nina turns 60

cactus

It's been a tough week. Something that I thought was going to be good turned out to be, well nothing, really. I have this Christmas cactus that is a cutting from my grandmother's big giant one. And I am the worst with houseplants. Which is why people now try to give me succulents and see if at least those might be able to survive under my care. One year the cactus put out a bud! It sat in its wee pot doing its thing and miraculously not dying, but it had never had any flowers. I was ecstatic that it had a bud, and I watched it get bigger every day. I was so excited to see this thing bloom, I was sure it was going to be gorgeous. I didn't care that it was only one bud. I was happy to see it. It grew and grew until finally it just fell off. It never opened. Just fell off onto the window sill. 

I went over to my friend DeeAnn's house awhile ago, and loaded up with wine and cheese and cherries, we sat outside and drank and snacked and talked about the near impossibility of finding a relationship that is better than what we have on our own. It was a testament to the lives we've each built for ourselves, our quests for interesting and rewarding work, our creative passions, the activities we engage in and places we like to go. We aren't dependent upon men for our survival or even to make a good life. How lucky we are to live in this time when that is true. How frustrating that it seems to raise the bar so high. 

Among the many profound changes that happened to me after my son was born, I found I had a severely limited tolerance for bullshit. My priorities were suddenly very clear, and the stakes were high. By the time the baby turned one, I had left his father. Yes, you can draw a line between those two points. 

I have re-potted that Christmas cactus, put it into a bigger container, given it fresh soil, some fertilizer. I thought I might kill it during the transplant, but it has adapted to its new home. It's even put out some new leaves. I suppose it might actually bloom one day, but I'm not holding my breath. If it does produce a flower or two, the soft colorful petals will only last a short time before they too wilt and fall off leaving only the resilient segmented cladodes.

 

 

second beach

Been feeling so desperate and wild, full of longing and pain: old wounds that I thought were healed spinning back around to grab me by the throat, a new object of desire carves a hole inside me and shimmers just out of reach.

The only solution is to go to Second Beach. Even in the holiday traffic, the holiday crowds. If you walk far enough south you will be the only one there. You can then start to pry open the rusted bits of your mind, let the wind and salt and the far horizon inside of you, be reminded that you are here only so that everything can pass through you. 

The wet sand perfectly reflects the sky. Your wild mind starts to settle beneath the relentless surf. The wind there to hold your tired body. The light breaking apart and falling softly over everything. The shadow of a cloud scurries in front of you as you walk. You could walk forever. You want your bones to become sand, holding the shape of anything that presses into it until the water comes and smooths it out to mirror again.

wild heart

My wild heart. Always pointing herself in the wrong direction. Always hungry, always following along where my body takes her, and my body is even more reckless and wanting. Still trying to prove to myself that men like me after a lifetime of hanging out with younger and cuter women (ah, the older sister syndrome). So comfortable in the land of the unrequited. Spinning in place, sometimes maybe taking a step or two toward some semblance of balance, of health, but then right back to it. How I love my own misconceptions, the stories I spin that keep me feeling miserably comfortable.

Brigid used to say, "Someday you'll just get tired of feeling bad."

Brigid used to say, "Writing will save you."

I brought the piece I'm working on, the infancy of my book, to the revision workshop with Lidia and Zinn and all these other incredible women over Memorial Day weekend. People were kind. They were beyond kind. They loved my work. They responded to it just as I hoped readers would respond. When I am there, surrounded by them, I feel so much more myself, so much more a writer, than I can ever muster here at the end of the road at the end of the peninsula. I don't care about men, or whether they like me or want to fuck me, or if I will ever love one for real again. I am consumed, but by something that is real and good and true. I obsess over the work and not over a beautiful mouth that I'll never get to kiss. 

Maybe it's just a matter of pointing our damaged imaginations in the right direction, of digging a channel in the dirt to guide the water to the harvest and not the weed. Of knowing what to fertilize and what to pull out before the roots grow too deep. Remembering that you must plant every year, every season—that the work does not stop. Knowing that a wild-hearted seed might take root and bloom because the fertile soil is indiscriminate. You will be forgiven for burying your face in its intoxicating scent and breathing deeply before pulling it firmly from the damp earth.

 

Morelia

I returned to Morelia. I traveled through time and turbulence and I sat at a table in the Portales drinking coffee with my son who would not exist but for that city. I cried. I cried when we arrived, I cried when we left, I was overwhelmed with moments of joy and tenderness many times. I couldn't remember where things were. My memories did not follow the map of the city, but were layered one on top of the other like the blocks of stone that build cathedral walls. Or perhaps more like walls that have fallen down and the stones topple over one another in piles and pyramids. 

Nobody remembered me or cared very much when I went to visit the school where I taught English. I didn't really expect to be remembered, but I felt let down all the same. Alejandro teased me about expecting nothing to have changed when I was sad that the tables at the Portales weren't still covered in the same colorful tablecloths. I kept calling him by his father's name. 

We stepped off the plane, and there they were, Alejandro's grandparents, and his aunt Laura and her husband. We were greeted with wide open arms and kisses, everyone so happy to finally meet this grown up child that they had only ever seen photos of, the son of their only son. We shed layers of clothing and walked into the bright sun, smiling for photos. 

They fed us delicious homecooked food, corundas, pozole, enchiladas, sopes. We sat in hot living rooms and made small talk. I re-learned to ride the combis, the public transportation system made up of hundreds of mostly VW vans painted with different colored stripes representing routes. We took the Rojo 1 from our hotel to Angela and Daniel's house. They gave us gifts; they showed us the pictures of Alejandro as a baby, and of my parents, and of Alejandro's father and a younger me that they had on their wall. 

I was reminded over and over that I have so much, and I waste much of it; they have little and they share it. But what I wanted was to give Alejandro a deeper, truer, richer sense of who he is and where he comes from. And now he has that. Morelia and the people there are a part of him and always have been but now he knows it, he can feel it in his bones. 

This is the exact place where I sat when I met Alejandro's father. This is the place where he began. It does not remember me anymore, but it has learned his name; Morelia recognizes him as one of its own.