After our long hike through Boynton Canyon and the Subway, we loaded our tired and very thirsty bodies into the car and began searching for a refreshing lunch. We found it in the form of an acai bowl cafe not too far down the road. Inside the air conditioned eatery, I inhaled my frozen tropical treat in record time and sat shivering from the shock of cold until we made our way back into the sunshine.
The Chapel of the Holy Cross in Sedona is nestled into the surrounding landscape without feeling obtrusive
Our day, though, was not finished. We had passed by the famous Chapel of the Holy Cross on the way to Boynton Canyon, and decided we would make a stop on the way back to our hotel. The chapel, nestled into the red hills of Sedona is open to the public during daylight hours and offers stunning views of the surrounding landscape. Unlike urban sprawl below it, it almost feels like it belongs.
The views from the chapel are stunning and well-worth the short trek to take them in.
It is said that the chapel, like Boynton Canyon, is situated on one of Sedona’s famous vortexes. Even if one doesn’t feel a surge of energy here, it is undeniably a peaceful and beautiful place as you will see in the slide show below:
After spending some time admiring the chapel and its surrounding landscape, we returned to the hotel to relax and hose off. As we were determined to take in a Sedona sunset, we chose a nearby, albeit over-priced restaurant to have dinner before we got in the car for one more adventure. Our destination, the famous Airport Mesa, which is also reported to be a vortex site.
A trail towards the setting sun
We passed by the natural stone mesa to park our car, and began walking along a trail towards the setting sun. In retrospect, I would have preferred standing atop the red rocks, but we had thought we might get a better view from the trail. As it was, the sunset was not as magnificent as we had hoped, but one can never really complain about the views in Sedona.
Our sunset view
It had been a long day filled with lots of walking, and we were all quite tired, but instead of driving home, we made our way up to the top of the Airport Mesa road where there is a large parking lot and viewing area to see the stars come out. We didn’t last long.
We had an early start to our day two adventures in Arizona as my husband’s conference ended at 9:30 am. Ava and I were up early to take a sunrise (6:30 am) yoga class by the pool. It was everything I envisioned in a Sedona yoga class. And, you couldn’t beat the view.
The four of us decided on Boynton Canyon for the main adventure of the day, a choice that we may have made differently in retrospect. Arizona sunshine in June is more intense than one might expect, and the dry heat is difficult for the unaccustomed skin and airways. Our Boynton hike adventure took us eight long hours of walking through the dusty landscape with enough snacks and sunscreen, but not quite enough water.
The hike, aside from the Subway portion, is considered easy, albeit long. The red trail winds along the canyon floor with views of the red rocks and pockets of welcome shade.
The trail to the end of the main loop of Boynton Canyon is about three miles long. We saw several butterflies along the way, a few lizards, some beautiful wildflowers, and spectacular views of the cliffs.
At the end of the three miles, the trail steepens until it culminates at the mouth of the canyon where smooth red rocks rise into the cliffs. It’s a nice place to stop for photos and refresh the body before turning around.
Although we were already feeling a bit tired and eager for a cold beverage, we were determined to find the hidden Subway trail on our way back. After inquiring about it with everyone we passed along the way, and getting an idea of the general location, we took a gander off the beaten path. Winding our way through a very narrow trail filled with bushes, we encountered a friendly group of individuals who were making their way down from the Subway viewing points. They too had, inadvertently ventured off the unmarked Subway trail, and as luck would have it, they offered to walk back with us to the main trail and point out the entrance we were meant to take, which was ambiguously marked by a sandy inlet with a couple of branches shaped into a rough looking arrow.
I was amazed as we walked, how many people find the deliberately obscure trail and make their way to the most spectacular spot in the Canyon. In fact, many don’t bother with the main trail at all, and just head straight to the Subway. We could understand why when we got there…
Both Boynton Canyon loop and the Subway offshoot are well-worth the trek if you have the time and are prepared with plenty of (cold) water, snacks, sunscreen and appropriate attire. Only my daughter ventured up into the steep crevice of the canyon when we got there, but we all made it to the caves.
