My Story Yours
“I was born in a suburb outside of Pittsburgh, two blocks off the rail line - before it was abandoned, and then reclaimed for pedestrians and bicycles - so that the 7:45 and the 8:30 made audible bookends to my bedtime, first calling ahead, then calling behind, and finally the stuttered step of the cars over the crossing. We lived there five years, so I know that is one of my own memories, not just a story my mother…”
“… she doesn’t even remember. And my father was out of town: out of town and he never came back. Problem with the drink is it drowns you, so she couldn’t talk if she tried, and he won’t. So…”
“… you know the grandparents flew in, thirteen thousand miles, one thousand four-hundred and forty minutes, thirty-six thousand feet above the sea. It was a miracle, and there was your grandfather in all that heat, and your little face wondering about it all, carried way up high on his shoulder…”
“… well, it was several years before the revolution, you know, so I had time to make something of myself. That was too bad, maybe, because then I had to witness losing it all: name, fame, home. Family, too. I traveled east on the Express for… forever it seemed, and in the end, completely empty, I looked up at the signs along the street and couldn’t recognize even a single letter…”
“My father took me in his own hands. They told me I left my mother’s womb and my father was there to catch me…”
“… in the middle of the night…”
“… the midwife was there and told her she had a beautiful…”
“… beautiful it must have been…”
“… the arc of the crescent moon hung low in the sky, the sun just ready…”
“… ready to open my eyes…”
“… out of my mother’s womb with my eyes open and wondering,”
As though the love that reaches out of the heart belonged to those it touched. In fact, the love that reaches from the heart is the fruit that hangs ripe on the branch, or the cooling rain that waters the brow and the garden, or the ray of sun that warms the field and the breeze that carries a scent or a seed from one hand to the next.
In gratitude we receive what the world has offered, open it take it into us like communion wine, like the leaf-musk of Tibetan incense, allow it to flow right in until it touches the heart of a cell of the heart; it becomes part of our constant change, a step in our constant dance, a ripe fruit on the branch, water on the fevered brow.
“… we didn’t have jack, but we had her singin’. Every night she-bird came and sat there at the end of the bed singin’ til we didn’t hear her anymore…”
“… father was one of the soldiers who didn’t kill children, just made them, and then when the army took the village back they took his head…”
“… three wise women made a circle of their arms and they chanted the whole night without stopping once, and sometime before noon my mother came out of it, she just opened her eyes, and they placed me on her breast and she started nursing me. Nowthat is incredible, Makes you believe…”
“… well, he was stationed overseas, so of course it was just momma and gran, a woman and a woman and a woman. But when he came home he made up for lost time. I can’t count how many ball games and then how many dresses…”
“… they said I was trying to come out for 27 hours – twenty-seven! – must not have been too eager…”
“… and there is this picture of her looking at me, and me looking back at her; lost it during one of those moves, but I can remember it like…”
“I really don’t remember. But – well, here I am.”