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Though she has acquired a taste for classical music over the years—“it’s like learning to appreciate a stinky cheese”—she’s been a not-always-delighted captive audience for many of my marathon rehearsals.
One of my earliest memories is watching the opera “Madame Butterfly” with my mum, da, and mum’s parents and crying my eyes out. I was taken to operas, ballets, symphonies, plays…my family loves culture. I like basically every type of music. And I rap. One of the accompaniments I’m proudest of is laying down Eminem’s “Rap God” in one take.
quintessentially
I love words like this—words that, to me, sound exactly like what they look like.
“The racism thing is kind of obvious. I think the bigger thing is people’s goodness. Are they naturally good and turned bad by stuff like racism or are they naturally bad and need to work hard not to be?”
People called Mom that a lot, probably because she had a hard time holding her tongue and could be brutally blunt when she disagreed with you.
People call pretty much every female in my huge family that, because we’re all like this.
If you can’t trust me with a choice, how can you trust me with a child?
a her
her
Sleep would be so welcome. A warm blanket of black to erase everything else. Sleep without dreams. I’ve heard people talk about the sleep of the dead. Is that what death would feel like? The nicest, warmest, heaviest never-ending nap? If that’s what it’s like, I wouldn’t mind. If that’s what dying is like, I wouldn’t mind that at all.
I don’t know if once you die you remember things that happened to you when you were alive. It makes a certain logical sense that you wouldn’t. That being dead will feel like before you were born, which is to say, a whole lot of nothingness.
I don’t know if once you die there is anything left to remember things. I pretty much believe that dying is like going to sleep—minus the dreams—just … over, out, blank.
Mom probably would’ve said that I was there—as one of the eggs in her ovaries.
Don’t think Mom’s eggs were anywhere close to dad when he was 12.
And I bet she’ll be a stronger person because of what she’s lost today. I have a feeling that once you live through something like this, you become a little bit invincible.
I lost my first crush-love. A drunk driver smashed the driver’s side of his car. I never felt—still don’t feel—any stronger. I only learned that, for me, anyway, it’s not true that time heals wounds. My experience is that you just learn how to carry them.
Maybe if I’d had some practice, maybe if I’d had more devastation in my life, I would be more prepared to go on.
I’ve been more than ready to move on since I got the illness that left me without any cure and without any medication strong enough to temper my pain. I wouldn’t be here now if I didn’t have a husband and twin girls that I love more than anything in this world.
We grilled up steaks and, this being Oregon, tofu pups and veggie burgers.
I haven’t eaten anything that had a mother since the day I left my parental’s home and started college.
“It’s not that,” I said, suddenly feeling panicked. “It’s just that the two styles don’t fit together.”
“One Republic” (a band I like a lot) has a cellist. It sounds great.
I can lose you like that if I don’t lose you today. I’ll let you go. If you stay.”
Andante con poco e moto rubato.
Andante con MOTO e POCO rubato.
It was as if they were right there in the room with me as I wrote. And in a way they were. In a way they have never left me. And that’s just it, isn’t it? That’s how we manage to survive loss. Because love, it never dies, it never goes away, it never fades, so long as you hang on to it.