It turned out to be one of those experiences you check off the list. Done. Never again. Well, at least for me. Probably. One can never say for sure, but less than half-way through our ATV adventure in Sedona, Arizona I was quite sure I would not need to repeat it. But, let me start at the beginning.
We had four days in Arizona, less than that if you count the attempts to sleep after a red-eye and travel to and from the airport. My husband signed up for a CME conference in Sedona, which began the day after our son graduated from high school. Somehow we had all agreed to it, even though we must have known we would have been exhausted before our trip even began. Never mind that, we are used to pushing ourselves to extremes when we travel. It’s par for the course.
What we saw after dawn rose our first day
We didn’t play golf, even though the resort had a lovely course that ran beneath the red rocks with a sprawling green lawn nearly as brilliant as the blue sky that graced each of our days. The New Hampshire we had left behind was experiencing a rather damp and gray beginning to summer, and the shock of the intense, dry Arizona sunshine was welcoming, at first.
The Famous “Bell Rock,” which we drove by several times but never climbed is eye-catching. It’s one of Sedona’s “Vortex” sites
After flying through thunderstorms across the entire United States, we landed in Phoenix in the wee hours of Saturday morning. Only my daughter and husband slept (some) on the plane, and the four of us staggered out of the plane and made our way through the passageways that led to the shuttle to pick up our rental car. Two hours later, we loaded into a car that was not the one we had reserved, but it was close enough, only to be halted about ten minutes into our drive by an accident.
I can’t tell you much about the 2.5 hour drive to our hotel, because I drifted in and out of consciousness in the passenger seat. My daughter, who when I glanced back at her during the drive appeared to be fast asleep, slumped against the window, swears she saw the Milky Way at some point along the way. Maybe. It was the right time of night, and anyone who’s taken the drive from Phoenix to Sedona knows there’s a vast landscape of “nothing” for quite a while. Just a lot of desert.
Our Room’s View (if you walked over the balcony and onto the roof, which I did, often)
It was still dark when we arrived at the hotel, 2 am local time to be precise (5 am EST) and I wasn’t thinking about stars, I was thinking only of a bed to sink into. Somehow my husband made it to his 7:30 am conference, while the rest of our slept. The morning passed with sleep, breakfast, and a visit to the adult pool. By the time my husband’s conference was over, we were all ready to give a proper greeting to Sedona.
“What should we do?”
We debated the possibilities until we settled on an ATV adventure, totally unprepared for what awaited us. Deadman’s Pass could not had been a more fitting name.
The vehicle was built for the terrain, but I’m not sure we were. We rumbled along the highway, my son at the driver’s seat, until we got to the turnoff. It took several more minutes to find the dirt road, and during that time I was thinking, “this isn’t so bad.”
Before I knew it, the red dust of Sedona was flying into my nostrils and mouth, and I was gripping the metal bar in front of me as I realized I was experiencing a ride worse than a rollercoaster. The fear of tipping over and staying there stayed with me for most of the two-hour torture ride, and when it finally ended and I told myself “never again.” But in all seriousness, despite the steep drops and turns filled with gullies and rocks, it was a memorable experience. We were hot, filthy, hungry, and very thirsty by the time we were through, but we did see some spectacular views that I managed to capture with my phone while tipping out the open window.
I hope you enjoy these shots from Deadman’s Pass despite being unable to ride along with us 😉
I was having a tough day. A really tough day. It was one of those days when the weight of life compounds into the crushing feeling of overwhelm. Aside from my pets, I was alone, and I didn’t want to be alone. I needed support. I needed to feel seen and heard. And, it turns out, most of all, I needed a hug.
