sketch #9: 10:50 pm Email

He wrote again. Tonight. My hands were cold and I clenched them as I read, unable to feel anything. Anything new, anything at all. His words were directed toward me, but it was all about him. Again.

And I wondered if I would ever think it was worth it to spend my words explaining to him how very little about him it actually is. And how it is actually all about me. And about damn time.

sketch #8: Harlem

My Harlem morning is:

Goodbye rain!

Thank the neighbors for a Whitney Houston throwback.

A familiar hat and no makeup, unwashed hair and a feeling of abandon.

A corner stop - because this Saturday runs on Dunkin’.

Effortless wander down a familiar construction path asphalt drag to the park.

Hallelujah guitar strains spilling over Harlem Piers, coffee in hand, watching the world through brand new weekend recovery eyes.

Long grass, wet earth, family fishing on the dock eureka caught one celebration.

Little boy standing on a statue, standing on the pier, standing in this overstated, overly understood city.

Shopping cart wheel screeches, rollerblades, the sweat of running, horns honking, rowers rowing, frenzy-filled outside-bound freedom.

sketch #7: 120th & Amsterdam

The City never stops. Until something silences its horn echoes, and halts its colliding pedestrian paths and swerving taxis with perspective. That day it was the news delivered via phone, on the corner of 120th and Amsterdam, beneath clouds that promised rain. A little girl was about to lose her mother.

I armed my defenses immediately. People continued past me in all directions, unaware that the world was about to change, and I coulnd't cry. I refused. But my heart hurt. And every bit of logic - rational and not - screamed for answers and cursed the illusion of fairness. I wished myself home where I could proactively work to fix what had happened. To hug that little girl. To be hugged back.

How many people would pass me today and every day with leaden hearts and shortened breath, overcome with grief, without my even knowing?

sketch #6: I-70 East

It was like some kind of Kansas holding pattern, watching the power lines subtly dip and rise against a watercolor sunset. My consciousness mimicked their movement and I realized that I was strung like power lines between where I'd come from and where I was going. My soul felt heavy and I slept - the cab of a pickup truck, restless kind of sleep - on and off for hours. Sunflowers. Windmills. Unfamiliar license plates. Middle-America. I dreamt Kerouac dreams about cross-country adventures and a Dharma Bum take on material consumption. The further east, the muggier it became. The further east the further from home I got. The further east the greater the availability of fried chicken, biscuits, and something called a Boburito.
When it rained I leaned my head against the window, an iPod gently soothing my anxiety (skipping songs that I felt too deeply for now), and remembered 12 hour Patagonian bus rides. Alone. And I felt alone again. The kind of alone one feels knowing that they are doing something meaningful and that there is no way to make another person fully understand. A positive, a brave alone.

sketch #5: Quari Street

Driving away from the house I felt a familiar sense of pride - one that I've become accustomed to, but never taken for granted, over the last 3 years. 3 years. That's how long it had been since I met this family of 7 - each of them letting me into their lives little by little - and understood for the first time what pride in the growth and development of a young person feels like. We spent the evening sitting on the front porch (the same one that had been a mess of sidewalk chalk and buckets of water only months before), reminiscing about first meetings, shared dinners of home-cooked fried chicken and lasagna and catching up on gossip about mutual acquaintances. A memory reel - lacrosse games, Chuck E. Cheese, meetings with school counselors, continuations - played in my mind as I listened to a mother's woes and a 4-year-old checked me for "ear boogers." I'd felt already the weight of many goodbyes, but this one read like a lesson in symbolism. Chapter 1: Trust-building; Chapter 2: Advocacy; Chapter 3: Boundaries; Chapter 4: Communication; Chapter 5: Community Re-defined...
I felt a completeness upon being reminded again of my status as a member of this family. And I felt an emptiness as I searched for words to thank each of them, aged 4 through 43 years for what they had meant to me/taught me/rewarded me with. Hugs would have to suffice, and my trademark challenge to each kiddo to do their best in school this year, complete with the warning that I would be checking up on them. After all, if I've learned one thing about kids it's that consistency is key.
As I parked in front of the house I didn't know it yet, but the domino-effect of smiles, followed by shouts of "Miss Melissa!" and the rush to the car to hug me, would be one of the best parting gifts I would receive.