Miyasan’s Daughter

Today I went to my nephew’s birthday party. It’s been a while since I’ve been back to that area. I think the last time I went was his birthday the year my sister died, three years ago.

I wasn’t expecting the emotional reaction I got driving past the exit off 695, where 83 veers off and goes straight into Inner Harbor and Johns Hopkins. There was a pull in my heart as I made that curve to get on 695, a pull to stay in the right hand lane and go downtown instead.

It’s not that I wanted her to be sick back in the hospital…her suffering was more than anyone should have to go through, and I would not wish her back there for anything.

I just wanted to see her. I wanted to cry and might have had it not been for my little girl sitting in the front seat. But I could feel it, that space - not empty, but cavernous, nonetheless, full of sorrow, grieving opening wide.

When was the last time I fell into those depths? It comes up periodically, threatening to swallow me, but I always manage to sidestep it. A tear or two…maybe…if I’m alone, but quickly an errand or some other thing needing my attention spirits me away.

But the cavernous feeling threatens not to be sidestepped so easily today.

We finally come upon the off ramp to the main road. Left, goes to her house. Right to the park. I turn right. There’s a stoplight now. When did that go up?

“It’s been there a while, Mom. You must have not been here for a long time.”

Yes, it has been a long time. But it feels like just yesterday and like Vernice should be here waiting for me when I get out of my car.

“It’s about time,” I said. “This used to be a very dangerous intersection.”

We drive to the park. I pass a restaurant she and I ate at the summer before she died. The cavernous feeling grows wider.

I pass a bank, she needed to go to shortly before one of her last downward spirals. She was like Lazarus, coming back from the dead over and over again, each doctor thinking this was it, she would not make it this time. But she always did…until she didn’t.

I think I might get a headache.

We pull into the park. I get out and my brother-in-law greets me with a warm embrace. I step into the pavilion, and there on a column is a board with pictures of my sister and my nephew. Tears well up, but I will not let them escape my eyes.

My brother-in-law’s lady comes to greet me. She is gentle and kind. I speak with her a while. Explain how raw I feel. I speak to my brother-in-law briefly. The tears are escaping anyway. I say, “I need to go for a walk.”

And I do, but only a short one. The children are coming up the path. They bring me home to myself. Today is a day of celebration. I walk back with them.

The day goes well. There is a picture of my sister where her smile is absolutely radiant. It was taken before her cancer struck. She holds her son close to her. I ask if I can have a copy. My brother-in-law says of course. I can’t take my eyes off her smile.

Funny, how when she was on death’s door in the Berkshires, she said she needed to smile more. Her smiles were like deep rich wells of joy and subtle pools of kindness.

I get ready to leave, say my farewells and go to tell my little girl who is in the playground that I have to go. She asks, “Mom, are you okay?”

I say I’m feeling sensitive, and explain I’m missing my sister.

“Don’t feel sad, Mom. Maybe you don’t see her, but she’s here.”

I hold her to me, she’s right, and we walk to my car, arm in arm.

This morning I look out my front door and see the morning glories. They always make me smile.

When we were living in New Mexico, we had a whole string of morning glories on our back fence. I used to stand by the back sliding door in the early morning hours and look at their beautiful dark blue faces looking out at me. They seemed such a contrast, these flowers, with the wide dusty desert behind them.

It always amazed me that such delicate flowers could exist in such hostile climate. The hot desert sun made their show of color last only briefly and in the earliest part of the day, which made glimpsing their beauty all that much more special.

In ways I could not comprehend then, but am realizing now, they were an inspiration to me, speaking to me about the stubborn insistence of beauty to exist even in the harshest conditions and the power that lies within that which seems so fragile and vulnerable. They were telling me to hang in there.

Some part of me must have heard, must have responded with my own fierce “yes” within the petals of my own tender youth.

It’s funny, how we often feel like we’re alone, but support exists all around us and is offered and we accept, even when we don’t know we are.

