now know through you shoulds by now I suppose he should know, he already did the work to teach me the tactics to navigate these wild waters with the wits of a fair-weather warrior. So how then, is it that my memories of my father amount to this? Perhaps the memories I have of him are rather the legend I have created of this man. Training German Shepherds to wait idly by while he did his grocery shopping. The road trip across the country to help some girlfriend get clean from crystal meth. The broke down car on 5th Ave in New York City; walking from Central Park, panhandling down to the Village. Held at gunpoint in Kingston Bay, and tents on some Jamaican beach. Levis and railroad tracks. Quaaludes on an airplane. Some girl, Jane, who helped him get back to Chicago. The Democratic National Convention. This is the myth of my father. But my own memories? They boil down to fun-tickets and wine-stained heartache. And yet, I love him, in spite of this, or perhaps because of this. Twinkle, twinkle little star My little girl body is curled up amongst the sweet comfort of an oversized bed as my mother sings to me. I do not remember her song as much as remember my father’s song. I am learning to sing out for both of us. I am learning to heal. We are learning to heal. I carry my mother’s wounded heart. And with that, I must choose whether or not I need to bear this heaviness upon my back. I choose to let the hurt lie down to rest. I choose to carry only fairy’s dust. Hands clapped and rubbed wildly together until fingers find the body of girl in need a magic and a good night’s sleep. When I think of my mother, I think of tiger lilies, peonies and liriope. I think of the way I would crawl into her bed, an ocean of white linens. I would cradle her arms in my small child hands and pretend they were babies. There will always be blessing in burying oneself in an ocean of pillows. My mother has always had more pillows than anyone needs, but she’s never fretted the cost of comfort. Perhaps that’s the way it always was, that she built a home from heartache, baked good, fresh linens and love. With each plant in the garden she buried some broken part of her heart. And what better way to heal than to give back to the Earth that which you can no longer bear? I remember the first, and possibly only time I told her I hated her. I ran out into the heavy rain on Heatherstone and I walked as if I would never go home. The art of anger only a teenage girl can truly master. I turned after a while to find her driving, just far enough behind me, waiting for me to be ready. And this is how she loves me. your grandmother started speaking up at the table around the same time I stopped wearing a bra I remember anger. Between mother and daughter there is, always, anger. It is an anger I will not understand until I, one day, stare at my daughter as she does something I either hate, resent or do not understand. Or perhaps there is jealousy. Perhaps there is supposed to be jealousy. Our mothers, with each generation, sacrifice a part of themselves to carve out a path for their daughters. This path is carved with blood, broken hearts and bones. And so, perhaps, the anger is an anger of forgetting. Daughters forgetting to honor their mother’s sacrifices. Mothers forgetting to honor their daughters light. Up above the world so bright I have feared my mother’s death for many years. I have feared that the world has been too unkind, and she will see fit to leave it. I have feared that, in bearing the pain she already does, any misstep on my part may be the final straw. Straw on a camel’s back is not fitting for the image in my mind. Perhaps a more apt description might be, boulders on a bird’s shoulders; my little bird. And so, sometimes, I fear she will fly away. Up above the world, she might find peace. But I cannot imagine this earth without her. Without the desperate, fierce love that can only occur between mother and daughter. When I think of my mother I think of the smell of soil. I think of Lancomé creams, red nail polish and crossword puzzles. When I think of my mother, I think of how she is teaching me to love myself. Fiercely, at all costs. And so, now, when I think of my mother, I think of resurrection ferns. I think of the healing of Autumn air. I think of seeds and soil and low country mornings. The way, if we let it, every day is a chance at resurrection. hold me closer tiny dancer There is really only the one memory; we are drunk off Corona and Black & Milds and we are listening to a playlist he has perfectly curated. This is the only one I have where he feels, still in my mind, like my brother. We are dancing together. We are screaming the lyrics to these songs on some forgotten beach in one of the Carolinas. And we are family. He tells me secrets as we lay in the sand, together, staring at the stars. And the rest are fragmented and raw. Is it possible that we discussed his problems at every single family dinner? Strange games, glasses of milk, what did you learn at school today?, and they must have asked me about my problems too… There was the time my father smacked him in the face at the dinner table. The time my little-boy brother took my father’s gun and shot the floor. I remember his face, stricken and weeping. I can still hear the sound of the gun shot from only seven feet away, sitting up stiff as a board in my bed, afraid to move, afraid to stay. My mother coming to hold me, go back to sleep, she whispered. But she forgot to give me fairy dust that night. And I suppose my parent’s anger, righteous and fearsome, the way my father dragged him across the floor and down into the basement, was a result of their own fear. What would have happened if the little-boy brother shot himself instead? My brother, this man I hardly know, lives on in dismembered memories and the exhausting attempt to piece together the good. When I think of my brother, I think of cheap vodka and DUIs. I think of when his school forced him to go to rehab, which left me alone at home on Easter, eating shrimp scampi in the backyard at Heatherstone. I think of the day he was drunk and I thought he was going to hit me. I think of when he told the budding feminist in me that women’s breasts are just for sex and not for anything else. I remember thinking he was a budding