REMEMBERING
“When did it happen?
It was a long time ago.
Where did it happen?
It was far away.
No, tell. Where did it happen?
In my heart.
What is your heart doing now?
Remembering. Remembering.”
Dear Hadley,
The first letter I wrote to you, in a notebook a bunch of years ago, was Mornings. It began with lines from Mary Oliver’s Why I wake early:
Hello, sun of my face.
Hello, you who made the morning and spread it over the fields.
Her words inspired that letter to you. And years before that, when I was struggling, drowning in the darkness, her words saved me. A life raft, a buoy:
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
I’ve carried her with me ever since. She keeps me company as I move through my days. You can find her in my living room—right next to the couch and on the coffee table. She’s in my office, on my bedroom nightstand. Close proximity for all occasions.
And she lives in my head. Her gentle, loving lines etched in my brain, woven into my thoughts.
She’s with me every morning, as I sleepwalk downstairs and flip on the coffeepot, impatient, slow:
Do you need a prod?
Do you need a little darkness to get you going?
When I’m being too hard on myself over a mistake:
You do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
When the opinions of others get too loud:
But little by little,
as you left their voice behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds
and there was a new voice,
which you slowly recognized
as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world.
She was with me during a particularly tough breakup many many years ago:
Someone I loved once gave me a box full of darkness. It took me years to understand that this too, was a gift.
And she was with me when, with eyes full of love-drenched tears, I first picked up my sweet baby Lenny:
Because of the dog’s joyfulness, our own is increased. It is no small gift.
In my office, tacked above my desk, she nudges me in the direction of creativity:
Be ignited, or be gone.
And when I’m stuck on a project? Out of words, fidgety?
There I was, books piled on both sides of the table, paper stacked up…
You’ve had days like this, no doubt.
And wasn’t it wonderful, finally, to leave the room?
When I wonder—as I often do lately—if what I’m supposed to want is actually what I want:
When it’s over, I want to say: all my life I was a bride married to amazement.
When I’m clinging too tightly to something that is not mine?
Oh to love what is lovely and will not last!
What a task
to ask.
And when a kiss sends a spark spark spark:
I know someone who kisses the way a flower opens.
This past Christmas, I gave grandma—your Gram Gram—one of Mary Oliver’s books. New and Selected Poems, Volume II. After spending every morning of this November steeped in it, I found the whole volume reminded me of her. The seasons, the birds, the trees, the thoughts on age and time. It’s the stuff that Gram Gram holds most dear. The more I read, the closer I felt to her, the more I understood my favorite, independent, strong-willed dog-and-plant-loving woman in her 90s, my favorite woman on this whole planet. These two poems from that book—which I’ll put here in full for you and for me—continue to break my heart open.
—
In Praise of Craziness, of a Certain Kind
On cold evenings
my grandmother,
with ownership of half her mind—
the other half having flown back to Bohemia—
spread newspapers over the porch floor
so, she said, the garden ants could crawl beneath,
as under a blanket, and keep warm,
and what shall I wish for, for myself,
but, being so struck by the lightning of years,
to be like her with what is left, that loving.
The Bleeding-Heart
I know a bleeding-heart plant that has thrived for sixty years if not more, and has never missed a spring without rising and spreading itself into a glossy bush, with many small red hearts dangling. Don’t you think that deserves a little thought? The woman who planted it has been gone for a long time, and everyone who saw it in that time has also died or moved away and so, like so many stories, this one can’t get finished properly. Most things that are important, have you noticed, lack a certain neatness. More delicious, anyway, is to remember my grandmother’s pleasure when the dissolve of winter was over and the green knobs appeared and began to rise, and to create their many hearts. One would say she was a simple woman, made happy by simple things. I think that was true. And more often that once, in my long life, I have wished to be her.
—
When January rolled around, I decided on a mantra for the year. I wanted it to be one word, but the loudest voice inside me was saying: Let go. It’s two words, but only five letters total, so it feels easy enough to hold. A personal reminder to let go of expectations, of judgements, of the beliefs and stories that no longer serve me. To shed the pieces of my identity that I don’t need to carry forward. A reminder to loosen my grip. No more white knuckles.
Which reminds me of another one of my favorites:
To live in this world
you must be able
to do three things:
to love what is mortal;
to hold it
against your bones knowing
your own life depends on it;
and, when the time comes to let it go,
to let it go.
As I type, it’s January 16, 2019, and Mary Oliver died today.
But, as the best ones do, she left us treasures that will long outlive her time here.
I can’t wait for you to discover her, Had.
And maybe, for you as for me, you will find her words help you discover yourself.
Or your grandma.
I love you, you wild goose.
Aunt Liz