I didn’t know how much I needed a hug until my friend Becca came through the door after responding to my text message asking if she was available for a walk. I told her I was having a tough day, and as good friends do, she read between the lines. She got into her car and came over. She walked through the door, navigated around the eager dogs, and pulled me into an embrace. We never went on that walk, instead we sat on my porch and she held presence for me in the way I needed her to, and for as long as I needed her. And, before she left, she pulled me into another hug.
I have a complicated history with hugs, some of which I have written about before. But it took those hugs, and the hugs that followed after from my children and husband, that made me realize how vital loving embrace is.
For some of us who have known conditional, abusive, and complicated love, in all its myriad forms, the right type of hug is not always easy to come by or receive. The wrong kind of hugs can feel like we are being violated instead of nurtured, and no hugs at all can make us feel unwanted. We are complicated beings with our own complicated sets of histories and emotions, and the seemingly simple act of hugging can be filled with nuances that are not easily defined or understood. It’s taken me almost fifty years on this planet to realize how vital the right type of hug is for my wellbeing, as well has how necessary it is for me to let others know this.
I spent a lot of time yesterday and last night thinking about my past and my relationships that have involved hugging in all its myriad forms. I thought about what I had never felt in my mother’s hugs, and how long it has been since she has embraced me. I thought of the violating feel of my stepfather’s hugs, and how when I had reunited with my birthfather as an adult I had finally felt the father hug I had been longing for. And I thought about all the hugs, those love-filled hugs, that I had experienced and was missing. I thought of Sue and Rachel, who both gave the best mother-love hugs one could ask for, and what a loss it has been in my life to have had them pass, less than two weeks apart, two years go. I thought of my grandmother’s loving touch, and the hugs of my dear friend Carol who has lived too far away for over a decade. And I thought of type of hugs I was missing from my adolescent children and my husband, and how much the complicated language of hugs had infiltrated our family life.
I’m still thinking about hugs, and how much I believe the right type of hugs can change a life, and maybe even the world. This simple act that is not simple at all. I have since spoken to my husband and children about hugs and told them how much I am missing theirs. I have opened myself into asking, and in the process am realizing how important that asking is, sometimes, to the act of receiving. And, although I have received my required doses of hugs in this moment, I know I will need more. And so will the people in my life.
We have a painted chalkboard on our kitchen wall where we post the day’s events, and this morning I moved the schedule around a bit to make space for something I believe to be even more important. I created a space for the request for an embrace by chalking the words, “Who needs a hug?” Underneath, I wrote the word “Mom.”
I hope that I, in turn, can be available for anyone who needs the right kind of hug in their life, in their moment of need. And, I hope if I don’t know they need that hug, they will ask me for it.
Have you ever thought about what it might be like to meet the writers behind the blogs you read? What would you talk about over, let’s say, a cup of tea? This thought occurred to me while I was reading through this morning’s blog posts that come through my email feed. I happened to be pursuing a post by Jaye Marie and found myself thinking about how lovely it would be to sit with her over a cup of tea and talk about bonsai. I’ve never tried growing a bonsai, but I find the idea fascinating. Bonsais fill me with wonder. They make me think of magic and fairies. Of creating an almost impossible beauty inside a troubled world.
And from there I got to thinking about how much I enjoy the words and shared blogging lives from the writers I follow. When I open their posts, it’s like opening a personal letter from a friend. Some of these friends I have been lucky to meet. And some of those encounters have literally transformed my life. Like meeting the late Sue Vincent.
Most of the writers, though, I merely know through our blog and the comments we share at the end of our posts. But, this doesn’t make their presence in my life any less meaningful. After musing about having tea with Jaye and talking about the art of bonsai, I got to thinking about what else I would enjoy talking about with my fellow bloggers.
Dawn Minot’s post this morning about living life as an introvert struck a familiar cord in me. I found myself thinking about what it might be like to sit beside Dawn on that rock by the water and talk about Life with a capital “L.”
