Altitude
We’re back in the mountains today, the kids and I. Coming up out of Redding I have this feeling come over me, or maybe it’s a release. It’s as if someone has brushed their hand down my back quietly. I feel myself settle deeper, more easily into the seat as I navigate the two lane highway over the mountain. I look forward to the person I will become when there are no buildings higher that two stories as far as you could drive in the time it takes to get a good nap in.
I realize that as soon as I enter this place I am inspired again. I write and I write, even without a pen or computer. I write in my head all day long. I’ve been thinking about writing and what it is, why I do it. Why I do these blogs. Is it pure vanity? There are sentimental reasons, but they are not alone. I rule out the vanity mostly because of my need to reveal the ugliness. Maybe not brave enough to unearth the true shame, but I do tear the sheets off, I am proud of who I am, even in my poor moments of which there are sometimes many. I don’t know why I write like I do. Or why I have built up momentum as I’ve aged. At 13 I wrote in moments of despair, at 19 only when assigned. It seems now I write in great spurts that can last months. I wonder if at 70 I will write through the night, or for weeks at a time. What I know is there is this part of me, that if met and introduced to would say, “Let me tell you what I’ve seen.” Would say this over and over, because that is what seems to drive me, that sentiment.
This has made me realize why the loss of one particular friend was so tragic to me. Instead of writing in my head I often wrote to her, about all I saw. She and I were like-minded in ways and nearly everything I told her, she heard and felt. This might have been a well-practiced trick, but for awhile I felt the echo of my life and suddenly everything had a place to fit, like a good home. Now I write this blog and maybe hope that it echoes somewhere, with strangers or people I love. More close to the truth is this:
I see myself in fifty years, old and white-haired, bedridden like in a tragic novel from two centuries ago. I’m sure I will wear an eyelit nightgown and sip from a hand-painted teacup. Beside my bed will be one of my boys, depending on the week maybe. Either one will be grown, beautiful, with a life full of love and contentment. He will hold pages of all these days I wrote down. On my deathbed maybe I have revealed these diaries to my sons and now they read excerpts of them to their old mother. And in moments of reading my thoughts, sentimental and sometimes tedious, one of my boys will laugh at something I found funny. Maybe something he said as a child. Or maybe one of them will tear up a bit reading of their great grandmother’s death, or the vague memory of their grandfather’s funeral. Maybe it will bring back to them the smell of baked sweet potatoes and incense. Maybe Cai will have a flicker of a moment when we watched from behind as their father ran his hand gently over their uncle’s bald head, their too dark suits, the crush of velvet two seats down. Maybe something of some of these words they will read to me and laugh or remember and in that moment I will feel that same echo, let it lull me to sleep.
Of course maybe none of this will happen. Maybe I will never grow old or maybe my sons will not ever know about this. Maybe if they do I will have made mistakes along the way so that they would never consider reading to me, or wouldn’t understand. Maybe they will not be the poets I see them as. But I can’t really consider all of these possibilities. My sons are walking poems to me. They are blinks of nature, like magic. I will keep writing all this down believing that they will hear me one day and it will give them something. I will teach them about the beauty of words and hold my breath, hope they see it too and that one day I will hear an echo and sleep more soundly because of it.
I realize that as soon as I enter this place I am inspired again. I write and I write, even without a pen or computer. I write in my head all day long. I’ve been thinking about writing and what it is, why I do it. Why I do these blogs. Is it pure vanity? There are sentimental reasons, but they are not alone. I rule out the vanity mostly because of my need to reveal the ugliness. Maybe not brave enough to unearth the true shame, but I do tear the sheets off, I am proud of who I am, even in my poor moments of which there are sometimes many. I don’t know why I write like I do. Or why I have built up momentum as I’ve aged. At 13 I wrote in moments of despair, at 19 only when assigned. It seems now I write in great spurts that can last months. I wonder if at 70 I will write through the night, or for weeks at a time. What I know is there is this part of me, that if met and introduced to would say, “Let me tell you what I’ve seen.” Would say this over and over, because that is what seems to drive me, that sentiment.
This has made me realize why the loss of one particular friend was so tragic to me. Instead of writing in my head I often wrote to her, about all I saw. She and I were like-minded in ways and nearly everything I told her, she heard and felt. This might have been a well-practiced trick, but for awhile I felt the echo of my life and suddenly everything had a place to fit, like a good home. Now I write this blog and maybe hope that it echoes somewhere, with strangers or people I love. More close to the truth is this:
I see myself in fifty years, old and white-haired, bedridden like in a tragic novel from two centuries ago. I’m sure I will wear an eyelit nightgown and sip from a hand-painted teacup. Beside my bed will be one of my boys, depending on the week maybe. Either one will be grown, beautiful, with a life full of love and contentment. He will hold pages of all these days I wrote down. On my deathbed maybe I have revealed these diaries to my sons and now they read excerpts of them to their old mother. And in moments of reading my thoughts, sentimental and sometimes tedious, one of my boys will laugh at something I found funny. Maybe something he said as a child. Or maybe one of them will tear up a bit reading of their great grandmother’s death, or the vague memory of their grandfather’s funeral. Maybe it will bring back to them the smell of baked sweet potatoes and incense. Maybe Cai will have a flicker of a moment when we watched from behind as their father ran his hand gently over their uncle’s bald head, their too dark suits, the crush of velvet two seats down. Maybe something of some of these words they will read to me and laugh or remember and in that moment I will feel that same echo, let it lull me to sleep.
Of course maybe none of this will happen. Maybe I will never grow old or maybe my sons will not ever know about this. Maybe if they do I will have made mistakes along the way so that they would never consider reading to me, or wouldn’t understand. Maybe they will not be the poets I see them as. But I can’t really consider all of these possibilities. My sons are walking poems to me. They are blinks of nature, like magic. I will keep writing all this down believing that they will hear me one day and it will give them something. I will teach them about the beauty of words and hold my breath, hope they see it too and that one day I will hear an echo and sleep more soundly because of it.
