Opening Up

As this country begins to gradually (not gradually) open up again, I’m wondering what this means to me. I’m happy for all of the people who now feel comfortable enough to resume outside work for a way to keep food on the table and those who have felt it unbearable to be trapped in their own spaces to finally venture back out. My existence didn’t change much because I live a fairly solitary day to day removed, while leading a self-employed life, with everything I do being largely here in my home. I feel very grateful that I am content to continue on in this way. However, my children, my husband, and many friends need “out” and I hope they’re able to get that soon. They are dismayed and somewhat concerned by my lack of needing an outside world and others can’t fathom my lack of energy toward a “distance” walk or meet up somewhere. The truth is that I am fine. Not terrified of the outdoors or suffering from some private depression or reclusive malady. Instead, it’s been a gift. It’s been a long time since feeling centered and having an inspired desire to work as consistently as I have during this time. Depression came to me post inauguration and stayed for a very long time, while the news and all its racism, vitriol, and violence kept piling high. This time of quarantine gave me personal permission to find my peace in my way and at my speed and thankfully I have reclaimed my creative footing. If I don’t have that, for me and only me, I am on a path towards being lost. It is the thing, outside of my family, which sustains me and keeps me hopeful: gives me purpose.

And in crept the mother/daughter story after all.

Back to work!

I thought I was needing to write something having to do with the mother/daughter story today but it has trickled out more as a gentle need to reflect on what it means to me, to “open up”. I guess my opening up has had more to do with the ability to write each day like an easy faucet, without cajoling or trickery, to be present in what is all around me, to continue to resist the bullshit within these private walls with rigor, to support my fellow artists & friends who have fought mightily against this virus, and to create. I suppose, more than anything, I have been spending most of my time opening up about my mother and our complex lives together and not together.

And in crept the mother/daughter story after all. Back to work!

Mother Daughter Legacy

More and more I consider what thoughts, experiences and feelings I hope to leave behind with my children. I first land on what my own mother has left me with and ponder the positive. Plenty of the other to go ‘round and all of that toxic related thought can be like a bad swill that seems to never leave my tastebuds.

I’ve primarily grown up reflecting on and basking in the fearlessness which my father possessed but he was one half of a whole and it is only more recently that I am able to look at my mother with the same reverence and regard. She too was fearless. First I think about how she ran after her passion for dancing and at a young age swallowed it whole to commit, with everything she had, to to be extraordinary, which she was. Fear did not keep her from pursuing a life of eating, sleeping and breathing dance nor did she shy from where those dancing dreams would take her. Next I reflect on her fearlessness to not only fall in love (which can be as terrifying as it is heavenly) but with this African American specimen of beauty and talent who was my father. Not only was he obviously “exotic” to a European classical ballet company, a beautiful dancer and a gorgeous man but she also said “yes” knowing of my father’s fluid proclivity and proceeded to marry him, have his children and leave all that she knew behind to follow love to the U.S. These are not small decisions to say yes to and I acknowledge the bravery and blind faith it took to make those life choices. And while her abandonment of me did not end up being the most loving, nurturing or lasting I must also acknowledge her feminism and rebellious action to choose what she felt she needed to do to survive. Good, bad or indifferent there is some important and impressive power in that. Could I do that? I would hope that nothing would ever come between the ferocious love I have for my daughters but that’s me standing in my shoes and not my mother’s. I don’t know all the intricacies and sorrows of her past or the daily demons she must feed to keep them quiet. A friend of mine once commented on how another friend of mine was not the best person to count on because she was “broken”. That day I kept my response to myself but I was silently furious with her judgment. Who is not, on some level, broken? Anyone who knows me and my journey with my mother knows that I am never quick to give a pass of total absolution or forgiveness. I am still working on that. However, I recognize “the unbearable lightness of being” and know that life can be hard and cruel but we are all struggling to make sense of it and try sculpting out of it some shape of a thing called happiness.

I think I want to leave my children having rubbed on them a bit of knowledge, a bit of street smarts, an access to experience humor, realizing their own potential greatness while also accepting their human imperfections, moving through their lives with a dash of grace, a fearlessness about hard work, celebration of their talents and passions, creating reasons to be festive, practicing big doses of kindness, to never give up believing in a little bit of magic, to embrace what is different and unique about themselves, to live in their female skin with power and confidence and reminding them that absolutely EVERYTHING that has been my story, their father’s story, their grandparents and those before them; from slavery to hash tags flows in their veins has left them with a rich and strong legacy.