Below is a message I just received from an amazing woman/mother/poet/professor/cousin. The way she makes words wrap you up and hug you in just the right way is breath taking. I love you Jackie and yes, you know. xoxo! Some of Us Are Holy On the day that Maya Angelou died, I didnt know yet. And when I read my cousins wifes words (black, a woman, does it matter? I think it does.), when I read her words, a Facebook message that confessed I cannot believe my husband didnt know who Maya Angelou was. I cannot believe that I never told him about her myself, I didnt catch the was. She and I are close and we are connected and I knew that she knew that I of course knew who Maya Angelou was, but she didnt know that I didnt know yet. I didnt answer her. Not right away. But when I did, later, I said, I didnt know why you told me that. Now I know. My cousins wife is beautiful and triumphant and fierce and casting about for permission to rise. To keep rising. Her husband looks like my twin and their two daughters look like all of us. On the day that Maya Angelou died, her oldest turned ten and caught Hibachi shrimp in her mouth while she looked on, making a video that I would later see. I know her well enough to imagine how she stood astride the convergence of the two occasions. On the day that Maya Angelou died, my friend, (small, blonde, and fierce. Does it matter? I think it does) knew to tell me right away. She knew that I wouldn’t likely know yet and she knew that I needed to, right away, for me, yes- but also because she wanted me to know with her. She sent a text (one high school English teacher to another, one woman to another, one mother to another, one reader to another- does all of that matter? It does.) She wrote: My god, Jackie, I am shaking. Maya Angelou has died. I am trembling with the news. I called her and asked, Can I come over? I wanted to sit in her bright parlor, Tiffany blue, grey, and so much white, and search the television for stories. I didnt have the news at my house and I wanted to sit next to her on her couch and be a part of the reckoning of this large passing. She said that of course I could, and I let myself in and there she was carrying a laundry basket and looking around for her new kittens. She had been crying or was about to cry and we are careful around her feelings. When her mother died, we werent seeing very much of each other, but I drove to her house and sat as close as she can take and I asked her to tell me what it was like. We share broken mothers and the fear of being mothers to daughters- but only she has a little girl, and so I only partly understand. Tell me, I said. And as best she could, she described the terrain. On the day that Maya Angelou died, we found a beautiful black newscaster interviewing a weeping, lamenting, black professor of poetry (does it matter that she was the newscasters former teacher, that the professor was a real live friend of Sister Maya? Does it matter that she wept and spoke in verse on CNN? I think it does.) It took a few too many channels and she hadnt located the kittens yet and she hadnt begun or finished crying for her mother, so we sat beside each other on the white couch and wiped and wiped at our eyes. I asked if she had taught Caged Bird. Of course, she said. Me, too I answered and we knew enough of what that meant to leave it alone. I forgot to tell you, I said. After I read your message, I watched a fox come out of the woods, walk purposefully across this wide stretch of parking lot and dart into the woods across rt 179. I didnt think it was Maya, but I did think that it was a reminder of mystery and I also - in that instant- I thought, no I realized what I already knew- Maya Angelou is in no way removed by this death of hers. I felt certain of the fact that she had swooped out of that body that held her, animated her, wounded and taught her all those 86 unapologetic years- and that she became the expansion she had always been. I said all of this to my friend, who didnt question my account and I also said, as I watched her wipe eyes over the blurred edges of varied loss and grief and friendship, Im not at all sorry really. She did it all didnt she? She lived. She lived and lived and kept making all of that language, kept saying all of those words and well always have it. It already happened. Shes everywhere already and we pass her words like Shakespeare, like Einstein, like Ghandi, like Mother Theresa- distilled experience and undiluted wisdom that gives and gives and what can we do but think of her rising now- having done her work so fully and so well? We stood at the kitchen sink drinking down glasses of water and I listened to her tie her mothers passing to the kite of Mayas death. And out came the nods that we exchange over survival and endeavoring to do better and again her daughter and my relief that my child is a boy. And I stopped her and said I really love you, you know, and I watched her wince almost imperceptibly at the declaration and then both soften and stiffen at the same time as she reached for me and said, Awww, I love you, too. And I said, Im glad it was you who told me. Im glad we found the newscaster and the professor and that we were all together in your parlor.” And then we looked and looked and finally on hands and knees found the kittens curled together under a heavy armoire on the second floor, asleep. On the day that Maya Angelou died, I played Youtube videos at the dinner table for my son (beautiful, watchful, full of feeling. Does it matter that his mother, too, is a poet? I think it does) so that he would know, or begin to know her and I paused over the inevitable recounting of the rape that kept her silent all those years when she was the age he is now. That night I curled against my lover (he is very young, and very strong, and very kind. Does it matter that my world can no longer be contained by what I used to believe? I think it does.) and I said quietly into his neck- tell me which of these Angelou lines you like best. I offered first: When people tell you who they are, believe them. Then- People will not remember what you said, or what you did, but they will remember how you made them feel. And he gave it polite consideration although he knew right away and he whispered his answer into my ear. - J. Welsh 5/29/14
Posted on: Fri, 30 May 2014 00:01:30 +0000
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