Tag: new beginnings

Welcome
Autobiography · Relationships

Welcome

Ruby Pipes3 Comments

Dear Draven,

I got the news of your birth while I was at work. Shrieked. Showed the friends I was with pictures of your tiny red face and your beaming parents. “Congratulations, Aunt Ruby.” It ran through my head over and over. What the responsibility of being an aunt means. What my own aunts mean to me. I think about the times I’ve called them crying. The times they’ve called me. All the talks we’ve had about how simple and beautiful and hard and devastating life can be. How resilient they are. How resilient we all are. What a strong family you have come into. After fifty hours of labor, I’m getting the feeling you’re pretty strong, too.

And you’re going to have to be. You’ll learn quickly how challenging living is. How exhausting just existing can be. You’ll learn all about heartache and suffering. But you are strong, just like your mother, and you will continue. We all do.

Perhaps I’m not the one to tell you of the joys of life. I’m just crawling back from the edge and you probably know more about them right now than I do. But I want you to know that I will always teach you of fierceness. If I can accomplish one thing in our relationship it will be to show you how hard we can fight for ourselves. And to never confuse that fight with toughness or stoicism. To fight with a passion and a fire and a caring so magnificent it cannot be smothered out by the hardship of existence. You do not need to be tough, you do not need to build impenetrable walls. You only need to learn resilience. To trudge forward despite how hard it is. Everything else is just background. Thrown in for interest and texture. You will learn, we will learn together, that everything is piled on our own foundation and we are the ones who build it.

I will not fill you with false promises. I will not overload you with ideas about who you should be or how capable I’m sure you are. I will not tell you you can do anything. I want you to show me. Even when you think I’m not watching.

I love you.

Ruby

Photo courtesy of Annie Spratt.

Roses
Autobiography · Poetry · Relationships

Roses

Ruby Pipes4 Comments

Fingers busy.
Knitting yarn, stringing beads.
We create and teardown simultaneously.

I slept until noon on Monday.
Haven’t done that since…
I can’t remember when.
Nadine said I must have needed it,
but my headache disagreed.

I skipped showering two days in a row.
Planned the next four months, but did mostly nothing.
Ate M&Ms and finished watching Breaking Bad again.
Let myself take it easy.
Forgot the idea I have to earn downtime.
Just breathed.

We shared a dinner and played a game of rummy.
Family time has taken on new meaning and
I curl up into it.
Wrap it around me like the scarf he’s making.
Wear it like the jewelry I created.

I go to bed before Andrew, but
he joins me.
Gently climbs in and pulls me to him.
All arms and legs and sheets.

The world is softening around me.
Rose petals peeling back and
revealing smells of sweetness.
When pollen tickles our noses
we all feel the same thing.
And I’m surprised when I’m not afraid of it.
When I let it climb over me.

Photo courtesy of Jared Doyle.

On and On
Autobiography · Mental Health · Relationships · Writing

On and On

Ruby Pipes2 Comments

My mood goes in and out like the tide. Eroding me even when things are good. Emotions in general exhaust me and I try to spend more and more time avoiding being alone. Don’t feel it. Whatever it is. Don’t.

In the middle of the night I put out a plea on Facebook for someone to take a walk with me. A friend I don’t know well takes me up on it and we trudge around The Hill and talk about nothing of consequence. Life is simple, beautiful, goes on.

Days later we get back the light. The perfectly cloud-dispersed echo of sunshine. It shone off V’s face, danced in his eyes as Andrew drove us south. Hands out the windows the three of us took deep breaths at the sight of our mountain. A reminder that life is simple, beautiful, goes on.

Back at their apartment V leans over the stove. Stirring and inhaling deep. I like to watch him cook. It feels like a metaphor for what we are all doing here. Making something new. And we all sit down at the table and eat the dinner we prepared together. We’re building something. Learning to trust it.

Andrew asks me if I have a blog post geared up for Tuesday and I shake my head. V tells me he doesn’t know how much it matters what he thinks, but that my writing is “really good”. It’s just the kind of nudging I need to not give up on me. So I sit down and write this while Andrew draws and V finds music to play us.

So I think maybe life goes on. Maybe we keep building even when we think we’re not trying. Even when we don’t think we can. Life comes at you. On the express lane when the light is perfect and the windows are down. Hands at two and ten. Our lives in Andrew’s possesion without even considering it.

We already trust. Let’s build.

Photo courtesy of Charlie Harutaka.