It still makes a difference.

I’ve been reorganizing my blogs, much as I am now trying to reorganize my life, carving out space and time in a rushing river of time. When perhaps, all I need to do is realize the fastest currents are within me.

I will be here more often now. I’ve been carrying thoughts of my mother lately.

Maybe it’s because my oldest daughter has told me that she is with child again, and there has been talk that it might be a girl.

Well, of course, it might. And then it might not. But this is the kind of talking that is done with playfulness and fun, but more…it awakens me to a realization. The line among the women of my family has been tenuous and hard fraught with feelings of desperate love, jealousy and betrayal.

Will the cycle be broken with this one? Or with my youngest? And what kind of role model will I be to a granddaughter?

This morning, my youngest told me that she thought we were a lot like each other, that she could see me in her. I smiled. She meant it as a compliment, a stature she wanted to obtain. She has not grown to despise what I represent.

I know there is a natural breaking away, but can it be that it will not be so hard or harsh as it was with my oldest? So much of that depends on the choices I make now…and the choices she will make then.

Strange…how when I am in this place I feel like I am in a sacred place. Not like a regular blog like my others. Those are special and meaningful to me. But this place is different, because when I come here, I am different. In this most public of places, I feel alone. Perhaps my thoughts of my mother crowd everything else out.

Even as an adult with children and grandchildren, she looms a large figure in my life.

Sometimes I feel like a turtle. I come to a realization, like the one in October, make a decision…and then draw my head back into my shell and stay in the same spot. Then some time goes by, in this case, almost five months, and I emerge from my shell again, only to discover that I haven’t gone anywhere.

It’s easy to get discouraged. Sometimes I wonder why I journal, when each little notebook dated years ago show me how many times I’ve made commitments only to forget them, and then to make them as if they were new insights again later down the line. And I wonder, do I ever learn anything?

But eventually, something does click, something does sink in, and begins to take root. Perhaps, each realizing and forgetting is like the steady downstroke and upstroke up a hoe, cultivating the field, turning the soil for the planting of seeds that will, in their time, grow into something.

Okay, so *now* I think I will post a little more often here, because I really need to. This week I thought I might lose someone very dear to me to a stroke. He’s going through a cancer challenge right now, as well. To say this hasn’t reopened some doors concerning my sister’s death would be a lie.

But it’s, also, made me realize other things…like how I keep postponing or putting my life on hold. Well, that’s not entirely correct. Everything I do is my life, but I am realizing how often I put those things that are a priority to me on hold - at least until tomorrow, and there always seems to be a lot of tomorrows - that truly are important to me, answering other demands. Whether they are important, also, is not the point.

They can both be important, and they often are, but I have a tendency to compromise even those things that I am responsible for to meet the needs of another. Even still, I can say I would not have done anything differently this week. I’m merely observing a pattern, not questioning my decisions for this week.

I, also, see another pattern. And that is the pattern of being an outsider, of belonging, but not really belonging. That feeling of not being legitimate, of being a part of, but not really being a part of. To sort of hang in limbo in relationships, without real status or an inadequate one. This means being called to act “as if” and also to not be treated “as”. Because there is no definable role, you can cross boundaries or be stopped in your tracks with the attitude that it is not your place or scolded by the expectation that it should be.

It is a prime set up for utter frustration. I know I do not wish to continue like this. I know I am determined to change.

Old patterns. New decisions. I wonder how long I will retreat into my shell and remain there this time?

Or if this will the moment I plant my seed and watch it grow.

You know, when you’re an incest victim or a survivor of anything, memories often have a negative connotation. Words like “flashback” and “triggering” usurp the meaning and purpose of what memories can mean, and take them to a place of pain and hurt.

But tonight, I am grateful for them. I have a right to them, you know. And as I think of the things that make me smile, I savor each one like a good sip of hot tea. And somewhere, from deep inside, I am warmed from the inside out.