You Take the High Road, I'll Take the Low

If I were to die unready, what would I say of the sorrow in the rooms? If you, the reader, know of death as is or as is not, how would I explain traveling by snail, carrying a bell that is missing a tongue. 

How would I show you all of the average houses I have built to spite the promised mansion? I have lived in them all and never set foot in one. Might I be so stuck in the infidel mud of grief that the last of my words be of reasonable despair? And you may ask reasonably, “tell me where you are lost so that I may find you.”

Or might I be who I am when I am me and say aloud the shortest of prayers; ‘Thank You.’

I found a book on the shelf, before the late March. Inside was a yellowing card and an inscription from my mother to her father. The occasion was unclear, perhaps the book was the occasion. Did I know that my mother had her own father? Yes. But, did I know that she had stood among the shelves of books, maybe three in hand, deciding on which one to buy? Or maybe she intended on just that one, and with the gate of an irritated New Yorker headed to their bodega, she walked straight through the door and to the book, waving help away, a swift “no, thank you.”

Did I know if she already had the card at home? Did she stop at the adjacent drug store for the card? No, she would never do that. 

She would have either already had the card, having seen it, liked it, bought it, and saved it until its recipient became clear. Or, if it was a quaint enough bookstore, locally owned and no gaudy sign of money making incorporation. Had they had a little tree, near the register, she might have thumbed a few with furrowed brow.

For all I do not know about my mother I know the ways how she procures a card. I know exactly what she looks like standing in line at the post office. I know it does not change because mail to my mother is not a chore, though less important mail does get in the way of the mail which is the center of her post as correspondent.

If she had no card at home, which is improbable but not unheard of as she does have high turnover, she would have settled on the best from that tree. Sacrificing her standard of stationary would be alleviated by the location of its purchase, again, if the store was quaint. 

She would have said a parting ‘thank you’ to the salesclerk.

All is forgiven when a card your mother wrote for her father stays folded inside a book that looks as though it was never read. She too was once small and perfect and holy, unready for the vanity of sadness. She too got what was there to give and had no choice until she did and when she did she searched deeper wells than I, and turned to give what she had found.

Unfufilled motherhood is the deepest well. Either to long to hold the devotion of one’s own mother, or to long to be a mother devoted to who you hold, the heartsick of each is exactly exacting. These wells are twins and will order you to turn over your soul in its entirety and you will say, yes, it is already done. Thank you.

For the longing of your mother, you will say “these teeth are bared from hunger, I am not rabid.” Something mothers know of teeth shown.

For the longing of your child, you will not speak because truancy doesn’t listen.

Ever homesick, I was most surprised of all when I became a home for someone new . I wish I had felt home enough to house the love I met without condition when I met her outside of my body. There has yet to be written a comedy which shows us the tragic humor in thinking you have and know something only to be shown, in an instant, that what you never had you do now. Or if it is written, please send word.

What is missed in the classic story like that of the Stone Child is the physical comedy. Tom Hanks slapping his breast pockets for a document not there; how does one make room for a real elephant when for their whole life they had a pet beetle which was told to them was an elephant? I can tell you that your ribs break quickly and your heart is not broken but stretched, which causes alarm all the same. Perhaps having a real elephant prepares you, and then when you have an elephant of your own your spirit does not say; “You, this body, your life, are not enough. You, without a

home, cannot deserve this fluke, this fortune, this size.”

But how can we not say ‘thank you’ to this?

This, the moment we have fought the bear of grief without knowing what we fought, walking now into the sun, bloodied, soiled, weak, ourselves, and hoping we might keep our elephant. You will say “Tomorrow I will be bigger” as galaxies are dwarfed to nuisance. There are many ways to learn or know the true or size of an elephant. 

Should you not know and find out, and if you look for home by knocking on the salesman's door to pay him for the panaceas that you throw into your well. You will throw yourself down too. On the chance that there, you will find your soft place to fall.

I wish for you consideration in survival of this fall, but the hope of what it offers cannot contend with my wish. The hope that when your leap meets bottom there will be the uncomplicated arms of the holiest God felt in earthly body, a soft embrace that says “you are terrible and I love your terribleness. You who are wrecked and broken are my beloved wrecked and broken. You who are unfixable, need no fixing.”

Since we know that those who do not know what size an elephant is are least likely to heed advice on consideration of this fall, I say then, take care if you who read this are ever here or there. It can cost the life you live. It was that you were never fearless, when you simply had no courage. It was that you were never calm, when you should have been shaken.

In looking for the way out, the magic thoughts of will to will your mind won’t move the stones. But, here is where advice might work; behind you is an open gate. Though if you do turn to look and see it there, here is your darkest night. Knowing that you could have always left will mean that you are now the soft place to fall. The one meant to protect you is now you. No one is coming and never was. If you do not want to say ‘thank you’ then you will want to stay. And it is blessed and okay to want to stay, just please, turn and walk while wanting.

 ______

My Mother’s mother had a great grandmother by the name of Sarah Shields who was born into South Carolina enslavement in 1823. Her enslaver, my ancestor, sought and was approved by the state of Alabama to marry Sarah, though this did not grant her emancipation. She birthed eight children by that man and long after she was done birthing she was emancipated by those she birthed.

The lateral reproductive plane of my family tree is uneven at two generations deep. On my father’s side, too poor to be poor and freckled white. On my mothers, her mother, not poor and did look Black but light skinned enough to make handy her Sicilian roots as cover. 

When the volunteer sheriffs of racial pedigree came with torches lit to shine light on my mother’s mothers bloodline, her skin color became a liability to her husband's career and a danger to her and her children. I see her, set on the cliff of a canyon, a ranch style home on the flattened ledge, my grandfather far far away being his name. Her four girls and an often used garden hoe to hack the heads off rattlesnakes when they came too close to the house. There on this ledge she is too thin, and unable to avoid the tanning of her skin when the snakes needed beheading or a rug shaken out. The even oliveness on each thin shoulder, and fear but you would never know. 

All of the money she might need, all the needs unmet. Sarah Shields is a woman in my family tree and she is a body in our history with a thousand more like hers. A place to point at why we drift with notions of the highly sexualized

Black woman, who in fact, was highly used for sex. The body of my mother’s mother’s great grandmother was made a weapon to educate the command which strapped my father’s mother to a bed and took her baby from her arms.

There is no poetic angle, no tie for these ancestral bodies to be wrapped up in a bow.

Just the small and insignificant wink of two ships which never passed, in waters of different dangers, where it is always night.