effervescent & pink
This morning, I watched a horse graze on the wet grass. Unhurried, at ease, long tail twisting and flicking. I wondered briefly where it came from, where the fences were that might mark its range. I opened a window, turned my focus away, the questions momentarily forgotten, and by the time I looked back, the horse was gone.
June and July passed in an intense and wild blur. It's hard to know how to process, to try to metabolize these experiences and not let them all just wash over, rush past. The impulse is to draw from them, absorb whatever richness or insight they might offer. But time passes so quickly now. I am always left grasping at wisps and wake.
At the end of the school year, I left as soon as I could. New York for a long weekend. Catching up with an old friend, a quick trip to see the Cha work at the Whitney Biennial, and then meeting, for the first time, a half-sister. I had made a reservation for us at a chic bar with outdoor seating. The afternoon was hot and bright. I waited, poised at the edge of the plush banquette and scanned the passing pedestrians. I ordered a drink. Something that arrived effervescent and pink in a short, stout glass. Then, A. arrived, too.
We wanted to look more like each other and we tried, pulling up childhood photos on our phones and comparing.
“Around the mouth, I think.”
“Look at our chins!”
“Oh, this one, look at this.”
It was sweet. Poignant moments we'd missed out on over the years. I can't say that I didn't wish for a clearer resemblance. Something visible, perhaps shockingly so. Something undeniable and conclusive. But 26% shared DNA is I suppose, not negligible. So, here we are.
—
Where we are, now, is in a quiet, remote rented house, with a view of mountains and woods, for a few days while our son is at camp. It’s the first trip we’ve taken alone in nearly a decade, a little preview perhaps of the looming “empty nest.” I appreciate the unscheduled days, no meetings or phone calls or rehearsals or brunches or backyard happy hours to attend or to host. I brought a stack of books and folders stuffed with notes, a few fabric squares for hand-stitching when my concentration wanes.
—
For a short time during my adolescence, I danced competitively in Irish dance. I don't remember much about those years anymore, but there is a memory of one particular competition that haunts me. Dancers would stand in a row across the back of the stage, and one by one, each competitor would come to the center of the stage, do their dance, and then step back into line. I came forward when it was my turn, began and after a few bars, forgot what I was doing and stopped. Once I had stopped, there was no real way to pick it up again, or at least not that I could fathom at the moment. So I turned around and walked back into line as the music continued.
I went on dancing after that event, even qualified for the national competition the following year, but when I think back, I recognize something in that moment, a kind of involuntary shutting down that suggested something about the parameters of my capacities, something about fear, doubt, some kind of lack.
I was reminded of this again during a presentation I was making for a much-anticipated roundtable discussion. It's difficult even now, months later, to speak of it directly. I began the presentation and then stopped. I had my notes, of course, but even consulting them did not help much. I read a few more lines from my notes, hardly hearing what I was saying. And then I mumbled something about pausing there to give sufficient time for discussion. We took a break and I left.
—
A. is 8 years younger than me, which among many things, unsettles many fantasies I have held about my earliest years. We share a mother, according to what I can glean from the DNA data, whose circumstances, whatever they might have been, must not have not changed sufficiently between my birth and the birth of A., for the outcome to be different. I am able now, conclusively, to reject the story I had sometimes been told, that both my parents died together in a car accident. It is, as they say, what it is, and with each passing year, I loosen my grip on the stories that had sustained me, as the possibility of any sort of reunion recedes into the murky distance of miles and secrets and years.