As I progressed through my emails, Anita’s post about Nova Scotia caught my eye. Anita, who travels the world and captures the beauty of place in her photographs and words. Yes, I decided, I would quite like to sit with Anita some day and talk about travel and the magic of place.
And then I found a post by another person I have had the pleasure of meeting. When I opened it, Steve’s lovely photos framed a lovely poem. The post, a reminder of another blogging friend I have talked with over tea. One of the subjects being the art of photography.
Soon, I began to consider myself rather lucky to have these “letters” to open every morning. I think perhaps, I’ll continue to reflect, and share, from time-to-time, as I open up my posts, on what it might be like to have tea with the person who wrote the words.
We are, here in the USA, residing in the aftermath of another horrific mass shooting at a school. It has become a normalized discomfort. A discomfort that does not have to exist, but yet, here we are, again.
I’m not going to blog about the need for gun control and legislation, because it’s a fact that we keep repeating without doing anything about. I keep voting and signing petitions, I keep practicing and teaching yoga. I keep trying to do my part to change what feels like the unchangeable. But, it’s never enough. There is always more to be done. The simple and obvious start is to enact those laws we refuse to enact as a nation. I do not hold a position of public office, I’m merely a voter, but I’m also a citizen who engages with and creates entertainment in the form of books (which, one day, I’d love to see recreated on screen).
Last night, I wrapped up my engagement with the Blood & Bones series on Netflix by watching the final two episodes. And, just as I did after seeing the series You through to its latest episode, I found myself wondering why I had allowed myself to endure it. I am a sucker for seeing things through. I rarely put a book aside, no matter how much it pains me to finish it, and I often do the same with films. But, I’m done with You and I’m done with Blood & Bones. Why? Because even though the writing and creative execution is, at times, beautiful and even brilliant, I have decided not to torture myself any longer waiting for the good to prevail over the bad. And, let’s be clear, there’s a whole lot of bad in both of these series.
We wonder why we are obsessed with violence in this country, but we cannot seem to break the cycle. Rarely do we see fantasy series created without an over-abundance of violence and we keep churning out thrillers filled with murder and horror that push the edges of extreme in the name of entertainment.
When will we decide we’ve had enough? When will we decide that maybe, just maybe, we benefit more by spreading the good we are capable of, over the bad?
After waking up at 2am this morning from dreams laced with the violence from the last two episodes of Blood and Bones, I renewed my vow to do my part as a creative to spread the good over the bad. Violence is not a prerequisite for fantasy, nor is it for drama. We do not need blood and gore to keep the page turning, or the viewers locked to a screen. We need a good story. And, dare I say, a story about good. Conflict need not turn to violence, and when it does, it behooves us to ask why? Why are we writing it? Why are we reading it? Why are we watching it?
I know when I engage with it on the screen or in a book, I am always waiting for the bad to turn back to the good. But, as we see in the series mentioned above, it never stays good for long these days. We have normalized violence, and we can’t be too surprised that we are seeing it normalized in our schools. If we want change, we must be the change.
And so, I’ve decided to put aside those two series and focus on creative that brings me hope and joy, which is also how I engage with writing. If it doesn’t educate me through historic violence, I see little need for engagement. I know through personal experience with writing fantasy and adventure books, that violence need not dominate the prose. It need not be a means to keep the viewer locked to a page or a screen with a rush of destructive adrenaline. Why torture ourselves with the bad when we always have the choice to bring forth the good?
The Current View from My Yoga Studio Windows Overlooking the Patio
I really should have written, “because of the snow,” because it is the blizzard we received yesterday that has made the landscape majestically beautiful. But, spring officially arrives in less than one week here in New England, and the bulbs that had emerged their bold stalks of green out of the waking Earth in my front garden are now covered in several feet of heavy, wet snow.
Oh, Spring, where are you? Why the long leave before your return? We are pining for you. Our skin, thirsts for the sun. Our feet, aching for the feel of dirt and grass. We have become grounded, or should I say ungrounded, in winter.
