Your birthday fast approaching, and I am thinking about you more and more. 37th, the one you will not celebrate. No yellow mug with Isabella's little hand dipped in green paint and printed on as a present.
I am watching her to grow without her mama. She's such a sweet, loving child. Smart, adn a beauty just like you. She looks a lot like Danile too but it's you I see, even in her hazel/green eyes.
Living testimony that genes are not water, Iz tries to order all of us around, control freak already at 2! No worries, though. I make sure to instill a grain of humor in response to her bossy ways, making her doubt that there is one only truth, one only way (hers). And yet I cannot stop smiling when I see her acting up at the playground, a mini-mama version of you.
I recall our never ending conversations about serious matters. You made me sweat through interrogatories, pressing on like a pitbull with those talk-show questions... "Who was the man you loved the most?", "why did you split then?, " how can you still be friends?", "Would you veer go back with him?"
Man! You spit out questions in a row like bullets out of a gunmachine, worse than a shrink cornering her victim on the couch. But it was fun to watch how you were able to fish out of me answers that I never even knew were there, before. What a gift you had, being so naive and self-assured at the same time.
Isabella sports the name you chouse for her more than ten years ago. I remember you telling me the whole story of your children, the two kids, boy and girl, you were suely going to have. What sports they would play, what colleges they would go to. All planned, decades before things could even happen! I still cannot believe how you were able to entangle me in a fierce discussion, begging you not to homeschool your (unborn!) children. I was driving us through Sequoia Park, cutting the curves to avoid upsetting your stomach... Not pregnant yet, but the children had already graduated from Columbia. They woul ddance hip hop too, to balance it out, and practice kung fu for confidence and ballet for grace (!).
I promised you on your death bed that I will help Isabella to grow up strong , graceful, passionate and loving. My way, you know, is to let a child find her own way, don't "guide" too much. Children know better. It worked with my own son but that is not the reason to repeat the experiment. It is more a matter of being true to oneself. I am not the kind who can write down how many minutes of sleep, how many grams for a meal ( girl, were you funny always carrying around that little notebook full of baby-data!)
I encourage Isabella to be spontaneous and express herself, follow her heart, be generous and enjoy as much as she can. And Isabella is a natural at the art of dancing her life. She loves dancing and singing. You'd be so proud to see the way she shakes her little bootie, teaching the moves to her toys, the stuffed little bears and dog-dogs and monkeys.
According to the Chinese calendar Isabella is an ox, like her dad, but I am 100% sure that she is instead a monkey, her favorite animal together with Moki (not "a dog" , whatever dog, just "my dog").
You were telling Isabella how good she has been to you, how happy she made you, just before saying goodbye to your own child. You have been so brave and generous protecting her, not letting her see your 37th in a hospital bed, a sick mama who could not be healed by all love, not even her little girl's love. It was, it is, a fucked up destiny. But you ended the story before the dreadful ending written on your chart, a move not many, not even few could just think abot without getting cold feet. Once you made your decision, you acted upon. Determined, consistent and unafraid. What a legacy to leave behind, Eizabeth! What a story to be told to your girl when time wil come!
She started asking abot you more, no longer content of holding on the picture on your dirver license. She used to carry it around like a charm. She now voices exactly waht she wants : "Mama. Photos:No! Door. Mama: door". Here comes the very bad part, telling a 2 year old that her mama will not come to the door.
I kept the dress you wore the first time I met you, 13 years ago. It will help me to tell Isabella the story. Her mama's story, that I know she will ask me to tell her a couple of million times, as she does with the Sesame Street cartoons when we play them on my computer. "Elmo: more!", "Big Bird, Cookie Monster: more!". It soon will be "Mama: more!", and I am sad that it cannot be "Mama again", in flesh and bones.
I know that you are here, close to Iz, watching her grow anyway.
There was a double rainbow in the September sky some nights ago,a lightning storm over the San Gabriel Mountains. Unsual Los Angeles weather that made me think of you.
Unusual things happen to extraordinary people. Your daughther's unusual upbringing will make her a very special person. Not diminished. Enriched by all the talents that she is already starting to unfold.
There is a golden pot "somwhere over the rainbow". Iz(abella) sings it almost better than Iz. Another talent that she took right after her mama.
Love, in the end, is the only thing that counts (Tom Robbins, so true!)
Posted by: Gloria | October 03, 2011 at 03:44 PM
Love. Just love. What karmic gift has been given you to incarnate as such a fearless witness to life, Gloria..
Posted by: Carmen | October 03, 2011 at 01:16 PM