I post on this blog every Wednesday as a matter of course. Often this space serves as a way to share resources and new books and wise words from fellow authors; on occasion it works as a journal: a tether between life and writing, a place to sort through all that keeps me sane (though “sane” is relative, last night I was less-than-so as I slammed the blender into a batch of chocolate chip cookie dough, baking at a time when I could have been meditating). Today these words are more life than writing as I sit in the airport waiting to fly home to see family, to help a sister, to love a nephew. Today it is about the sunshine pouring in the window, about this moment of gratitude for good health, for family. About a strong cup of coffee on a strange table fashioned in the form of cheese–reminders that home is in two places and my heart is stitched into the binding of both.
Home
In Texas, I get lost.
Two lane roads open into four lane highways, and concrete consumes old pastures. Overpasses pile up like skyscrapers, and I grow restless behind the wheel of a borrowed car. Everything has changed.
I ride the freeways like a foreigner, holding my breath and missing my exits and circling the city until I find something familiar. Something constant.
The cemetery where my mother is buried. The houses where I grew up. The road to my Uncle’s home–as it rises and falls–on the way to celebrate my grandmother’s birthday.
I get lost in these images.
Then later, with a warm afternoon breeze on my face, the sound of cicadas send out their call in waves, like a radar. And I think, This is what it means to be home, the pull of memory: of easy conversations with my cousins, my sisters, my father, our time apart irrelevant; the feel of my grandmother’s hand in mine, her skin worn and fragile after 90 years but her spirit strong.
I carry all of this with me into the next morning as I board a plane before sunrise, hold tight each moment for several days after. For as long as I can, because I know it may be a year before I return.
Before I get lost again.
In Texas
I live a double life.
My right leg stands in a state
With four seasons and my eye towards the future,
While my left foot dips in another,
Searching for remnants of
Pastures and two-lane roads.
And, each time I return,
To one home or the other,
I am torn.
I sat at the lunch table.
My daughter on my left; my grandmother on my right.
One spoke in sing-song silliness,
The other spoke in running commentary
Of my history.
In my chest,
There was a stirring
Of emotions.
I looked around and saw
That I would be the only one
To cry.
So I willed my eyes dry.
And, I swallowed, hard, my gulp of tea.
I listened, instead,
To my grandmother’s stories as they rolled off her tongue.
Her thin lips formed each detail
With confidence and accuracy.
Her voice never wavered.
Her eyes twinkled when she spoke
Of mischief
And narrowed when the subject grew dark.
No one questioned her faith.
In fact, I wondered if I, too,
Could send away the Devil
With one loud rebuke,
“In the name of God!”
For five or six hours
She sat in the same chair,
Cushioned with a leather pillow,
As listeners cycled.
She leaned in with gossip.
She leaned over with advice.
She leaned back with a smile.
I burned her image into my mind.
I tried hard to memorize her words,
So I could repeat them,
In years to come,
To my daughter,
Who won’t remember
The moment at the lunch table
With Nanny
In Texas.