I have been bringing stainless steel tablespoons to my yoga classes so that my students can ground their bodies. It has been too long since our bare feet have felt the magnetic pull of of Mother’s Earth, welcoming us back into her body. So, we have to rely upon artificial means. The magnetic properties of metal to align our bodies’ polarity.
I am not complaining, but really I am. The snow is beautiful, and for skiers, like my son who has hit the slopes with his buddies on this school declared snow day, this blizzard has brought a gift of a free day to adventure, once again, beside Winter.
But, I am eager for spring. I am eager to see the return of buds filling with life. The swell of brooks and ponds teeming with tadpoles…and I have been waiting (not so patiently) to forgage for spring fungi. Oh, if I am honest, I have not been so diligent about embracing Winter’s gifts. The repose it offers. The churning of life in the process of building. My middle-grade manuscript sequels sit mostly untouched in their separate documents, surrounded by the aura of excuses. Instead of the writer’s muse, I feel the tug of Persephone’s hand pulling me out of these darkened days.
“Come back to the light!”
Ah, but it is indeed brighter outside, a brightness now magnified by the white masses of moisture now slayed across the branches of trees and pilled into forever drifts beside the walkways. Oh, have no fear, we will find you, Spring. We will find you someday…soon?
Lately, my thoughts about connection have turned to roots. In particular, the roots of ancestry. This is where grief is now pointing me, and I find my eyes eager to fill with the loss of separation when I think of where I have come from. I used to believe it didn’t matter. Later, I believed that perhaps the longing I felt inside of me came from past lives. I think, in part, it does, but that is not the longing that pulls the sorrow from my lids these days. It is the longing to find my roots in this life.
At the end of summer, I will turn 50. Instead of a party, I have chosen to travel. For many week I have contemplated where, even though the longing pulls me to Croatia. Beside me, I can see the ghost of my paternal grandmother nodding her head. Come home, she whispers, Come home to your origins. She is wearing a black dress, as though she is mourning with me, but I get the sense through her smile that this mourning can become a rebirth.
When I search for flights and places to stay, the old gnarled fingers of doubt take hold of joy and start shaking their habits at me. It is too expensive. Be practical. It is too long of a journey.
But, it is my choice to decide to shed the habits of lack that have been with me since birth. It is my choice to rebirth a different belief.
When I think about this return to origins, I think of how I used to believe these origins were never mine to claim. A foolish thought, perhaps, but the circumstances of my life have always told me otherwise. Not ever feeling as though I truly belonged to an extended family, even though I had three sides that I could, in some way claim, has taken a toll on my sense of connection. It has pulled up my roots and left me feeling a thirst that drains my eyes.
It has taken me some time to realize why I no long feel the urgent pull to escape to the ancient lands of Albion to find this connection I am longing for. It is not that the wild places of magic do not call to me still, but they are not the missing pieces I need to reassemble at this time. I need to, I am realizing at this half-century point of my life, rebuild the structure of my DNA. I need to weave the strands back into unity. I need to fall in love with my origins, and realize my origins have never truly abandoned me.
Come home, we are waiting for your return.
So for now, this is a post that waits to be continued. I am not going to question why my paternal side of origin is the one calling for home the loudest right now, because it feels right. It feels like a coming home.
Years ago, I walked into the office of a healer, and before she placed her hands on me she looked into my eyes and asked, “Why are you so sad?”
I recall being offended. I had not felt sadness that day, but rather excitement for this new experience I was about to try. But she was right. Sadness lives inside of me. It always has. This sadness, I am realizing, more and more, is something I need to address rather than ignore. Grief made a home inside of my cell before birth. Some of us are born into loss before we realize we have lost anything. And, so I need to begin at the beginning. I need to begin at the origin of cells finding union before separation.
