This moment: RIP, Prince

I stand outside myself when I remember the moment.  I see myself, just out of the shower, hair wet, towel draped loosely around me, when my phone pings the "illuminate" ringtone which tells me my sister needs me or wants to make me laugh.  I don't rush to it, know it will be there until I check it, and put on some underwear first.  The rest of my clothes are on the bed but I don't grab them just yet, instead I pick up the phone to read the message.

Prince is dead. Devastated. Mess.

And I am naked except for the underwear I just put on and need more clothes because I feel so naked but also need to call her.  I want to be dressed.  Because I will remember this moment and want to be dressed.  I don't want to be crying in my room, which I am now doing near hysterically, as I fumble for the TV remote and the phone.  I reach my sister and the news channel at the same time and she is saying yes but I don't see it on TV so maybe it is not true.  Because why would it be true.  Because it can't be.  And I keep putting on my clothes but also a blanket over my still wet head to wait for the news on TV.

It's there.  A still of Prince from Purple Rain and that 1958-2016 at the end.  The marker of time.  I think, "I'll die in your arms under the cherry moon."  I think, "Until the end of time, I'll be there for you.  You own my heart and mind, I truly adore you."  I think, "Baby, baby, baby...what's it gonna be tonight...."  The first songs that coming from my subconscious to my head.  He's gone.

The moments, hours, days, and now weeks that follow I move in a slow jam of molasses.  I am going through life's motions but the pull at my throat and the corner of my eyes and my solar plexus and my chest don't let me forget that I feel profound loss for someone I don't know but who helped me discover myself.  The journey he led me on at various stages of my life by sharing his cannot be overstated.  I've heard it said that when one is, say, tripping on psychedelic mushrooms or acid, a good guide, someone who has already experienced the effects and visuals, can help navigate the emotional roller coaster, the drama of the alternate universes, and the mind-blowing imagery of that sojourn.  My life with Prince's music has been such a trip.

Some nights I react to his passing in the lower chakras.   I actually drop to my knees with ache and longing.  I feel untethered and disconnected, empty and ungrounded.  Prince gave me license to be in possession of myself and to connect to the energies, physical and psychic around me.  I felt the hair stand up on my arm, my heart beat faster, my head spin, my legs go weak in the landscape he created.  I dared not be ashamed of my otherness, my sexuality, the magnetic pull and attraction between souls.  

"They feel the heat, the heat between me and you."  

There are no words for what the 15 year old me felt when she first heard those lyrics.  I felt like I'd been told a secret, that something lurking inside would be impossible to hide when I discovered my soul's mate.  I don't think I'd ever stood face to face with a boy at that time, let alone felt his heat, but I knew something wicked and delicious and terrifying would happen when I did. Songs of love and longing had not been so visceral for me until that moment.  So much of Prince's music took me through the full range of emotions, love, sex, heartbreak, pleasure and pain.  The sacred and the profane.  The spiritual longing, the seeking, and the command he took on stage, in the studio, on the screen made him both pilgrim and guide.  

I loved that Prince did not apologize for his blood, sugar, sex, magic (to quote the Red Hot Chili Peppers).  He was all those wicked things and a vulnerable man cub. He was music's Mowgli walking through the jungle of the human psyche in all its dank, dark, delicious earthiness.  He was sexy and naked and sweating and sweet and looked at us all with those wet eyes and everyone fell.  He was so real as to be surreal.  So truly enigmatic that no matter how often he was asked to define himself, he believed in not doing so, he was.  That he is gone in a blink takes away a pocket of that magic.

I'm haunted by his passing as much because I loved him and his music at a time when I was flowering into my own being as that I, and so many others, had no idea how he was suffering.  I am haunted by the man alone, by the tunnels I imagine him passing through to get from studio to studio, the corridors and chambers of his secret spaces.  I feel stunned by all the work amassed, the work never heard, the work, the work, the art, the music that he kept making even when his fans still connected to the tried and true, the music that we knew.  I imagine him alone, in the quiet, with his god and his muse, creating and hurting, and being distinctly human on a quest for the divine.  I consider my own pain, my own loneliness, my own torment and compare it though I know I shouldn't.  I think of an artist in physical pain and addiction and imagine the sorrow.  And then the lyrics flood me and everyone in my life really for infinity because we have to listen to his music until I say stop and I have not yet.

