Friday, August 5, 2016

Twisted Fairy Tale



My Italian grandmother walked around the house in her old age and her old age was the only age that I can remember, whimpering. I've written this before, but I carry her in my cells. Pray that I die, she muttered in her thick accent, pray that I die. She fingered rosary beads. True. She was always of old age but not always old. She also pinched the skin on the top of your hand and played a sing-song game whose words I've forgotten as they were in Italian. I knew the Lord's Prayer in Italian, but I've forgotten it. For a moment I forgot the Lord's Prayer in English, and lord knows her meatballs and spaghetti were hallowed. I twist language to avoid what I avoid. It's unbelievable that I still can't deal with Sophie's bad days in a way that I believe I should be dealing after twenty-one years. I leaned over and wiped a drop of drool off the floor, a trail of drops from her bedroom. I had walked her out and down the hall to put her in her chair. I propped a pillow under her fragile elbow so that she didn't bruise her arm. She has tiny bruises on her arms and legs, the skin so fragile over bone. My grandmother was strong in body but looked soft. She carried bags and bags of groceries through the streets of Harlem and up the stairs to the apartment over the firehouse. She had burns along one arm. We were told they were scars from tomato sauce that had spattered while she stirred it as a child in Calabria. She never went to school. She was illiterate. I look soft but am strong in body. I read all day long for a living and because it keeps me alive. I read an article today about a black firefighter in upstate New York whose home was torched and burnt to the ground along with everything in it, including the two family cats. The man, his wife and two children weren't at home and are alive. The arsonist was a racist, a fellow fireman who had written him an ugly note a few days before. Niggers are not allowed to be firefighters. No one wants you in this city. And so forth. What do we do with this information? Who are these people who live amongst us? I feel a whimper at the back of my throat, and it burns. I felt it earlier when I leaned over to wipe the drool off the floor, the trail of drops like crumbs, my grandmother's rosary. I have scars, but you can't see them. Why do I feel fragile, like skin over bone? Why can't the drops of drool be crumbs that I can use to find my way back?

16 comments:

  1. So excellent, so elegantly woven, these pieces with those. You are so beautiful, you and your children and the fragility that allows you to find the words you find. xo

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  2. ah, to be a super human, Elizabeth. No exhaustion, no pain, no dark days. If only. I understand the day in day outness of care giving. It takes a very strong person to do this necessary work. It also takes someone who is compassionate and keeps herself open and soft. I think you've got all those qualities, and more. Wishing you a better day, tomorrow, or even this evening perhaps. A deep breathe, a hand on your heart, the knowledge that people care and appreciate your honest writing.

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  3. Your writing, as always, is beautiful. You are beautiful. Hang in there, Elizabeth. Sending love. x0x0 N2

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  4. Your words, your images are not quite like anything I've ever experienced before. Perhaps some of that is because what you write of is often nothing quite like anything I've ever experienced before. But then you bring these words and images to me with such familiarity, such strength, such clarity that I see what you see. I hear what you hear. I know what you mean.
    And thus, light pours into my heart and my mind like the light in that picture pouring into your home, bathing your daughter and I see everything more clearly than I did before.
    This is your true gift. The world is lucky to have it.

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  5. I'll bet your feelings go back and forth each and every day.
    Like a ship sailing an ocean that seems to go on forever. A wave goes up, a wave goes down. Still and serene and stormy seas. Sometimes you see land, sometimes you don't, and ever once in a blue, blue moon - you dock.

    I wish I'd known your grandmother, she sounds like the salt of the earth.

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  6. Dear Elizabeth,
    I hear you. I love you as well.

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  7. You are fragile and you are strong. I feel the same way often. Unable to go on, unable to not go on. Surprised at how fragile and how strong life is all at the same time.


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  8. Reading your words. Listening to your voice.Taking this all in.

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  9. There is a GoFundMe acct to show that good volunteer fireman and his family that people care: https://www.gofundme.com/2hunioc

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  10. I read about that black firefighter whose house was burned in upstate New York. You know it slammed me in the gut. You know why. My son, the firefighter-medic. May he be safe from fires of all kinds. Sometimes I can't quite believe the world we are living in. This post is brilliant, the way it goes from micro to macro and back again, harnessing what is real, what matters, what breaks our fucking hearts.

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  11. I do believe 'should' is the cruelest word in our language. You deal with Sophie's bad days the way you always have - consistently and with love. That is enough. The fact that you don't do it with clinical detachment says something about the care you take. Unfortunately, I think that it is this type of detachment that allows people like the man who burned the firefighter's house down to do things like that - if we don't feel connected to others in some real way, we are capable of treating them horribly. But often, the people who are detached from everyone else have decided that it is too painful to be in relationship with those who need care or are struggling. That is what sets you apart - you know that it is painful and yet you have decided that it is something worth doing. Bless you.

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  12. You are a writer in the truest and deepest sense, that is for sure. xo

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  13. Beautiful writing. You're channeling your grandma and her marinara.

    XX Beth

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  14. Oh sweetheart. Sending you love.

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  15. I admire your strength. It takes great strength to admit when one feels fragile or overwhelmed; especially when one is usually an absolute powerhouse of purpose and will.

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