Day 15
30 day/30 minute (minimum) writing practice
Maya and I journey East to Nova Scotia. Flair airlines. The lady checking us in says, ‘I got you’.
I wish I/we could say to Haitian brothers and sisters, “We got you.” But we don’t. We don’t got you. Wish I could extend ‘I got you’s’ to this earth that rumbles and roars and retaliates and does what she does cause she is being trampled by a traumatized species. We. We humans. Ruthless and unconscious and afraid and distracted and self-absorbed and afraid and angry and afraid and arrogant and ignorant and dotish and ruthless and relentless and afraid and and and and ….
I journey East with ‘I got you.’ on my mind. Dads fav tea cup holding mom’s flowers placed on his grave, me whispering beneath the giant maple and oak trees ‘we got mom, dad. we got her,’ while tiny wheat coloured crickets pop through the grass.
The trembling young man sitting beside me on the plane, “you scared too,’ he says when he sees maya put my hand in hers for take off. I want to take his hand but cannot. He trembles and moves his body in a synchronized calming ritual. We breath together.
Persian taxi driver sharing his love of literature at 5 am while taking us to the airport. I express a desire to spend the day with him talking books and writing. He tells me he will look for my book.
Theo’s gentle reminder to let mom be herself while i find a way to be myself. I think of Prentice Hemphill’s definition of boundaries “the distance in which I can love you and love myself simultaneously.” And recognize that too is an ‘I got you.’