Now and Then

I HADN’T SEEN MY AUNT TERRY in a while. Two years at least.  I was visiting my mom when she told me that her baby sister was recently diagnosed with uterine cancer and that I should go and visit. When I dropped by, I wasn’t surprised to see my auntie in a bright blue house dress walking around, chatting up her visitors. I told her she should be in bed.

“But I haven’t seen you in a while, darling”—I was always her darling. She held me in a tight embrace, hugging me again and again. I was comforted by the warmth of her face, chest, and arms.

We talked about her diagnosis and about how she was taking this news. At some point, late in our conversation, she took out her phone and guided me through her social media feed. I took this as her way of letting me know she was okay and there was little need for worry. She entertained me with an endless scroll of pictures of fruits and vegetables from our native Jamaica. Odd looking creations from a world nearly extinct. Food trees originally grown by indigenous people in the Caribbean–as well as, Latin America, Asia, Pacific Islands and Africa– the seeds brought and cultivated in Jamaica by European buccaneers, and by enslaved and indentured peoples of color.

“Remember Otaheite apple?” Aunt Terri asked me in child-like astonishment. “Look at this pear!… Remember Jackfruit?… And, sweetsop?” Her sincere, sweet delight tickled me. “Look at this!” she said, as she scrolled from her Instagram feed to a stream of images on Facebook. “White yam with mackerel! They boil it, you know, or air fry…” She went on like this, checking out pictures and videos from our Jamaican-diaspora friends and relatives. Here and there showing off their acquisitions of much-loved childhood foods wherever they were in the world: Jamaica, the U.S., Canada, England, China, Columbia. Images of naseberry, guava, sorrel, Scotch bonnet peppers, breadfruit, fried fish and bammy. The sight of these foods made me smile and my mouth water. I asked auntie how she was feeling.

“A little blue,” she admitted.

As we talked and laughed it was hard to tell. Cancer. No cancer. Blue. No blue. She was always the same, as far back as I could remember. Her boisterous cackle of a laugh, her sharp eyes wide open.

Sometime later, days after my aunt’s first chemo treatment, I stood and watched her in my mom’s garden. Auntie came to the U.S. over 50 years ago, at age 20, and began a real estate business after working as a home aide in New Jersey and saving up all her money. Because of my aunt, my mom was able to move her family to Brooklyn, and now here they both were tending to mom’s garden. Mom was holding a chainsaw and wearing scuba diving goggles to protect her eyes. I couldn’t help noticing her funky-looking purple velvet pants, which, in my eyes, matched the chainsaw and goggles. All the way punk rock!

My aunt was in yet another colorful house dress and had fashioned her patchy hair into a blonde spiky hairstyle. They didn’t always get along, these two, and they still argue. Baby sister resentful of bossy older sister telling her what to do. Once upon a time they were both young mothers of three, caught in different circumstances. One, my aunt, a single mom; the other, my mom, lucked out with my dad and married at 20, the same age her sister had struck out on her own and left her country (and children) for a better life in America. Now, here we all were. Reunited. I delighted in their company as a “dear” daughter and “darling” niece. I listened to their hysterical stories of family and work and joy and pain. I took in their theatrics, how they used their hands, face, and voice to act out conversations. I marveled at their strong bodies weathering lifetimes of hurts and various happenstance, and their bouncy unending banter.

I’ve come to appreciate the ways I resemble and don’t resemble these two women. Like my aunt, I never married. Unlike my mom, neither auntie nor I will celebrate 55 years of marriage to a devoted partner. Like auntie, I came to the U.S. at 19, leaving all that was familiar for a city that never sleeps and with seasons that changed so there were times when you couldn’t feel your very fingers touch your frozen face. Mom, me, and auntie have come to know intimately, through our lives as black women in a world that doesn’t always care for us, both love and heartbreak. We’ve kept alive. the Anglo-Catholic traditions of our parents and grandparents. We worked hard to support friends, family, and kin. Like my mom, I love to dance; like my aunt, I love to laugh.

But I wonder. Maybe not until I cried the first time I heard the “Heart Sutra” (bawling, with wet cheeks and snotty nose), or lived at a Zen monastery, or practiced buddhism for ten years, could I fully come home to these women. These women who, through their example since forever, had taught me everything they knew about faith and love. Undoubtedly, the anxieties and fears of all our younger years are still there. Fears tampered by life, and yet still– Every day is a good day. We three women, our bodies inexplicably strong, accept this as the blessing it is. I admire my mom and aunt for their simplicity and grace. It’s hard not noticing the sameness of their broad, flat feet, and how they walk and how they stand. They are trees with roots deep in the ground. The rest of their bodies, branches–wide and open. Branches that may sometimes seem frail in responding to the many gusts of wind. Elder, rooted bodies thankful for the rain and sun.