And in this moment in my life, waiting at a stop light, mindlessly folding laundry, sending a message, reading, or dreaming, the songs come back, pop into my head like mile markers.  You've come by here before, they say.  Remember when you ached, longed for that boy, fought your own demons, wanted, needed.  Do you remember when you were alone?  When it was another time?  Another place?  And it was quiet and you were naked and out of the shower and had no idea which way the day would go?

I feel guilty for taking so long to let go.  My mood is revealed by what's playing.  One is warned whether or not to ask the question, show me the Beanie Boo, or ask for another something by my dancing or my silence.  After the call, I slowly, silently finished getting dressed.  I'd turned off the TV at some point probably to hear my sister better as we talked.  The house was still.  

If I gave you diamonds and pearls
Would you be a happy boy or a girl
If I could I would give you the world
But all I can do is just offer you my love*

(Prince and the New Power Generation, Diamonds and Pearls)

It hadn't been one of my favorites but there it was.  And I sang it out loud to break the silence.  And as I'd felt so many times before listening to his music, I wanted someone to offer their love.  

RIP, Prince Rogers Nelson

(c)  Copyright 2016.  Repatriated Mama:  Back to the Suburban Grind.

Thelma and Louise and Me

After the whirlwind week between Christmas Eve and today, I found myself with the first free moments last night.  The girls were passed out in my bed, tucked in after having had their first up-'til-midnight celebration of the new year's arrival and the following day's parties and good wishes tour through the neighborhood.  Flicking through channels, sitting snuggled up on my couch with a blanket and a glass of wine, the quiet of the house brought the present upon me.  I was no longer in my head planning for the next day, reflecting about those passed and things missed or not done, I was right there.  And my birthday was coming in a few hours.  I got to Thelma and Louise just as they were coming upon J.D., the young, handsome, brand new Brad Pitt, but I knew the story like I know myself.  Thelma and Louise, like The Color Purple and Terms of Endearment and The English Patient, is a spot on my timeline, a moment of clarity and insight that I take pleasure in revisiting, no matter the tears and splatter that are sure to come. 

And on the eve of my 45th, I looked with new eyes on my story.  Every time, every single time, I love the charm, naiveté of Thelma.  Her hope, her wonder, her journey (with massive shock and disappointment sure), her young soul charm and adorability.  I beg her to see what I see before she gets into trouble, does something stupid, thwarts their chances and every time she does not.  She is so cute, so sweet, so shiny.  Oh, Thelma.

But I am Louise.  Cautious, well-prepared, ordered, organized, playing the cards close to the vest.  The thrill I get as this woman tidies her house before going away for what she expects will be a long weekend cannot be understated.  The way she keeps herself in check, always on high alert, even when she is having fun is familiar.  Her composure, her comportment, her trembling under that reserve is mine.  I can be zany and funny and irreverent.  I bet Louise was once a long time ago. Sometimes.  Before Texas.  Which she wants to avoid at all costs, does not want to revisit.  It's the past and threatens to tear her wide open again. 

Thelma and Louise takes us all on this journey across the gorgeous landscape of this country, showing us the beauty, the majesty, and the shifting contrasts and shadows made from that luminous glow.  As these women let their masks fall, revealing themselves, their internal struggles and realizations and their skin, their human skin that they live in every day without make up, naked, we see the terrain change shape, see danger in the shadows, feel the ominous pull of life's magic and mystery as they sort out the mess of their circumstances.  I have put myself in their shoes, lived vicariously through them every time.  But this time I wondered, what if indeed one of these women were actually me.  What if instead of two beautiful white women who find themselves with snowballing legal and emotional problems, Thelma and Louise or Thelma or Louise was a black woman.  Was me.  Would anyone be willing to take the journey with me? Would anyone want to come to my rescue?  Would my choices be seen as heroic or tragic?  Could I make that drive through the country, through the Midwest and Southwest of the United States as I tried to figure out how to right the wrongs, the mistakes and the impulses that got me into hot water?  Would I go over the canyon or be knocked off long before my soul made that arc, reveled in its evolution and transcendence? 

