Today, the faces staring back at me through time, black and white photographs, eyes wide, curious, wondering what we’ll do next.
They were babies. Bible study in the church basement. At home tucked in their beds. In the schoolhouse learning to read. Sitting on the porch next to mama and brother and sister, waiting for pop to come home. Grandma to come home. He never did. She never did. They never did.
Because of this apparent infraction or perception of a wrongdoing, or, plainly, truthfully, now anyone can see, a lie. He crossed the street at an “odd” time. She lingered by the door “too long.” He sued a man who murdered his cow. She tried to register to vote.
All in the name of maintaining power, a social order, a racial hierarchy, a state of fear so strong it caused the great migration northward. One of the largest migrations of people. People who had already been kidnapped. Keep moving to outrun and to outlive.
When slavery was declared dead it had to go underground, under the skin, under a new name, under the boot of a policeman’s foot, under the shovel of the chain gang, under the narrative of a super predator, under the war on drugs, under the extra detentions, under the beliefs and cultures and mores of a society based on stolen lands and stolen bodies.
We can trace the lynching of men, women, and children through this campaign of terror that still haunts this country.
A ghost
It doesn’t haunt as much as it remains.
It still is.
A thin veil.
A pallor.
A mist, hovering across the Alabama landscape in the early morning, blanketing as far as the eye can see and the mind can dream.
Of the past.
Feel the dirt, the sand, the clay in the present. So many colors of the earth. All collected from the hundreds of lynching sites around this god-forsaken country.
Those men, women and children now returned to the earth.
The future yet unwritten.
Written after a visit to both The Legacy Museum: From Enslavement to Mass Incarceration and The National Memorial for Peace and Justice.
I sit here, typing away on a keyboard, connected to the power grid and connecting a series of microchips and parts I don’t know the name of, always hoping that my computer is backing itself up into the cloud. Whatever that means, not cumulus or cirrus. The battery warm because I think I ultimately have a lemon on my hands, the hard drive completely lost less than a year ago. And to what is my memory now? But, nevertheless, it’s what I’m doing. Trying to preserve my version of things, the stories I’ve learned, am learning, the way I see the world. For what and for whom I’m not entirely sure. Maybe just for myself, to know I existed, I was here, I told my story. In narrative, still life photographs, exquisite moments of beauty.
When just two weeks ago I was existing in a different space and time, outside of the concrete and the poor air quality. Away from the winds blowing the stray trash around, the street noise from Benders and the sirens from the largest fire station west of the Mississippi.
In a place, a big house, that smelled like the cedar holding it together, dimly lit with just a few key overhead lights casting shadows, two-dimensional formline art carving its way up to the ceiling and the house posts, each ovoid telling the story of creation, of the founding of a people who were there before the ice age, on whose islands exists a rare white spirit bear to remind them of the time when it was cold.
Singing, dancing, celebrating, breaking bread, beating hand-hewn sticks on a fallen log, lovingly, painstakingly carved until it became hollow, the perfect drum to echo in and out of a heartbeat, a heart beating.
All that time on the land and the water, rocking side to side, hearing stories. Stories about a person’s self-esteem and self-possession. Stories about a person’s regard and disregard for the lowliest of animals, the rat fish. Stories about what exists in the deep sea. Stories about medicine, where to find it and how to respect it. Stories about the possibility of change, a tightrope walk across the chasm between evil and good. Stories about listening to the silence because it always gives clues. Stories about social norms as it were, the lack of hierarchy and guns and monuments.
Stories to carry across generations. Because when there is plenty of food to carry a people through the winter, and the darkness and rains keep them inside, by the fire whose heat provides light, and there is no written word, stories become the skeleton, the base of all the flesh and blood that follows.
They are not anyone’s stories either. They are given, with permission, shared with a purpose, credited to the clan house, the family, the individual who before conveyed the story.
And to hear them, to receive them, considered a gift. A sacred contract. A witnessing.
To listen, absorb, carry forward to whoever will come next.
It’s not romance of what it means to be Indigenous. It’s not the white gaze on an alternative worldview.
It’s focus. It’s DNA. It’s memory. And it’s alive.
They make me stop, pause the chopping of whatever thing and the folding of the whatever thing and the walking whatever thing to whatever place it should live.
Counting aloud to herself
Saying “awwww” while she pats whatever soft animal or doll is in her reach
Finishing a book with a “mashhh” when she means “mas,” “mas libros”
Telling a fantastic story – while kicking her leg in the air – about the moto she saw pop a wheely down south van ness during rush hour, a long string of sounds and head nods, ending with a big “YEAH” as a flourish for emphasis
It’s with urgency all of these things are spilling out of her, all sorts of sounds and punctuation and exhales forcing their way over her tiny lips
Before, only using her hands to sign and gesture wildly
People – when I mean people, it’s the well-meaning seatmates on the plane, the fireman in the coffee shop, the clerk in the grocery line –
People tell me, oh watch out. The toddler years will get you. And if they don’t, the teen years will.
Right.
Parenting by strangers, parenting by observers, parenting by society.
What am I missing, I think?