It was never a secret that I was an unwanted pregnancy. My parents were too young and unprepared to have a family. Yet, first my sister was born, and then I. Sometimes, I find myself wondering what words and emotions my body molded into being as my cells became tissues, organs, and bones. A human molded into form without the tightly woven threads of love to support her came into the world as a girl named “truth.”
Rejection did not take the form of abortion, but of unwanted birth. And in those days before sonograms warned us of sexual organs, I was expected to be a boy. But love found me in a complicated way, and I was not given up. Instead, I was wrapped tightly inside the wants of my mother, who never seemed to understand that I had wants of my own.
And so I made her my everything, as all babies do who have the privilege of a mother-bond. I followed her through the leavings that became losses as grief began to make an uncomfortable home in my growing body.
The first leaving left everyone I knew behind except my mother and sister when I was two-years-old. That was the spring and summer we went into hiding with the Hare Krishnas. I never knew what it was like to wear PTSD in the body until four decades later when I was in a mantra class for yoga teacher certification. That day, while practicing the “Guru Mantra,” the traumas of the two-year-old girl living inside of me cried for release as my body shook and my mind swirled into the past.
“Why are you so sad?”
The words haunt me with their call for recognition, and so I follow their story and watch a two-year-old girl leave behind her father, grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, and friends. I watch her struggle to unravel the structure of DNA until her genes float unmoored inside of her wondering where they came from. Wondering why there is nothing to tether them home. And, I see her longing grow into a wave that she swallows over and over again until she can no longer swallow it because it has become her.
Grief is the manifestation of lost love, and I now realize how much it has become a part of my cells. It is the ripping apart of connection. A boat unmoored from its anchor, floating alone on the sea. Yet it is a human condition, and not a metaphor.
And, so I return to the two-year-old girl and watch her cling to her mother and the tangle of her wants. I watch her follow the only bond she feels she can cling to as they travel across the country to form a new extended family. Here she finds friendships. Some of which become the untethered loss named grief. Here she also finds new grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins, yet their love is complicated, conditional, and not woven tightly with the strands of DNA.
But it is this DNA that complicates their union. Her mother has chosen to love a man that is her cousin’s son. The cousin is her father’s nephew, but they are of the close age that they lived together as unhappy brothers for many years. I have been brought into a family that is not wholly welcoming because of the strains that can be imposed upon DNA. It is a tethering without want.
Yet, love finds me. I grow to love my stepfather who has made himself the sun in our small system of orbiting planets. I dutifully cross out the name of origin that belongs to my father, and learn to separate the strands of DNA inside of me without realizing those strands are beginning to tie knots of ache inside of my belly.
And I learn to love my new cousins that come into being, and their grandparents. Even the one who has a hard time looking at my face, as well as the faces of my mother and sister. I call them my own. All of them. I have a new father. I have a new large, extended family through which I share birthdays, holidays and the long weekend of Labor Day on a tiny island in Maine. But I will lose all of those connections. Another choice made by my mother.
“Why are you so sad?” The words tangle with my grandmother’s “Why did she give you up? Why did she choose him over you, and your sister, and her grandchildren?”
Because she made him our sun.
But I tried to stay in his orbit. Oh, how I tried, even when I watched unhealthy patterns that I experienced as a child take form in the grandparent-grandchild connection. I tried until I could try no more, but long before I let the orbit, my mother decided to disconnect from the family she married into, and so, by this law of attraction I have with her, so did I.
When I left the orbit, my mother stayed.
I have come to realize that reconnection after separation of these genetic bonds we carry inside of us in the form of family is like trying to reattach a limb with nerve damage. But I am trying. The loss of my mother, stepfather, and step-family has come with a re-connection with my birthfather, and some of my paternal cousins, aunts, and uncles. The love we share has deep roots, yet its unearthing exposes the grief of all the losses. All those birthdays, holidays, and celebrations not shared. All the words never uttered, the hugs never felt.
But, how grateful I am to have this reweaving.