And then the tears fell harder even than usual when I realized that though the archetype, the Everyman (woman) journey, is indeed for everyone, I doubted that most would want to come along on the ride with me.  It's where we find ourselves today or at least where I find myself.  Deep in my heart, though I love with everything I can, I wonder if my love is reciprocated truly.  In our "post-racial" America, I now wonder who wants to hear my story, any of our stories, to really listen to them without trying to place it in a specific genre, a special place, an "other" category.  Does anyone believe that though our stories can be and are similar in so many ways, that we'd still like to see ourselves, be seen ourselves as part of the larger tale?  That ours are not peripheral, supporting parts but starring roles too?  I don't ask the questions to receive knee-jerk, fumbling reassurances.  I ask because of how much it hurts me to even have to.  Because the doubt has crept in and made me feel that whatever it was I thought I was leaving to my daughters has been eroded and that they will have to fight to be seen too. 

I ended the year struggling to be open and available to people who were more than comfortable telling me how I feel, how people of color are/feel/act/think/behave or who told me they didn't see what I was showing them, telling them, expressing, shouting about, crying about, and were quick to walk away or shut down the dialogue with all sorts of "proof" and "post-racial" mumbo-jumbo.  I lost people, let some go and allowed others to let me go when I took off my makeup, my mask, and showed my skin, my human skin, and it was real and pained and flawed, and could not be tidied.  When I realized that even I, a friend or a colleague or acquaintance, could not make a convincing argument for recognition or compassion or even dialogue. 

After years of trying not to "drive through Texas," not to go back to some painful truths, to reveal the scars I'd covered with my tidy, poised, secretive composure and protective stance, the circumstances had changed.  I couldn't get out of this.  Though I'd take many roads to try, they all still seem to end at the canyon.  So here we are.  I am hoping in the new year that we can talk to each other.  That the seekers of the shiny and new, the naïve and the fresh can take the hands of the weary and the wary and the jaded and the wounded and forge a direction together.  I hope that we are able to step back to think about and consider what each other says rather than react and attack.  I hope that I am not met with theorems and postulates in place of real stories and truth and connection.  I hope that we can find some kind of common group so that my story is as interesting, as worthy, as real, as true, as archetypal as any other.  I want us to see ourselves in each other, longing more for what is similar, rather that foreign or strange.  I want us to journey in all senses of the word--physically, emotionally, spiritually. 

I love Thelma and Louise and wouldn't want to change their story.  I road with them through their map, followed the lines that lead them to themselves and to their realizations and truths.  I will again. Their journey has informed mine and they have inspired me to seek out hands to hold, to revisit old places and find undiscovered territory, maybe even some truth.  Out there in that wildly powerful and spiritually haunting landscape, we all discover the essence of who we are.  If we let ourselves.


(c) Copyright 2015.  Repatriated Mama:  Back to the Suburban Grind.

Gone for the holidays

I haven't allowed my husband to see me cry in that ugly, snot-dripping, hyperventilating way since we left Barbados, where that sight was a common occurrence.  As in most relationships I have had throughout my life, I am cautious and read the other person's reactions before I go on willy-nilly just expressing the hell out of myself.  That's part of my raisin'.  I know that my real feelings, the true strength of them, can blow the roof off the house and that, generally speaking, "nobody got time fuh dat."  When I am all love and light, when I cannot give enough of myself, when I pour in and cannot see the space between myself and another person (most often my children, sometimes my husband), it is so good to be around me.  I am mistaken for easy-going and good-natured and happy go lucky to those who have only experienced me this way.  Oh, how I wish that I were.

