February 8, 2020
Brynn,
I write you tonight from the border.
I walked across the great mass of concrete
bridge into Tijuana for the first time in my life
and stood between two
countries separated by a wall of barbed wire.
Up in the sky,
a full moon was shining
radiant light.
I don't diminish myself anymore, Brynn,
I have finally put the
Wise Woman in me
on the throne of my mind and
my heart and
my body.
Do you remember hearing her voice
when we did the ceremony together
when I was pregnant
and then again ten hours after
my daughter was born?
Wise Woman speaks to me
the way you always have spoken to me.
You who always saw me
full and radiant.
You who took my hand in the parked car,
or did I take yours,
when you said the word "quest."
Let us think of our life as a quest.
You who looked at my outline for the book
I longed to write,
in that cafe in Berkeley,
in college,
and said yes, I see it too.
We called each other writers,
didn't we,
before we ever published a word.
"Brynn and Valarie are writers!"
We dreamt our lives into being
arm in arm
in the streets of
New York City
San Francisco
Los Angeles
and yes, I remember the howling heat of the valley,
which is why I said
"triumphant"
when you returned,
poetry professor,
community healer,
memory keeper,
maker of meaning
and art that traverses time.
And yes, I believe that the ancestors are happy
when we visit their paper lives.
"If you summon me, I will come" said Papa Ji,
on his deathbed.
So I summon my grandfathers,
the one who was locked in the dark barracks of
Angel Island,
and the one who taught me that "Sikhs do not hide."
And I summon my grandmothers,
the one who made an empire out of dirt,
and the one who died with the music still inside her.
And I link them to Alma and Mitsuo
in my mind,
making a life in the inhospitable desert
in a hostile country,
that took their labor but
not their names.
They made this country ours,
didn't they,
our grandparents, with their blood and sweat
and sweet solidarity
and pain they never spoke so as
not to pass it on.
But here we are, Brynn,
remembering it,
reclaiming it,
because we know
the secret --
the alchemy
of transformation
lies in us.
It is a song.
I used to come to the sea
to be undone by wonder.
Now I look into the face
of my son
sleeping at my side
and my daughter
nursing in my arms.
The game changes.
when the game is love.
Love is sweet labor,
Brynn.
Can't be nothing else.
All I want now
is to be a good ancestor.
Oh Brynn!
My book is done.
I finished it
eighteen years
after I started writing it.
"Faithfulness to the labor."
You kept me
faithful
on the quest.
Now the book will be announced
in three days.
I am amazed,
and terrified,
but mostly amazed,
and terrified.
Until the Wise Woman says,
breathe,
and yes,
push,
and then --
breathe again.
The moon is high.
The baby will wake in six hours.
I will nurse her and cross the border
again
lawyer's bag over my shoulder,
to meet the families who are waiting.
You will gather
your community up in your arms, Brynn,
and read these letters.
We became the activist,
and the poet,
didn't we.
Who am I without you?
Who are we without each other?
May these letters
ignite all who hear them
to go to the
borderlands
that need them --
and find a way
in the still darkness,
to sing.