Confession

My desk is messy
My mind is less so, I hope
Only Bach can help.

Photo by Jr Korpa on Unsplash

(This post is part of my "Growing Up & Growing Old" project.)

Another morning ritual

Fine blue and white stripes
My eyes open to the day
Electric toothbrush.

Changing back to the old

The stores are open
The line ups of masked people

Slowly disapear.  

(This post is part of my "Growing Up & Growing Old" project.)

Second jab

It's raining outside. I feel quite flat and matt this morning. I am getting my second jab. It feels as though this is something momentous. Odviously, only for me. Maybe also for family and friends that I can now meet up with. 

(This post is part of my "Growing Up & Growing Old" project.)

One of our homeless

She wanders through the streets
The midnight shift until dawn
Barefoot and breathing fire, she
Stomps the wilderness of her fury

Down down beneath the ground.
She laughs out loud and her
Ancestors echo back her
Childhood escapades from the
Storefront windows. She glimpses
The shadow of her moving self
And shouts at her to take care
There are monsters out there.

The morning light finally comes

And she slips away quietly from

Our streets. We know not where.

Life flying by

Each day comes quickly
I wake, eat, sneeze, go to bed
All the while dreaming.

My parents’ philosophy

 

Me: If you were to sum up your parents' philosophy for raising children, what would it be?

A.: Creativity, love and freedom. They gave me the entire mandate to decide for myself – balancing on the edge of irresponsibility.

M.: Happiness is overrated (and puts a lot of pressure on the individual). Instead, look for joy in your life. Enjoy the moment.

K.: Not sure if my mother had a philosophy! Generously, I think she followed the philosophy of the times. This was, she was expected to have kids, as well as stay at home and raise us. All the while being a good wife to her husband’s career.

I think my father didn’t have a philosophy of being a parent, but he had one about how he wanted to live his life. Which was to be a good person, kind, loving and a good person for his kids, and grandkids to model after.

(This post is part of my "Growing Up & Growing Old" project.)

The joys of summer

I walk down the streets
Roses glimmer everywhere
A feast for my nose!

Photo by Sara Budhwani on Unsplash

Out on my bicycle

Pedaling madly
Past drug dealer in the park
Racing from the storm.

Photo by ty morrow on Unsplash

Blindness

 

Watching Hyori’s Bed & Breakfast

Makes me dream of Grenada

The old Grenada of my childhood;

Salt-blasts over the cliffside

Cheese and tomato sandwhiches

With warm lemonade for lunch

A Bentley for the children, G&T 

For the adults waiting for dinner

To be served at Ross Point Inn.

I love those memories, for they

Are filled with a child's innocence.

Yet, they were colonial times, and

As such, seeped with disparity, 

Despair and a long legacy of 

Denying others their born rights.

Only we, as whites, could live 

Without the concerns of others. 

My morning meditation on the riverside

Two wild geese take flight
Water lilies drink the sun
I sit legs crossed.

Photo by Lynn Kintziger on Unsplash

Missing you

Rain in our basement

Summer days now grow shorter

And I think of you.

Interconnectivity

Early this morning, as dawn
Creeps behind the clouded sky
A strange dreams of times past
Visits and leaves behind unease.

I wake to the breeze of my open
Window and the songs of 
A homeless woman who often
Spends the night in a doorstep
Down the way. She talks, yells
And then sings her inner ghosts
Into the greyness of the streets.

That done, she begins her day.

Passing my childrens' old school

School year is over
Leaving asphalt and kittens
Summer days abound.

Summer without sun screen

 

Oh those were the times, when we would spend all the days outdoors, in our swimsuits, running through sprinkles, eating popsciles, drinking endless glasses of sweet lemonade. 

We were red-brown-red-brown the summer long. Little did we know of sun screen, sugar highs or balanced diet. 

(This post is part of my "Growing Up & Growing Old" project.)

My family tree

In the botanical encyclopedia, there are pages and pages of illustrations of trees with their branches, barks, leaves, and system of roots. I stare fascinated at the variety of them; all the colours, shapes and sizes. 

Their root systems, exposed without the covering of soil, seem oddly, embarrassingly intimate. Looking at them reminds me of walking into a mixed sauna. The exposed roots reveal the ways in which nature accommodates the different types of soil, the changing seasons, and the push and pull of the hemispheres.

Momentarily, I ponder the generation after generation of my ancestors who migrated from one country to another; driven on by strife. There were those with deep narrow roots whose lives were brutally severed by famines or wars. There were my parents’ generation who cut their tethers and sought freedom, or adventure, and, on some rare occasions, wealth.

 
And here I am, a collection of grafts of all their wanderings. I stand tall with bamboo-like agility with roots that are spread wide, but never will grow deep.

Nightly battle

 

When sleep eludes me
I read murder mysteries
My eyes stay half closed.

Quiet hour

 

Ventilator swish
Quiet hour in Grenada
Dive in the pool. Splash.

(This post is part of my "Growing Up & Growing Old" project.)

These precious days of June

I rise in sunlight
I sleep and the sky is blue
Summers in the north.

Daily encounters with strangers

(Disclaimer: I speak German fluently, but with an accent.)

At the beginning...

Where do you come from?
Why are you here?
When are you going back?

The first question sparks an internal dialog: What should I answer... where I was born (Caracas), where I was raised (all over), where I am a citizen of (Canada), where I have lived the longest (Germany), where my heart feels most at home (Grenada)?

A few more years down the line...

Where do you come from?
Why are you here?
When are you going back?

My answer: Canada

A few decades have passed...

Where do you come from?
Why are you here?
When are you going back?

My answer: None of your f**king business. 

(Disclaimer: this is what I wish I could have said. It is what my friend, Hamed, used to say when some random person asked where he came from given the colour of his skin. I was both shocked and in awe when he told me that he responded such. As a passport carrying Canadian, I could not breech my etiquette.)

In the last years...

Where do you come from?
Why are you here?
When are you going back?

My answer: Lübeck... and I derive joy from their expressions of doubt.

(This post is part of my "Growing Up & Growing Old" project.)