So.

The way a family communicates is a funny thing. I haven’t spoken to my grandmother in months now. I carry that guilt everywhere I go because she’s more of a mother to me than my own. Still, that guilt is just little less heavy than the weight that family bears in mind. It’s always been a big mystery, exactly how old she is but I suspect she is about eighty now, so I’m not surprised that the dementia has finally set in. I gather that, from the age that my grandfather was at the time of his death, this past autumn, and from what it said on the little printed programs at his funeral. As long as I can remember, my grandmother has said she is 39 years old.

I’ve always known that she moved here from the Island with my mother and auntie when they were very little girls, and that her husband was no good, but once I had my own painful truths to tell, I learned that her first husband was worse. I’m not sure if I learned more about my family’s history sooner it would have changed anything, but in hindsight I’m able to identify patterns that make more sense to me now. I feel like a lot of family lore is given on a “need to know” basis, but maybe if it was safe to be shared openly and without shame there would be less of us who would need to know. There’s no point in telling her something like that now. She didn’t mean for any of this to happen and none of us want to talk about the past.

There’s so much I want to say that sticks in my throat so I’m thankful the crows are back. I’m never exactly sure how to track when they return, but I always notice when they do. I think some of them stick around all year, but it’s maybe only a few. Ravens stay here in the North Land all year but I’ve never really understood them and they don’t seem to pay any attention to me. They never say much and when they do it sounds ugly so I don’t care about them anyway. Crows, on the other hand, I notice when they’re around and I look up to them. When I have a whole heart full of something to say and no one to say it to I take a walk and I look up and tell the crows. My heart gets so heavy in the winter when I can’t find them.   

I’ve moved forward from a lot of the things that once kept me in unhealthy patterns, but the way that I move in the world will probably always be a little difficult for most folks to understand because of the ways that our lives are stained by a past that has continued to haunt us. I can buy new clothes and cars, but it hasn’t changed the way I instinctively fawn over the most dangerous person I can find in any room. This is something that I later learned is a fairly common trauma response to people that have experienced extended patterns of violence. For years, my grandmother didn’t have a way out, because she was restrained by time, the ocean, and language barriers but the habits she developed were unknowingly passed down like a hope chest full of knowledge of when to fight, take flight or freeze. I had hoped to pass down better knowledge to my own child, but I have my doubts when I think about what’s lurking in the darkest corners of my subconscious. When she was very little, I was in a constant state of anxiety, just like my grandmother must have been. As we rushed down the sidewalk, I still remember saying things to her like, “There’s two kinds of people, Bebe: The quick and the dead. What are you?” That little girl would look up as she hurried to keep the pace so we wouldn’t miss our bus. “Quicker, Mommy. I’m quickER.”

I hope so.