68.

the women in your family have never lost touch with one another. death is a path we take to meet on the other side. what goddesses have joined, let no one cast asunder. with every step you take, there is an army of women watching over you. we are never any farther than the sweat of your brows or the dust of your toes. though you walk through the valley of the shadow of death, fear no evil for we are always with you.

-Edwidge Danticat

"Women Like Us," excerpt taken from Krik? Krak!

it has been a long time since i have devoted a weekend to only reading, writing, and thinking. a little over two months to be exact.

i've just finished reading my first of Edwidge Danticat's work. she published this collection, Krik? Krak! when she was 16 years old. in it she explores Haiti's historical evolution through violence and government-sponsored oppression, the relationships between political hostility and every day lives of citizens, the psychological effects of trauma, the fight to maintain cultural traditions and identity in the face of oppression, the most terrifying side of humanity as well as the strength of humans when confronted with terror. reading her work reminded me of many curiosities that have laid dormant in my short time away from school. one, that stands out, is the question of what pull us into the spectacles of mass atrocity? what keeps us from turning our head away? what encouraged me to read this book in a two days? this is a question that i have turned over and over in my head for the past year and will continue to consider as i (hopefully) continue studying trauma, conflict, reconciliation, and healing.

aside from this academic jolt of memory, i feel like this is exactly the type of book i needed to read. you know how sometimes, if you are really lucky, you pick up a book that provides for you a shadow of the type of wisdom you are thirsting for at that particular moment in your life? friday, i answered a phone call and was told that my grandmother, Mama Grace, is on her way out of this life. up until now, i have been thinking of her predicted passing in terms of my father and not in terms of what she has meant more particularly to me in my life. i thought this angle of consideration strange, but after my reading i trust in it more. it's just that there is something unexplainably earth-shaking for a daughter to have to bear witness to a father's heartbreak. not in that "you are the strongest man in the world" way. rather, what is so complicated is navigating my own transcendence from "baby girldom" to being a woman in my father's world. last night on the phone my dad told me for the first time in my life that he needed me. there is something simultaneously empowering and heartbreaking that lives within these moments. this journey to be seen and heard as a woman in my family has been a battle i've fought diligently, but now the circumstances are not what I imagined would serve as the impetus for this shift in identity.

Danticat's celebration of women as life-givers and storers of family's secrets helped me to really embrace my processes in thinking on my family for the past few days. i've been thinking more of my sweet Mama Grace and of her dancing the Jitterbug with my dad every day, making him pull over on the side of the road so they could listen to"The Streak" and laugh, and the way her chocolate pies made all us grandchildren stop bickering and start begging. i still can't help but mostly think of my daddy though and how i think i know now that no matter a man's age, he's never ready to lose his mama. it makes them revert back to being a boy again - my dad slept on the floor two days ago,at three in the afternoon he found himself napping on the rug in the living room. i assure you he hasn't done this since the days when he snuck chewing tobacco into Sunday morning church service.

danticat helped me make sense out of my thoughts on my father prevailing over the past few days.

the tales in this collection interrupt the general climate of violence to unveil the indestructible bond between mother and daughter, mother and son, motherland and and citizens. the binding force that is responsible for the creation of as well as safe-keeping of our legacies, that serves as a sanctuary for the stories that our children inherit, the ones that define our values, that create our parables, and come to define our realities, is this connection between mothers and progeny. mothers are the source of all the memories yet to be made, and in Danticat's as well as my daddy's stories, mother's are the force that remove the mire from life one delusion at a time, revealing a glimpses of the granite that is called truth.

it seems that these stories bridge the gaps that time creates and remind the reader that it is the memories that are strung together over generations that become our sole inheritance.

--

my dad was sifting through some memories of his mama last time i was down south. he remembered with a smile that no matter whether he was down in the creek or over in Gooseneck Holler, that she could stand on his porch and call his name out and he smiled as he remembered, "I swear to God, honey, you would think she was standing right beside you." i imagine that she always will be, with the rest of the army of women watching over us, allowing us to pass through this life with dignity and grace.