What existential dread in the land of parenthood should I be feeling next?
Or are people telling me I should feel?
And I simply don’t.
Instead, I settle in and listen to her in the room next to me, chatting about the Pooh bear on her toothbrush, as she sits on the mat on the cool bathroom floor.
You’ll be two tomorrow. And for a moment, as I was rinsing off the dishes from dinner, looking out over the neighborhood and the trees swaying in the foggy breeze, I felt hollow, for a flash, a prolonged moment, an exhale. Is this called grieving as they grow?
You’ll never again need me as much as you do today. Or a year ago, or now two years ago when you arrived, blinking, serious, curious, wise, stopping breathing for however many seconds the nurses were ticking off, to quickly, succinctly, efficiently teach us how it feels to have our hearts stop, to remind us that we’re all small mounds of sand ready to blow away in the winds of living, of striving to carve out a life well-lived.
You’ll never again be as small as you are today. Or a year ago, or now two years ago when you entered this liminal world. At whatever time it was, when the stars were high in the sky dissolved behind the cerulean blue curtain of the midday California sun. I often tell you the stars come out at night, but that’s not true. They are always there looking down, lyrical in their dances, year after year, always coming back to the same spot – a flash frame – on the day and time you joined us. I hope that knowledge one day brings you quiet comfort.
I hope I find ways to tell you the truths, all of them.
That you are not alone, ever, that the stars are with you, unless you want to retreat, to be in the corner of your own mind, for a moment, as I am now overlooking the neighborhood and the trees swaying in the foggy breeze. And the first star of dusk makes itself known, sequins of light shimmering on the delicate horizon. I feel full, for a flash, a prolonged moment, an exhale.
I tuck Celeste in to bed, shutting the door behind me
And walk across the hallway, stopping under the skylight
I look up
The breezy shadows dancing off the walls
I wonder if it is midday
It’s that time of the year
when
Time is stretching, unfurling, unfolding
As if it has nowhere to be
As if it can dangle its toe into the flowing river to cool off all afternoon
As if the nostalgia of summers gone by and ease and youth and small problems are all we have
I look up
And it will have been three years since he died
As if the bright green spruce tips emerging at northern altitudes and the stone fruit ripening on the trees in the valley and the grapes darkening the tips of the vines up the road
The wall of fog looks periwinkle next to the pink sky above it. It’s the view from my bedroom window right now, as the sun is setting somewhere over the Pacific.
It caught me, one of those moments of awe. Where I feel above and beyond myself. Humbled, outside of my head and even my body.
The wind coming off the western fog bank blowing the tree branches, now thick and full of their leaves, in a gentle sway back and forth and back again.
All of these elements working in concert. A symphony listened to and watched out over my backyard.
An old co-worker, a friend, really, but one I haven’t seen in years has a deep meditation practice. I think of him often, and did just now, and recall this scene in my mind. Casually, over the bright green recycled glass countertops in the work kitchen one day, me dipping a tea bag in hot water and him cradling a steaming cup of coffee. He said, “if you pay attention, really pay attention, day by day, hour by hour, minute by minute, second by second, and even divisions of a second, our lives are on a roller coaster up and down and down and down and up up up up up up and down fast and up again. Constantly.”
We hear from a friend that the surgery didn’t go well. We trip up the stairs. We spill this cup of coffee down our favorite shirt. But then it cleans up instantly. We get cut off in the parking lot. But the cashier genuinely compliments our smile. We can’t find a ripe avocado. We pass two mentally ill people suffering on the street and keep walking. We burn the muffins and nail the chili. Our chosen politician loses. Our hometown sports team pulls off a nailbiter. We witness a child being born. We behold a tunnel of wildflowers after a pause in the drought. The list goes on and on and on. All in a given day.
He was making the point with me that is what meditation is teaching us. To notice. To notice all these things, the good and bad and how they brush up against each other and look each other straight in the eye and hold hands and sit on a see saw and sometimes are even so intertwined it’s hard to tell where one stops and the other starts.
I thought of this today, as I had read a meme (do we read memes?) about how the fight or flight response did not evolve based on receiving a snarky email. I know this, but, still, when that email comes up from that one person who is a jerk, an excess, an agitator, I still feel it creeping up my face, distracting me from all the other things that in that one moment are good news. I’m breathing. The air quality is clear. The native honeybees are multiplying in the frontyard. The snap peas are ripening on the vine. The polls are promising. The addition of herbs freshly cut from the raised beds – the fennel, tarragon, and thyme – brighten up any salad. The construction is going to start in December at 18th and Mission. The celebration of my mom’s 75th birthday today is joyful. The spruce tips I foraged in Alaska just made a beautiful pesto.
Downs and up and up and up.
I always think of that opening Mary Oliver line in the “Wild Geese,” about not having to be good, not having to walk on our knees, dragging ourselves through the pebbles and dust of the desert, dehydrated, hallucinating, apologizing over and again for being deeply feeling humans in a deeply heartbreaking world. All because we are paying attention.
