When I first moved to California, the Pasadena Public Library was a place I could go to feel safe. My ex-friend and I were fighting over what her offer of my staying with her meant and I had hopes of landing an “emerging writers” fellowship with PEN. I sat and wrote and cried over my grandmother, whom I was still grieving and whose decay and death had broken me down.
For the year and a half I spent taking care of her, I couldn’t write. I couldn’t find humor in things and I couldn’t put words down without finding they led back to her. I was angry and tired and depressed. Because writing was always a way for me to understand the world around me, writing during that time was painful. It’s why Sherman Alexie cried every stop of his tour for You Don’t Have To Say You Love Me and vowed to never write nonfiction again. It’s why he was haunted by blankets.
The first essay I posted on boogiegals was an essay about mother’s day last year. I stepped back and looked at my bloody loogie and wondered, “Why?” It was just a bloody loogie, but, to me, it was more. It was an omen. It was a reminder of the hard year before; a reminder of my disgusting family; a reminder of the first year I didn’t have the person who raised me in my life; a reminder of my abusive mother. The bloody loogie was all that was left behind and all that was left behind needed to be hocked out.
I have a habit of seeing life in circles and symbols and realizing at the last minute: today this has happened because a year from today that happened. Today it’s raining because rain is a signifier of newness. Or today I am crying at the Pasadena Pubic Library writing about my grandmother, again, because the blessings coming my way are because of her – the rain, the gratitude, the migraine I get from having to tell others to be more empathetic towards the downtrodden.
Mother’s day 2018, I am feeling the love again. The sky is cloudy as it was when I drove across the country. The rain that followed me through the states is here again to say,
Hi.
I’m here for you and I see you and now you are free. You don’t have to pick up the phone when your mom calls you if you don’t want to. You don’t have to answer your two aunts who suddenly hit you up, wanting to know how you are because your mom has called them crying, telling them you are ignoring her and hate her and la-dee-freaking-dah. You don’t have to give any of them the satisfaction. You can continue doing you because —
That’s not something my grandma would’ve ever said to me when she was alive because all my triumphs were seemingly effortless… but now I am hopping over hurdles and clearing all of them. If she were alive, she would be so proud.
Thanks grandma. Happy Mother’s Day. I’m thankful.
A STOR¥ BY ? 