Skip to main content

Parents

Going to a funeral today. The father of one my girlfriends. Her father went in for some outpatient procedure last Tuesday, was released on Wednesday, collapsed in his bathroom on Thursday. I've only met Lori's father once or twice, but have been friends with her for more than a decade. We descended on her this past weekend with rum (her fave) and plenty of tissue. We didn't need the tissue, surprisingly.

So, I'm not ready for today. I haven't seen her unraveled, but I know she's going to be a mess and I won't be able to help. Add to that, i can't help but think about my own parents. I'm blessed to still have them (and to actually like them a lot); I can't fathom -literally canNOT compute- the concept of either of them not being here.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, ashes and dust and mortals and all that. I'm just not ready.

There's been a story or a poem about my parents scratching underneath my skin for a while. I'm just not sure how to approach it, how to wrestle everything into a theme, or one topic, or a particular form. Essentially, my mother taught me that I'm capable of absolutely anything and my father taught me how to implement and analyze everything. A pretty good combination, I'd say. As people, my parents are brilliant, good-humored, good-natured, and very much in control of the ghosts that haunt them. A pretty decent matching set, I'd say.

So, I'm not ready for today, on many levels. After today, though, I hope these poems/essays/stories will break my surface and find their way onto the page. Ashes. Dust. Mortals.

dnk

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Dear Deborah Brown Community School ~ It is quite a feat for a small charter to make national news.  It is perversely disappointing, however, to read that a charter school led by two black women is systematically persecuting students of color for celebrating the natural textures of their hair. As an educator, I understand and value the impact of comportment.  Indeed, many ills of the contemporary school environment can be aggravated by lax guidelines on conduct and appearance. Nonetheless, your policies against natural hairstyles levels a much more serious attack against your students.  Rather than teaching them how to be “presentable,” your policy forces the concept of “acceptable” at a disastrously early age. Yes, the school should vigorously mandate “neat,” “modest” and “respectable.” These are essential expectations.  Denying the option of neatly, modestly and respectfully showcasing the heritage of their hair, however, reinforces a wickedly...
4 comments
Read more

Kissing Jimi's Sky

I was born in 1969. Around the time I was finally sleeping through the night, Jimi Hendrix was resigning to a darkness of his own. He died the following fall at the age of 27, when I was one month shy of turning one. Had I been an older girl, wide-eyed with the turbulence and fireworks of the times, I might have easily joined the pilgrimage of women yearning to stretch themselves and their lives naked beneath his musician’s trance. By the universe’s exquisite design, I was not yet capable of rolling onto my back. I’ve held barely a thumbprint of Jimi Hendrix’s story until recently (another reason why we should vote for Netflix in 2016). I was enthralled by his lifelong romance with music, to learn he was never ever without his guitar, by the enormous chunks of obsessed practice hours and simmering stock of chitlin circuit years that brewed the ingredients of his genius, by the divine precision of daring to reach up and seize his star just as one was whizzing above his head...
Post a Comment
Read more

dashaFEST 2013

It's here again, dashaFEST.  What started as a single event exactly 20 years ago has evolved (exploded?) into a month-long celebration of ME. Wait, I know how that sounds.  Let me explain. I've always enjoyed throwing parties. The theme. The games. The food and drink. Stirring around my divergent circles of friends and associates inside the same space.  I feel a small tug of pride when unlikely acquaintances can trace their connections back to my living room. Over the years, that one, overstuffed birthday party has unfolded into a calendar of events. A women's only event. An artistic event. A group activity.  A party. Something for my daughters. Something for my immediate family. A performance showcase of some kind. The enterprise is wholly ridiculous, and I am fully aware of this.  But giving myself permission to be absurd for a change is, actually, part of the appeal.  For what it's worth, I'm not obnoxious about it.  I don't keep tabs of who...
3 comments
Read more