When my husband told me last night that he would be leaving to work during the Thanksgiving holiday not on Wednesday as expected, but today, Monday, immediately, I just went silent.  I wasn't even holding it in.  I was stunned.  I just slipped back behind myself, behind the knot in my heart, in my stomach, the knot that ran the cord of all my chakras from my coccyx to the crown of my head, and I disintegrated.  I could not look him in the eye.  Did not say a word to him.  Suddenly, I was very, very busy.  There was laundry to be done, knapsacks to be packed, lists to make and double check.  I got to yelling at the girls to clean their playroom and mumbled on about how they would all be sorry if Mommy was not able to take care of everything like she does.  But I did not cry.

I didn't cry because I always tell myself, as I have even written here many times, that so many others have it worse--soldiers' families, police officers, essential emergency personnel.  They do not get to spend holidays together.  They find ways to endure.  But our situation is not like theirs.  Because we, WE, we? chose this.  Because he is a private chef, my husband makes much more money working the holidays than he does during his regular schedule.  This is because I know, we know, everyone knows that taking a man away from his family during this time is a huge sacrifice and that he must be well compensated.  For years I have accepted, even preached, the value of this package on our family's financial situation, have asked friends and neighbors to help me give the girls the best Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year's possible, have sat up, without tears, putting toys together, writing notes from Santa, eating the cookies and carrots, then gone quietly to bed next to the girls hoping I've pulled it off again.

Without tears because if I let myself feel what I am really missing, I may never stop crying.  I have spent the better part of our relationship longing for him, wanting him closer, wanting him to be with me.  Long before there were children, the game of cat and mouse was being played.  I chase and he runs or at least hides. He might hide behind work or his culture, his language or his accent.  Before we were 'we' he hid behind his bad marriage, a miserable divorce, financial and professional fears, it doesn't matter.  He is hiding.  He does not want to be seen all the way and certainly does not want to see me for much the same reason as I cannot cry in front of him.  And so I hide too.  Hide behind the busy work, the busy-ness of being a mother and a wife, of hosting holidays without him, don't dare tell him I'd rather have him than the income, too afraid he will say "but we need it" which will make me second guess how important I am, we are, anyone is to anyone.  And that is not the way I think.  It cannot be.

When you have chased for love your entire life and it sits down in front of you to catch its breath and then runs off again, it is so easy to take up that game.  I am playing again.  It is so familiar.  My experience of love in my youth is the reason I try so hard to show my children how to give it and receive it.  I don't want them on the prowl for anything that looks like it, seems like it, but just isn't.  I don't want them to suffer more than they have to for love and a peaceful heart.  When they cry for their father, express how much they miss him, need him, want him, I support them but have not shown them how it hurts to be apart.  I don't want to blow their minds.  I don't want to blow my own.  But if they never see how to love from us, if they learn only to hide, to camouflage, keep stony-faced when they are full to bursting, they will be doomed.  They will disengage from their families, disconnect, and forget to tell the people they love just how much so and forget to beg them to stay.

Today was a bad day because Didier left this morning, a busy Monday morning that required too much attention to too much else, so I kissed him quickly and said goodbye.  It is the first of too many goodbye kisses that signify he is gone for the holidays.  We have done this for years and it never gets easier, but it looks the same every time.  A fairly innocuous kiss goodbye and then days or weeks of separation where we pretend that being apart like this is normal.  We ask how the other is doing without really wanting the answer, without really answering.  The ugly, twisted face came hours later after school drop off and three stops at three different grocery stores.  What I don't know, what I wonder, what I hope, is that somewhere he is making the ugly-crying face for me.  That sometimes he is the cat and I am the mouse and that somewhere in the middle we can meet, hold on, and stop this vicious cycle.


(c) Copyright 2013.  Repatriated Mama:  Back to the Suburban Grind.