I have learned, through grief, to love from afar, even those I have lost forever, because I know forever loss does not exist. In each loss that has led in a death of the body, I have found the reunion of the soul-connection. Each of these soul reunions have felt blessed as they do not carry with them the burdens of hurt. They carry only the light of love.
“Grief” in spoken words by Alethea Kehas, video credit attributed to Danilo Riba of Pixabay
I wonder if there is anyone who does not contemplate erasure, even if they have never experienced it first hand. When I was a young child growing up in an atheist household, I’d often find myself frozen in a self-imposed terror while thinking about nonexistence when I should have been sleeping. It’s probably safe to say that the concept of nonexistence has driven many lives towards various forms of religions, spiritual quests, and existential crises. After one has experienced existence, the notion of nonexistence becomes a little hard to stomach.
This is not a post about erasure after we die. It is about erasure while we live. It is a story about my personal experience with erasure.
Yesterday, through a Google search, I discovered that my step-grandmother had passed away at the end of last May, at nearly the exact same time my maternal grandmother died. No one told me about her passing. In fact, if you read her obituary, I don’t even exist as a part of her life.
My memory, though, tells a different story. A story of a little girl and her older sister flown across the country to be integrated into a family that wasn’t theirs. A family that struggled, some parts more successfully than others, to accept them. And one of the more successful people with that acceptance was my step-grandmother. She, in my memory, tried the hardest to accept my sister and me as her own, at least for many years. And, my memory tells the story of a girl who loved her step-grandmother and longed to be loved in return. I think I was, at least for awhile.
I once wrote a poem about this complicated love. The poem was about a little girl and her step-grandmother mixing together the ingredients of zucchini bread on a kitchen counter. I couldn’t, though, get it right, as much as I tried to revise and rework it. Which seems fitting, I suppose.
My mind has not erased this memory, even if my muse cannot recreate it. My body remembers the rhythm of the shredding of squash against a grater, the stir of the wooden spoon inside a metal bowl, and the dusty perfume of cinnamon filling my nose. I still use my step-grandmother’s recipe for zucchini bread. I even corrected my mother’s intentional error in the recipe book she gave me years ago, crossing out my maternal grandmother’s name and writing in my step-grandmother’s. Making bread with my step-grandmother is one of my happier memories with her. A memory I have chosen not to erase.
And there are more. The days when she took us on the “fun” instead of the “educational” outings that came with required essay writing. Those rare days when my step-grandmother, my sister, and I would ski through the snowy woods of the White Mountains, or slide with gleeful abandon down the water tubes at Weir’s Beach. My tongue still recalls the sweet pleasure of butter crunch ice cream at the end of a hot summer’s day…
And, that inner child inside of me still wants to be beloved.
Yet, she has been erased. Again. Erased from a life because she didn’t fit herself into it in the way that was expected. A product of conditional love. Still, I refuse to believe my step-grandmother and I didn’t share a love for one another. I refuse to erase the proof that lives inside of my cells. And so I will allow myself to feel this complicated grief, and try as best as I am able, to process its messy, uncomfortable form.
The last time I saw my step-grandmother was approximately 17 years ago, even though we lived, for most of those years, just 15 minutes away by car. I didn’t see her because that was my mother’s wish. Yet, my mother was not erased from my step-grandmother’s obituary. Instead, my mother erased her own daughters.
In the years before my maternal grandmother passed away, she would often talk about my mother and wonder why she had chosen my stepfather over her daughters and grandchildren. I could never answer that question because it was not mine to answer. All I could tell her was that it hurt me. It has hurt a lot of people in many different ways.
Everyone bears their own unique story, but love is the light that threads through all life. Instead of erasing the darkness, it illuminates its shadows and allows us to see them more clearly. I’d like to believe the nudge I have felt over these past several months to Google my step-grandmother was from the thread of love that comes from her. She, after all, didn’t choose to erase me. And, I have not forgotten her.
The Light Behind the Story 