I still don’t meditate. I still don’t take a deep breath when I get the email. I still don’t take a step back and notice how the protons and neutrons are held together, make atoms, elements, things, places and people, rotating on a dense ellipsoid, revolving around a ball of fire in the middle of nothing…and everything. All together, at the same time.
But I’m trying.
And the branches keep swaying as the sun is now fully gone home for the night.
I called home today – the home home. The home of my youth, of my family, where my mother sits. On the porch swing, admiring the weather, the bright hues of tulips and yellow jonquils blooming, how green the grass is, what 70 degrees feels like after a long winter. My phone call went to voicemail. Or I guess we don’t call it voicemail when it involves the land line. It went to the answering machine, where my Dad’s voice greeted me – suspended in time, maybe 10 years ago, perhaps less.
I didn’t cry. I didn’t hang up (usually I quicken to call my mom’s cell phone – or, worst case, wonder if I should phone the police because where would she be right now?). I didn’t move. I didn’t breathe.
I let it really wash over me and for those 12 seconds, I got to pretend that life was as it always has been.
Hi Dad.
What I wouldn’t give for that simple sentence to be returned.
After the beep, I hung up, set the phone down in my lap, and I let myself get carried away on the cloud of that voice.
His voice was clear, strong. Deep but not a baritone. Warm.
In my memory, his voice could be stern, sharp and punctuated, like any voice. But mostly, it was rich, full of a life force, that liked to take its time and soak things in. And the mischief often in his eyes could forever be heard in the teasing lilt of his voice.
It occurred to me that my daughter, 21 months into her young life, has never heard that voice. The voice that would speak millions of words to me over the 40 years we had together, impart guidance and cajoling and parenting and wisdom and exasperation and answers and questions and poems and quips and songs and coming up with some confident statement on-the-fly that was likely some creative interpretation of the truth about living. Which is, I suppose, what we are always doing all the time. My dad just had a grander way of delivering it.
All of that, and she doesn’t know it.
I sit and wonder, at what point do I play it to her? Do I start now, and have all the snippets and videos and voice memos become baked into her memories too, so that she won’t ever feel like she was without him? So that she won’t ever feel like there was a before and an after?
Today, of all days, my mom got back a recordable storybook, “A Charlie Brown’s Christmas.” She and my dad created it for Mike and me in 2011, the first Christmas we were married.
A few months back, when tidying up the shelves, I found the book, long forgotten and buried under other books. My heart skipped, as I fumbled it open and pressed the button to hear the recording. It kept catching, no discernable words coming out. I quickly got a screwdriver and pried open the battery case. Only to discover the batteries surrounded by blue crystals, acid leaked out, dried up. I cleaned and messed with the springs, installed new batteries. Still no luck.
When my mom visited last month, I brought out the book from the safe place I was storing it, folded in a clean cloth in the closet. Seeing her own handwriting on the book and the dated year, she breathed in quickly and exhaled a soft “Oh.”
We were in a predicament. But my mom and dad have always known people. She said, “let me take it home and ask the sound guy or maybe Glen Sies. I think he did some work for someone on electrical things and refurbishing old radios or tvs before. I heard he still tinkers around. Maybe one of them can figure it out.” This is when I most miss my home home and people who know people who know how to do things.
Tonight, I did call my mom on her cell phone, as she sat on the porch swing, listening to the trains come and go and kids on bikes get fainter as they rode up the street. I imagined the sun setting at her back. She asked, “Did you get the video clip I sent? The book came back.”
After getting Celeste into her crib for the night, I made a cup of tea and settled into the pillows in my bed. I opened my phone and found the video clip. Now it was me breathing in quickly.
I pressed play. Loud and clear, my mom said, “The name of this book is a Charlie Brown Christmas, by Charles Schulz. A gift for Meaghan and Mike.”
And then my dad, “and any future little Campbell kids. Read to you by Mom and Dad in 2011. With all of our love.”
I set my phone down in my lap again.
I think to myself, “yes, I will play this. I will play it all for her.”
After he died, we stayed with his body, in their bedroom, in the house they have been in for 50 years. For hours. In and out. Crying, laughing. Staying busy, being idle.
He had on a favorite grey Notre Dame t-shirt, cut apart in the back so it could easily slip across his arms and chest. A feeling of normalcy, of cozy, of himself, rather than a hospital gown, provided by hospice, worn by others.
I thought at the last minute, while the funeral director was there with the gurney, “Oh, Dad needs to put some shorts on.” We had tried to keep him comfortable and just had a blanket draped over his legs for the last several days. We grabbed a pair of well-worn navy blue mesh shorts and slid them up his thinned and bruised legs. Off he went.
It was only yesterday, now nearly 3 years since that day, that my mom quietly reminded us, “Dad wanted to be buried, to be cremated in that suit he wore to your wedding. With the Kelly-green tie. We didn’t do that. We had a few other things going on.” She half-sighed.
So, wherever you are, Dad, transcending on and on into the air and the dust and the water droplets that have broken our years-long drought, beyond the limits of the atmosphere and into the universe, going back to the star from which you came, we’re holding onto that tie for you.
keeping abreast | keeping a breast 