WordSisters

Author: Elizabeth di Grazia

  • Fractured Heart

    African VioletsI woke in the night with a deep sadness and an image that was slowly fading.

    Leaning down, I had kissed my grandma. She was sitting on the chair that she always sat on in her kitchen, the one on the left when you came into the room. This seat gave her the best vantage point to greet people, and the large window overlooked her patio and into the neighbor’s back yard. Purple, white, and pink African violets lined her windowsill.

    My grandmother and I were close. I stayed with her while I was going to college, roaring my 650 Honda motorcycle up onto her brownstone patio. After parking, I bounded in her house and up the three steps to her kitchen. I slept with her when she was confused to give her comfort and to make sure she didn’t wander away. One afternoon she told me that I should call my mother, see my family. I told her she wouldn’t say that if she knew the truth. She didn’t bring it up again.

    I was at her side when she died. Holding her hand, telling her it was okay for her to go. Being with her while she was dying was a gift she gave me. It was me who called my mother and told her that grandma was gone. My mother had left hours earlier after telling me to call her when her mother had passed. Same as I told my siblings when our mother was dying.

    I recognized that the deep sadness I woke with comes from not having close ties to familial people. There were a number of aunts and uncles I had felt close to growing up. That is gone. Some, through death. Some by my choice to not remain close.

    Since House of Fire has been published, I’ve been unfriended on Facebook by all of my siblings. I have watched them drop away one by one.

    I have no regrets. As a writer, if you really want to write about what’s important, meaningful, and to be a change in the world, you have to write what is yours to write. Mine has been to write the unspoken.

    I had to be true to myself and to the parts of me that has lived the unspeakable.

    This doesn’t mean that there isn’t sadness and a sense of great loss. That is just as real as the telling.

     

  • The Dead Cat is Out of the Freezer

    IMG_0493Seasons change, and so it is time.

    We have a small window to perform our ceremony – in between the comings and goings of teenagers.

    A line forms and we sing “Amazing Grace” while walking to the burial place in the corner of the yard. Our daughter and her friend dug the hole earlier. To make sure it was big enough they placed Trouble the dog in the hole but he quickly jumped out.

    Seasons have changed for the children as well. A Cub Scout is now a Boy Scout who will be doing his Eagle project on Saturday. A small girl, who was always the first to jump into the swimming pool, is still the first to try most things in our house.

    Our procession takes us underneath the flowering crabapple. The sweet scent follows. I lay down the paper bag holding our beloved.

    There is a discussion about whether to bury Angel in the shirt that he is wrapped in. I kneel, gently cover his black and white face with the fabric so dirt won’t fall into his eyes. My stomach constricts. I straighten. Jody hands the girl the shovel.

    There was a day when the children were ten months old that I thought they would be that age forever. I could not see past that day to this one. Parenting was hard work. Parenting was demanding. It still is, but in a different way. Now I need to stay attuned to who they are, what they are doing. I can’t be any less present. Because I need to be there if only to say, I see you. I am watching you. Give me your phone.

    After our ceremony, as they are rushing off, I pull down the branches of the apple tree and smell the white flowers that within days will fall off the branches.

    I want to shout to the children’s departing backs that I’ll never give up. No matter how hard parenting may become, I’ll never give up.

    Angel our cat is gone. He had a good life. I have a good life. And, you are worth it.

     

  • The Birth of Juan Jose’

    The Birth of Juan Jose’

    Juan Jose' and Crystel
    Juan Jose’ and Crystel

    The best part of Antonio’s name change was when Crystel stood up in the courtroom and said, “I want each of you to tell me something you like about me.” She stood confidently, her hand resting on the bar that divided the gallery from the well of the courtroom. She faced the nine people, including Antonio, who came to support his name change. Aunts, Uncles, Antonio and his girlfriend, were sitting with their back against the wall. She pointed to her Aunt Kathy. “Start there.”

    This surprised and delighted me. She was asking for what she needed. And, in this moment what she needed was to know that she was as important as Antonio who within minutes would legally be named Juan Jose’.

    She didn’t share his need to change her name. Her Guatemalan birth mother had told her that she named her Crystel.

     

    Waiting for the judge.
    Waiting for the judge.

    The birth search and visit report that Jody and I had done in 2011 when her and Antonio were 9 years old said, Mayra (her birth mom) remembered exactly the date of Crystel’s birth. Most birth mothers do not, not for lack of interest but because dates are usually not important in Guatemala. She named her Crystel Rocio. Crystel because:  “I felt she was a little fragile thing as crystal, and Rocio (dew in English), because as I was walking the day I gave birth to her, it was cloudy and it had rained during the night, and I saw the leaves with drops of dew on them”.

    When Jody and I adopted our children, we felt it was important that we keep the names that they were given at birth. We wanted to honor the birth mothers. At the time we didn’t know what their birth names would be and I fretted if I would be able to pronounce their Guatemalan given names. I refused to name my baby boy even though my social worker said that I could. I didn’t want to give him, one more thing that could be taken away from him. He was already losing his mother.

    IMG_0425A few months later, we received the results of Antonio’s birth search. His birth mom, Rosa, was asked if she named Antonio. She said no, that she wanted to name him Juan Jose’ (Juan to honor her father and Jose’ to honor her grandfather), but the adoption people named him Antonio. Her father Juan died in 1982 during the Guatemalan Civil War. It is estimated that at least

    5, 000 Mayans in the Rabinal area were massacred in 1981-1982. Rosa is indigenous and belongs to the Mayan Achi ethnia.

    Ever since Antonio learned that Rosa wanted to name him Juan Jose’, he felt that was his real name.

    Jody and I supported Antonio’s name change, nudged him even. We wanted to honor his heritage and his birth mother. We understood how central a name can be to a person’s identity. Both of us have changed our names.

    A door opened. “All rise. This court is now in session. The honorable Judge Bernhardson, presiding.”

    Just minutes before, Crystel had each person, including her brother and his girlfriend say something they liked about her.

    What I witnessed that afternoon was two 13-year-olds asking for what they needed.

    They’ll do well in the world, I thought. If a person can identify and then ask for what they need, they can navigate the road ahead of them. Jody and I have taught our children well.