Grateful for N

I've gone through several names during this temporary visit to Earth. My parents wanted to name me Adam, but then I was a girl. So my birth name was Nicola. Shortened to Nicky, then Niki.
Then I got another name, actually a whole new persona, an alter ego, and this name was Rivka, not even a name I've ever liked very much. But many, many people feel tender and warm about the Rivka person: she is a doula and birth attendant, and a friend, and a teacher/mentor.

Toni Morrison has the same problem:
"Toni Morrison was born Chloe Wofford, and still thinks of that as her real name. She picked up the nickname “Toni” in school (from her saint’s name, Anthony), and Morrison was the last name of her long-ago ex-husband. To this day, she deeply regrets leaving that now world-famous name on her first novel". NYMag
"Myself is kind of split. My name is Chloe. And the rest is… that other person. Who is able to feel, or pretends to feel, or maybe really feels, or at least reacts to celebrityhood. " (The Guardian Interview)

So, we're stuck with names we didn't ever really grow in to, and I am always grateful for Niki, who keeps me grounded and reminds me of who I really am.

Niki runs, and sails, and plans things for next week, and says she'll be there in five minutes. She drinks a wee bit too much, and swears a little too much, and she wants to live in many places for the rest of her life, and thinks Rivka is a bit of a weirdo, and a bit of a wuss.

I am so grateful I'm me, and her, and them.

M is for Mother

My mother died almost exactly two years ago. I miss her pretty much every day. We didn't have a peaceful relationship, far from it. But I knew I could call her anytime, if only to chat about plants.

My friend wrote a beautiful piece when I let her know that my midwifery certification had arrived just hours before my mother died:

I sit here now, in Bali, at dawn, in the quiet as birds awaken... and cry for your Mother's passing. This is HUGE... as the Human StarGate that opened to bring You Earth~side, has been destroyed. One door closes and another opens, and you become a CPM. My head is shaking in wonder. I believe that when a woman's own mother passes, she becomes the new Wise One, a role you are very prepared for. And... how perfect that your CPM popped through as that door was slowly opening to allow your mother to slip through to the other side.  

The doorway between our world and the next, is one and the same, it swings both ways, opening for Birth and opening for Death... 

And this is what I wrote: Tribute to my Mother.

I hope that people can have a last peek at the smallish whirlwind that was my mother.

Grateful for L

Found

Woke with a memory of Lydia, when she was

just fourteen, with a loose-toothed smile and 

dirty blonde hair, looking at me like I could fix things.

She told me a poem in my dream, we were standing

by the water of the Thames, then we were older, and

the water was still green and grey, dirty. 

No one was dying yet. There were papers. It was urgent.

“Trawling the street in front of

the police station, Emma’s photo in one hand and

your letter in the other,

waiting for tomorrow.”

And Sara keeps asking me about the seeds, those white,

pearly things in my dirty hands. Like teeth. Like a broken but

immensely valuable gold chain, tied in knots, the kind you can spend

hours shaking apart, and still never undo.

Oh, all right, the seeds, the smooth, time-heavy warmth and Oh! 

the promise in those seeds, the seeds:

promises of flowers, Lydia with her funny smile, and lovely Sara, and Giotto with his broad loving backs, and those round, white, eggy, fragile seeds.

And the love that no one can ever paint just right, so we make do with poems, and flowers, and dreams, and still life, and real life.

Grateful for K

I am grateful for Kampala. I was born there, and that fact taught me a lot about preconceptions, judgement, belonging, wandering, colonialism, love, subservience, race, heat, memory, and dogs.

Preconceptions are sometimes funny. When my son says his mother was born in Uganda, they look at him in a funny way, and the cartoon balloon springing from peoples' heads reads: "you don't look very dark".  Also, people have thought that my parents were missionaries. That's a laugh too, especially if you knew my parents!

Judgement is one of those things we all do. I have my prejudices, although I'm not going to air my dirty laundry here, I know that I am judged for many facets of my existence. Being born in Kampala gave me an early insight into people's prejudice and knee-jerk need to pigeonhole.

