Yesterday was Mother’s Day where I live, and no matter how much I think I am over it, how much I think I have moved past my mother wound, I still spend the day (the week, really) engulfed in grief. Estrangement will do that to you. There’s been a lot of endings in my life lately, adding a layer of newer, rawer sadness to tend to.
Saturday was gloomy on the East Coast, and my French heart immediately returned to the poems of melancholy of my childhood. Paul Verlaine’s Il pleure dans mon cœur and Baudelaire’s Spleen IV. The English translations don’t quite get to the beauty of the lines, and maybe it has to do with the specific sorrow of the French mind.
Still, I have spent enough time in grief to have developed tools, strategies to return to, when I find myself in a Baudelerian mood. There’s the sad songs, and the talking to friends, the walking around and exercising. There’s the trees and the tending to the earth.
This weekend, I did a little bit of all of the above, tending to my weeds before going to visit the lindens of my neighborhood. I keep a mental map of the trees planted around where I live, so on Saturday I walked (on my almost-healed foot) and watched in awe the heart leaves and shades of green. Lindens always take my breath away, their unassuming groundedness reconnects me to my self. Sometimes I wonder what I look like to passerby, eyes directed to the sky, glistening with tears.
I am a simple creature, really but after touching and crying at half a dozen trees, I noticed I needed more, so I went to my favorite one in Philadelphia. A massive linden that’s at least a century old. Heavy, imposing, the type of tree that I was used to living with in Europe. I get comforted by structures and creatures who have been alive for longer than I have, it helps me zoom out, put things in perspective.
I have been going to this tree for a few years now, whenever the world overwhelms me, and by the world I mean its cruelty. I have picked its flowers before, and drank their tea. I have lounged under its leaves and read books. That day though I simply embraced its trunk and breathed into its body. 5-4-3-2-1. Before saying goodbye for now,
On my way home, I stopped by the lilac bush, picked a handful of flowers that I hid in my pocket, before adding them to my altar. As a reminder of that day when everything hurt a little more than I could handle. So that, in a few days, or weeks, or months, I can remind myself that the feeling eventually passed. A small ritual.
Some news: I have a publication date for my book and I can’t wait to tell you more about it when the time comes. In the meantime, I’ll be spending half of July at the Sewanee Writer’s Conference. I am incredibly humbled to be joining the Creative Non Fiction cohort, and really can’t wait. I am not fundraising for this conference, but if you want to kick some $$ my way to make it a little more affordable, please do (my venmo and cashapp are @mininoam).
What I have been reading: 99 Nights in Logar by Jamil Jan Kochai and so far it’s so funny. Also for the writers reading this newsletter, reminder that I am a CNF reader for ANMLY and we’re open for submissions, so please send us some work!
What I have been watching: Until yesterday, the NBA playoffs before the 76ers got humiliated by the Celtics. And slowly watching a documentary about Amazigh rugmakers, more on that later. In Philly, I’m looking forward to this doc about Max Roach coming to Clark Park on 5/26
What I have been listening to: I’m obsessed with Sid Sriram Tiny Desk.