Momma, Mimi, Nonna, Roo,
Your mom, Nanny, gave us both access to life. She gave us the capacity to produce a usable form of vitality. Mitochondrial DNA is only passed down through our mothers. Remember the mitochondria from high school bio? The “powerhouse” of the cell they’d call it. The mitochondria produce ATP - our main source of energy.
You cooked lobster capellini tonight, to honor her. When you began to pull apart the creature - not long ago alive; now boiled - I jutted my curious head in between your hands and your eyes like a child, not immediately realizing I was blocking your view and progress.
When I came to, I laughed at myself, pulled away, and settled, still as close to your hands as I could get. Your hands. Her hands. My hands. Watch people’s hands; watch people’s feet and you’ll know what they feel.
Nanny’s hands hurt. She would rub her knuckles and I tried to imagine what pain there would feel like. Now you do that too, and I don’t have to imagine.
If Nanny gave us our energy, and she gave us our hands, and our love of food, which gives us energy, she also gave us pain.
She suffered, and you suffer. Bodies wrestling with life. I remember the way she’d cradle the low of her small abdomen with one of her knotted hands. I see the way your fist tightens; I see your toes curl.
Pain and I are still getting to know each other, but it seems demanding. It seems like a great challenge to grace. Grace which comes so naturally to you and did to her. What is pain, if not a way to test grace. To taunt it.
You are grace, Momma.
When I feel pain, I feel you, and I feel her. In some way, it makes pain perhaps the most welcome part of life, which is full of it.
Pain persists and such is life, saved by grace, we love.
Oh, how she loved; and you.
I am because you love me; I love because you love me.
Always,
m
True Wisdom: "Watch people's hands; watch people's feet and you'll know how they feel."
I love because you love me. That hit me in the low of my not-so-small abdomen. Beautiful.