Belonging, ah! belonging! A thing I've never felt. I spent my first three years in a paradise that was, as most paradises are, a touch unreal. From there I was swept off to Calgary, the land of snow, cowboys and Dallas gas men. I felt like the only girl in the whole town with crooked teeth and frizzy hair, and a dad who thought "puck" was a swear word.

Colonialism, that bugbear of the 20th century. I have though long and deep for much of my life about how colonialism has transformed our world. Of course, every generation always thinks theirs is the first to experience big events. I know that colonialism is an ancient practice that springs from one human's need to dominate another.

Love.

Subservience. In Malawi, when I was a skinny traveller eating mangoes, an older woman called me "memsahib". That was sad, and struck me down.

Race. Another place we can hang our coats of distrust, hatred, otherness, prejudice.

Heat! I love feeling the air at 37 degrees, or blood temperature. I love feeling sweat on my face, I love the sun, I love a rainstorm at 4pm, I love never having to wear a jacket.

Memory: When I finally returned to Kampala when I was 23, twenty years after I had left, I emerged from the plane and smelled a smell that felt like home. Fruit, sweat, woodsmoke, an unidentifiable perfume that the tropics emit. I went to the market in the center of Kampala - that was after Idi Amin but before the Ruandan genocide and before Kampala grew into the huge city it is now. I remembered the market. Nothing else remains in my conscious memory.

Dogs: When my mother was pregnant with me, her neighbor had two German Shepherds that were trained to kill anyone who entered the grounds of his house unannounced (read black Africans looking for work or begging). One grabbed her arm with his large teeth and wouldn't let go. My lesson learned was that dogs are very loyal, obedient, and can be killers. Ditto people.

Wandering - the opposite of belonging. Cavafy speaks better than I do on this one:

Ithaka

As you set out for Ithaka

hope the voyage is a long one,

full of adventure, full of discovery.

Laistrygonians and Cyclops,

angry Poseidon—don’t be afraid of them:

you’ll never find things like that on your way

as long as you keep your thoughts raised high,

as long as a rare excitement

stirs your spirit and your body.

Laistrygonians and Cyclops,

wild Poseidon—you won’t encounter them

unless you bring them along inside your soul,

unless your soul sets them up in front of you.

Hope the voyage is a long one.

May there be many a summer morning when,

with what pleasure, what joy,

you come into harbors seen for the first time;

may you stop at Phoenician trading stations

to buy fine things

mother of pearl and coral, amber and ebony,

sensual perfume of every kind—

as many sensual perfumes as you can;

and may you visit many Egyptian cities

to gather stores of knowledge from their scholars.

Keep Ithaka always in your mind.

Arriving there is what you are destined for.

But do not hurry the journey at all.

Better if it lasts for years,

so you are old by the time you reach the island,

wealthy with all you have gained on the way,

not expecting Ithaka to make you rich.

Ithaka gave you the marvelous journey.

Without her you would not have set out.

She has nothing left to give you now.

And if you find her poor, Ithaka won’t have fooled you.

Wise as you will have become, so full of experience,

you will have understood by then what these Ithakas mean.

C.P. Cavafy, Collected Poems. Translated by Edmund Keeley

It's the Joy in Your Heart

Today I am grateful for the joy I've felt throughout my life on this planet.

I, the grace blocker

I've been stuck at the letter "i" since the 14th. This is three days I've been thinking about things I am grateful for that begin with "i". Ink, because I love books. Invisibility, because I love magic. Irises. 

So, today, I am grateful for "I". I am grateful that I am me, and that I am someone I can actually get along with. 

I'm grateful that I've always been me, from the time I first remember, right up to this very minute.

Grateful for Home

Home is where the heart is. Over the years, we have built a few homes here and there. I've had the pleasure of learning how to build, alongside my husband. I've knocked down stone walls, built them up, placed large chestnut beams, tiled floors, and watched him work wonders with plumbing, electricals and the less fun side of building, like drywall and plaster. I'm not so great at masonry but it just takes practice.

Home is also the smell of baked bread, laughter, the wood stove, everyone yelling at each other, music, babies crying, the silence when everyone is asleep except for a newborn and a suckling mother, the ringing of phones and excitement when a big family visit is planned.

We've had big fights at home. We've cried, been desperate, lost people, broken things, had bad things happen. But its still our home, and I am so grateful to have one.