We’ve been all over the place since I’ve come back. A little this and that to fill our time.
We met some friends and their chickens
Took some long walks
Indulged
Used the sewing machine
Enjoyed the snow
Kept with our Sunday morning ritural
Had some friends over
Step back take a breath I take myself. I’ve been sitting in the hospital for two whole days working out the details of my aunt. We are ll together cousins and more trying to help, be supportive, and take away moments with her. We are all there together talking about everything but what is really going on, we won’t not with my aunt lying there, in the room we stay positive but that is exhausting. I am just a visitor 2000 miles between my own bed and where all of this is. I must be crazy to leave all of my love and support back there, I can not be there for her, take on responsibilities. Why don’t you live in Brooklyn one cousin asks, then another, why is it that I don’t live down the street….from everyone. These people are my family and I can not explain. We left by necessity but in landing back in Denver we have found what we need to thrive, and this secret ingredient isn’t in Brooklyn it isn’t near all the people I love.
My words and thoughts are going just too fast for all of this sitting. I need to get out and walk, move through the streets that are part me, part of my family going way back. So that’s what I do I ride on a subway, then another, then another just to walk through the crowded streets looking up. Looking above the modernity of today and seeing the pieces of this place that are eternal, past down to me through stories and memory. I look up to see the sun. I look up to not be overwhelmed by how many people are here and how busy they all are. I think that if it were a little warmer that I might just drift back in time to when my grandmother could have sat on that stoop, or walked by that building. I look up at the cornices of buildings that map time back a century, further back to memories that I only hold through birth, ones that no one has told me in story form.
Then I move through those streets, letting myself forget why I am suddenly in New York. Forgetting the crowd of loving cousins. Forgetting that I am sleeping alone in my childhood bed. I slip into a world of stories and tales. And I move until the river is in my view and the sky is drifting blue. I move until I can come back into myself and know that I am not that little girl in the back bedroom, that I am a mother, a woman, someone with thirty six years of my own memories. That is when I let myself pause.
I haven’t decided if I am going to edit this one for grammar yet.
Right now I want to be in two places caring for two people. My love is limited by the miles, I can not see how I can leave my aunt but also I can not be without Alder or Kevin. I know I have to go back if only for a while. Let me be clear I love Denver and want to live there, it’s just right now all I want to do is take care of my aunt, but I am a mother and really that trumps everything.
I went for a long walk this afternoon through the neighborhoods my grandmother grew up in. I find solace in the mystery of a past that is so close to me but untouchable. The streets that she lived on are now Chinatown but many of the buildings remain. I walked looking up pretending that there were no cars, no plastic signs, that I hear Yiddish not Chinese. I think if it had been a little warmer I could have slipped into that world of a century ago.
But really it is all a distraction, from the great shifts in reality I am dealing with. The sort of shifts that makes me wish we lived in Brooklyn not Denver so we might be closer to all the people I love, to the people who I would do anything for. Anything, except I have to be 2,000 miles away. It is never easy leaving here, even though I yearn for Alder and Kevin and the quiet and calm of our life, but I leave with such guilt. After all I am a good Jewish girl.
I will be back here soon, to spend time selfishly with my aunt, because even if I am giving her comfort I know two thirds of why I do it is for me to sop up every last bit of her that I can. The same way we always sit around after the meat is gone taking the crusts of bread to the juices that are on the cutting board. All of us around the table, talking, the fire dying across the room. To be there one more time all of us in “the big red house” all together.
I have much more to say but I have lost my words right now.
I’m heading to New York in a few hours to be with my aunt who is very ill. I still can’t wrap my mind around this. Prayers, blessings and warm feelings sent her way will be much appreciated. I feel a little lost because within the sadness I know that she is so tired of struggling through this illness which has lasted for so many years. I need this space right now as a place to be where I can speak of her openly I am sorry if this isn’t as joyful as I usually make this space but for some reason I need to share her with everyone as she has always been the most important person in the world to me.
