I was then, in that hospital room, dense about a lot and specifically about my grandmother. About her clout. It would be a long time until I would learn about the statistical error she corrected all those decades ago. A minor detail, but one that wows me. Quiets me proud. A facet of her character that reveals my grandmother’s second ply. She was a scrupulous woman; compulsive about precision. She wasn’t remedying those statistics in order to serve or fight for the rights of peasant women—outwardly, anyway—but because work was getting indexed improperly. It was how my Thama operated. What pressed her. No wonder my father insists on repeating stories about my grandmother. On remembering her like a zipper stuck on its slide. Chameli was a force. She had kick in her until the end, despite grumbling to me that God had forgotten about her.
My father’s repetition, especially with regards to his family—especially when it comes to excellence—is fundamental to his speech pattern. As though his thoughts accrue but cannot prosper without checking in with what came before. Like his body domiciles the past. His tone is, time and again, commemorative—which I’ll admit can grow tedious, though with parents it’s good to keep one’s cool. (Something I have yet to learn.) To heed one’s frustration, because aren’t we all disquieted by what we’ll leave behind? What we won’t. Aren’t we all overrun by the blotting-out that is inevitable? How every year we claim that this year went by faster. What was realized? Did I connect? If I’m mostly—often only—the sum of what I’ve noticed; should I keep better track?
Did I discern between admiring and enjoyment? Did I try on a dress? Even once? Did I disturb some peace? Experience some peace? Was I strong physically? How many times did I say yes when I should have said no? Can someone, please—anyone—devise a “no” that clarifies how no serves many reactions? How it can deliver beyond its blunt, single unit of speech? A “no,” for example, with less glare. A shallower, vaporous “no.” A “no” that riffs off “nope” but is more nimble.
Did I drink less? Sleep more? Eat more? Was I a body? And did the boundaries of my thighs and the span of my arms inform my flight, or were they limbs only? Swinging, stretched, crossed. Folded around me and furthering that feeling of deadweight when I wake up in the morning and think, Again? When I wonder if it’s possible to deplane from this week; from this period in life.
Did I listen to Tidal in its entirety instead of “Shadowboxer” on repeat? Illmatic in its entirety? The Miseducation without skipping over Lauryn’s interludes? Did I recover from the minor tragedy of gifting someone I love earrings she will never wear? Did I finally admit defeat and stop photographing sunsets?
Did I properly mourn my mother’s maple tree? She loved that century-old tree. It was, in a word, providing. When the city cut it down in February because of a vertical split they deemed dangerous, she sent me an email with the subject line: “our tree—RIP.” Attached was a picture from the scene outside her living room window. Our snowy front lawn powdered with sawdust and two city workers in neon orange, severing fallen branches into smaller logs. The tree’s stump looked irrelevant. And even though I couldn’t hear the violent, hacking buzz of their saws, I could. A vibration that tapers and starts over, tapers and starts over, like a terribly fatiguing and stubborn goodbye. This will be my mother’s first summer without her maple. But summer is not intended for withouts. So what now? As with all endings, nothing suits. In July we’ll play Scrabble on the balcony; unprotected, in view. A sudden rainstorm will no longer feel abundant. The green is gone. That magically indistinct quality of dancing leaves and their shadows, and how it’s impossible to tell where branches begin, end, and reach, unless a squirrel darts or a breeze gets rowdy. Will we miss the tree or move on and grow accustomed, and tolerate this new opening as an understanding?
What new habits did I develop to cut myself off from the world? When will I learn that those habits are, it’s possible, delimiting me from innocuous connections. Someone to sit next to on a couch too small, flipping the pages of a book too big, where the pages graze my sweater’s stomach, and I can’t pin why, but the whole small-big ratio of pages grazing my sweater creates an impression of secrecy.
Someone to wish well before his trip to Tokyo; to call when I can’t sleep. To share a bowl of blanched almonds with, sitting on stools—small again too—that force my knees to bend at right angles, which feels somehow athletic. Which is, by nature, suggestive.
Someone to provoke me; to watch Game 7 with; to accompany to a gallery where I don’t care for the art, but oh, how I love being in the vicinity of someone I confide in daily, whose posture is distinguishable, even under the lumpy mass of her winter coat, her scarf, the infantilizing fit of her boots. When will I learn? Nobody knows you’re thinking of him, of her, of our walk along the Thames, eight years ago I think it was, after seeing Peter Doig’s white canoe at the Tate, unless you call or write and say so.
This year, was I competent? Did I referee my whims or elaborate on them? Did I express gratitude? Feel the potency of night? Accept an offer to stay over without reciting the many excuses I use to screen my doubts?
How quickly did I quit my diary? How many ballet documentaries did I watch? Re-watch? What is it about ballet documentaries?
Why, come spring, do I get restless and talk at the people I hold nearest, dearest, instead of talking to them? Did I love extravagantly? Kick the ground, rip the lining, get loud with bourbon, rest my head on someone’s lap and fall asleep? Did I paint? Or use pencil crayons to shade the shy carriage of a pear? Did I enjoy the short-term taste of believing an idea I had arrived at was rare?
Or maybe it’s beneficial to abandon abstractions about how it’ll all come into being and subsist, alternatively, on touch, smell, Doreen’s laugh, Satyajit Ray, a poem’s scald, my stepmother Lisa’s compassion—her Irish scones too. Miniature awakenings that, with any luck, open one up to love or let go of one’s servitude to external validation. Miniature awakenings that keep me vulnerable to moonbeams and allow feelings to pathfind. To return to an original springboard and jump off again. And then again. Remember the feel of wet cement under your feet at the pool? Of shivering in line and climbing the ladder. The splash! How ordinary it became to splash. And then climbing back out, and shivering and dripping. The cool redundancy of doing the same thing over and over because summer’s inculpability meant it was possible to become your own encore.