misogynist. But also, when I think of my brother I think of sandy feet and Swiss Army knives. I think of the times we used to climb onto the roof. The first time I smoked a joint, perfectly hand rolled. As he handed it to me, he looked so proud. I think of how when he was drunk, but not too drunk, he seemed to let himself love me. And of course, I think of dancing in the Carolinas to Elton John, drinking Coronas pretending it would all keep turning, blue jean baby. choses que je ne savais pas aimé I didn’t know that I loved the smell of lilac in April air, the way cobblestones feel underfoot, sounds of spoons against cups. I didn’t know how I loved the sound of Edith Piaf while walking along the Seine. The way I would drag my index finger along the ragged edge of Pont Neuf, until a drop of blood seeped from freshly broken skin. I didn’t know that I loved the way French men kiss my thighs. The way his lips felt against my Monday morning skin. I didn’t know how good he would taste, after eating croissants, espresso-stained tongue. The way he sauntered away on the platform, boarding his train to Bretange, as I took a drag from my slender cigarette. I didn’t know I loved the sound of the accordion playing, as the sun paints itself across Sacré Coeur. I didn’t know I could ever love my own company so fully. I didn’t know I loved alone, like lilac alone in the Paris mornings. And yet, now that I have tasted this erotic life, I want nothing less, Here’s lookin’ at you kid I read his Tinder profile and find only this, of all the gin joints in all the world… I haven’t actually met a single guy in person through this thing but find it nevertheless entertaining. I am wearing a tiger-lily red blouse and black jeans, and I hop across Berry Street. I remember the first time I touched him, his knee, midsentence and told him I had to leave. Red wine was never meant to be drunk so quickly. This will not be the last time moments pass too quickly between us. The next time he sees me I am wearing cowboy boots from Austin Texas. I vomited on the street the night I bought these boots because I was angry with my mother. It is raining and I am wearing cowboy boots and a trench coat. We eat Ethiopian food and drink one, maybe two, bottles of South African wine. We could never imagine that in less than a year’s time we’d fall in love with each other, daydream about futures, births, and dreams, and then I would find myself living on the same continent where these very grapes grow. We could never have known. So instead we ask questions If you had a dinner party and could invite anyone living or dead, who would you invite? ​Michele Obama, Joan Didion, and Eleanor Roosevelt If you died and were reincarnated, what would you come back as? ​A tree. If you could have a super power, what would it be and why? ​Teleportation. And, now, I have so many more questions I would want to ask him. But I could never have known back then, these seeds would grow into something so unrelenting. What is your favorite smell? Fresh cut cilantro. What was the last thing your crossed off your bucket list? ​Live in a different country for 6 months. What is an aspiration of yours that not many people know about? ​Have children. For now, I will continue wondering, wandering. I suppose it has only taken me 7,000 some odd miles and tear-soaked prayer to realize I am tired of wandering. The other day, lying in child’s pose, I whispered through weeping, I want a family And I felt the truth of this take the wind out of me. Broken home and family, I have pretended to build a home within my heart. But I want fireplaces. I want children laughing, dancing to Al Green in the living room with a man I love. I want grocery lists, red wine and bubble baths and holidays and Sunday mornings and white linens. But before all of that, days are spent walking through the sunny cobblestoned streets of Soho. Leaning over the used book stands in Alphabet City, half daytime drunk from Jamaican style brunch cocktails. We dance and sweat, we press skin against skin, we make love. Perhaps life outside of making love becomes just an intermission. We eat croissants and drink coffee, almond milk lattes and americanos. It rains. In the beginning he hates the rain, but I think perhaps he grew to love the rain, not unlike the way he grew to love me. I love you. The words tumble from him mouth. He does not mean to say them this way. We do not know how to say these words. We do not know how not to say these words. I am moving to Tanzania. He is proud of me, and I am far too busy with planning than to check in with my heart. I am far too busy with the business of leaving to realize that I am leaving. No amount of airplanes, oceans, or miles traveled will change the fact that, a relationship is the art of building buildings to house the love we make. Like any good cathedral or monument, it does not fall to dust simply because we refuse to enter, because we have traveled away from it. It may, yes, fall into a state of disrepair. Dust gathering around the intricate tiles and stained-glass windows. Yet we need only to let the light in. Nothing a little water and good intention can’t clean up. It is a place we can revisit, perhaps with new purpose, with new eyes, in order to see the place anew. haraka haraka haina baraka I inhale deeply the scent of my coffee. I am staring out at the mountains in the distance. Last night as I fell asleep, I looked out my window at the way the waxing Gibbous moon was casting itself into my courtyard and I thought, I am alone in a bed in the mountains of Tanzania. Before I think too much about this, I fall asleep. I dream about something that I think matters, but in the morning, I cannot remember it. These days I am a sucker for songs that make me cry, daydreaming about croissants, the feeling of finishing a book, laying on the forest floor. And by the way, We never had cows. But now I am surrounded by cows, here on this mountain top. And even in this very moment there is a cow mooing across the hill. I have grown quite accustomed to the sounds of this mountain. I love you to ribbons, another way to say I love you. I have no idea what loving someone to ribbons entails, but god damnit if I won’t try my hardest. haraka haraka haina baraka

there is no blessing in hurrying