I also feel that I need to share her life while she is still here it just seems better that waiting until she is gone. I want her to feel my celebration.
When I was a child I would spend Saturdays with my father at museums and galleries. We would wander through s-l-o-w-l-y looking at each piece. By the end of the day I was worn-out and tired, but still I would come home and take out my own supplies and play with the ideas that we saw. So it follows that while my family visited we went to two museums. Alder enjoyed both. The MCA and the DAM both have great activities for kids.
We spent Sunday at the DAM Alder drunk in everything. In each gallery there was a different activity for kids, so sometimes it was hard to get time looking at the art instead of making things. But it was great to see how engaged he was for so many hours. We stayed for four hours.
We’re spending time with family from New York this weekend. Alder is in heaven having his Big Dad and Grandma Pat around.
There’s been museums and cooking and bookstores and walking around town. How has your weekend been?
Since we’ve been in Denver I have been pushing myself to write three nights a week for about four hours. Even if I can’t get anything really to come out of me I am working on outlines and character studies. I usually end up at the coffee shop down the street where I sit like so many others at their marble tables drinking coffee or tea and snacking on a cookie. But it’s been tough going, the words get stuck somewhere between my mind and my pen (yes I write long hand). This story that I am telling has been in my mind so long that I can see every scene like a film in my mind. I know what people say ans how they look when they say it; I can see ever minute detail of each space my characters inhabit. Yet when I transfer these ideas to paper they turn flat, more like a list of what should be written rather than an actual story. I’ve hit a wall, not quiet writers block, since I have all my ideas and I still sit and write, but my storytelling confidence has gone away.
But I really want to write this story, I have to tell it. It won’t let go of me and free me for my next project until I have exhausted it (and it me). It’s a hard to explain this, the story came to me in full in just a few moments of time. Not every scene was there but I knew where my protagonist starts out where they go and all the adventures that happen along the way. That was five years ago. Since then I written some, had a baby, lived in five houses, and done a lot of research. But the story won’t let go of me and it won’t let me bend it to my needs. Nope it wants to be recorded in it’s full insane glory. Yes I feel that this tale has been given to me, it is my responsibility to shape and express it into words and paragraphs, but it comes from the ether or the spirits or…..
So with this need to finish this project and a want to write I felt I needed a little outside support. So I called one of my old Denver writing friends to meet the other day. After two hours of talking about both of our projects, he soon to be fatherhood, my three year old, Hebrew names, graphic novels, Wendell Berry, science fiction, novels written at the beginning of the 20th century, writing workshops, the prairie, and a few other things we’ve decided to meet weekly to write. Not only to spend two or three hours writing once a week but also to push ourselves to produce really story-work for those meetings. What do you call that passion/homework? A kick in the rear? Either way it is what I need right now, external motivation and community for an act that I mainly do solitary. These are the steps that will lead me out of my slog and back into the flow of writing.
Sometime you just have to be happy. You just have to look up into the blue blue sky and see all the signs telling you to dance, and sing.
Sometimes you just have to read every Thomas book in the library before you leave.
Sometimes you have to paint a green livingroom brown.
Sometimes you need to see the passion in the people around you and celebrate them.
Sometimes you need to eat croissants for breakfast and let the crumbs get all over the place.
Sometimes you need to be happy even when things aren’t all okay.
Sometimes you have to give, and give wisely.
Sometimes you have to listen to other people’s conversation just because.
Sometimes you have to let things be okay and take things in stride.
Sometimes you have to write crap just to get to the good stuff.
Sometime you just have to be happy that the sidewalks are made of sandstone slabs.
Do I really need to ask? As I am writing this he and his Papa are building Thomas tracks in his room. It isn’t an obsession, there is plenty of room in his life for dragons and Lego, adventures, painting and stuffed animals; but he sure loves trains. The other day when we went on our walk we found a little bit of train track by an old warehouse. He spent a good ten minutes being a train up and down the 15 foot section of tracks. I can’t wait until it’s warm enough to bike around, then we can go up to the freight yard and watch all the action.
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