The Legacy of Strength Is Freedom
What I had to do to reclaim myself is pretty intense. If you look closely you can see exactly what I have learned in my parents’ house. And if that is not good enough I suppose nothing is.
My audience today, dear reader, is first myself. Woven into the fabric of my work is the understanding that my audience is, first, a black woman. Myself. My written work comes to you first from my life. So look closely. Because I can’t pose the question to other people before asking myself — what would I do if I knew that woman and saw her standing in that state at my front door. Would I listen? Would I take her in? Would I ask, “Debbie, is that you?” Would I turn myself away? Mothers are amazing because they don’t even blink. Either they let you in after you’ve done battle with the world and lost, or they turn you away thinking you’ve lost all that you’ve actually won. War with the world when you know you are living your truth drains a soul and can make you look hella…“crazy.”
Real talk? I tried suppressing rage and anger and hurt and pain I experienced just to make people feel comfortable. And the end result was a disaster:
Don’t look away. Take a close look at that picture. It is not that terrible at all when you think about how much time has passed now and that I did get better. We walk past people every single day who have gone through much worse. In theory it should be a cinch to scroll past, too, so don’t — if you’ve made it this far, we both have. Study that image. What you see in the scorched skin and broken teeth and swollen eyes is the end result of my having taken everyone else’s advice instead of listening to my own first thought to take time out for a moment to deal with an indescribable pain that nothing can ever quite fully heal. What you are witnessing in that photograph is what happens when people decide that what they’ll do “for the best” is turn their backs on you, praying you don’t ask them for anything at all, much less a little help. Their hope is you will just “get over it.” Because no one wants to catch the grief that comes from feeling as though you’ve lost everything. Perhaps there is a flaw in the culture of what we do when around the bereaved that needs to be repaired.
A lot happened before that moment of reckoning. Even I tried to look away from the reality of pain in myself and what it meant to have to start over all by myself. But I did look in the mirror. The disintegration was hard for me to watch, myself slowly slipping away…but let me tell you what it is you don’t see: You do not see a person who forgot how to read. I took that picture of myself with a second-hand digital camera after having done all I could with one nickel in my pocket, trying to survive too many days in direct sunlight without sunscreen and no food, very little water, and too many people staring, whispering, pointing and laughing, and looking the other way until I just passed out. In America.
A few days ago I told a friend that I do not feel anger. Because it is the truth. I just don’t. All the rage I felt at having lost my parents is gone. And really, that is the only anger I ever had. You’d be amazed at the healing power of memory. After I let go of all the negative energy I got from folks I cared for who were in a rush to push me away, I gave in totally to the fact that I needed to be by myself for a while to care for the damage caused by loss. It was the only way I could recover.
I let myself feel it all. Everything. I let myself remember. Everything. All of the pain, all of the love, all of the suffering, all of the heartbreak, all the struggle, every single bit of sacrifice. All the joy. All the tears. All the surprise. All the wonder. All the hopes I ever had…everything. What came pouring in after the all the worst was the good that makes me who I am that has always been here. It took a minute. And in that chunk of time that I can only describe as a heightened contemplation of my total being, every single cell and atom and mitochondria of my person transformed:
Because the rage you feel that fills the void left by the loss of loved ones is real. But so too is the healing. And that does take time. You see my grandmother in this image, dear reader. My aunt. My father, and my mother. And because I was adopted what that means is that you necessarily are looking at the lessons they taught me that were all that I had to tap into from memory to heal my own heart. Lessons in love.
Watching people watch you, seeing them wait for you to “get over it,” because it is only after you’ve struggled in their shunning that they’ll speak to you again is maddening. Until it is not. And then? It is eye-opening. You see everyone in your life for who they truly are. Your parents and your aunts and your uncles and your grandmothers have stories for this. Experience gives you a few of your own. Some of which you may write. Whether or not you do, the world continues to revolve.
I passed through walls of anger. Walked right through. And was I was burned to a cinder. What was left in the wake of all the calamity is what I had the strength to start with again. A deeper understanding of myself on my own terms about what happens when you remember the ones you love — folks who’ve helped shape you since your first recollection of butterflies. There is a thought process in my head I have learned over time about being born in November, and the whole notion of what it means to be connected in birth to the symbol of the phoenix. What I know, too, is that for me when the anger was gone I next had to deal with pain. When that is done is there room for happiness? I can’t really say that this is even about that anymore.
The test of time has proven it was only for the briefest moment that I believed everything beautiful in me could be taken away. In the calm and the quiet of my own darkest hour I was able to hear myself, and you know what? My darkest hour has music — my song. A gift to myself, from myself, that is pretty reassuring. There is also candle light.
When I sat down to write this, it was going to be an essay about what it meant for me to learn about books from the smartest man ever to walk the halls in book publishing — a man named Harold. He was a copy editor by trade, and a teacher. He would call me into his office on occasion to make sure that I was sure about how any given manuscript I was working on was put into production. Was I sure the author did not want a frontispiece? Would there be acknowledgements? What were my thoughts on the use of the serial comma? That last question was a life test. I asked Harold to explain commas to me over and over again because I found them to be so confusing — it seems a person could write a whole book on them as a subject. Harold would chuckle when the commas came up and we had a wonderful, ongoing conversation. Because improper comma usage can make anyone crazy. Harold showed me in different examples from all kinds of books, always being clear about house style, all the different ways the comma can work. To learn about sentence structure from a master copy editor, dear reader, is to learn from an arbiter of grace. To have learned from Harold was to be humbled for sure. It was an honor. To make it to this sentence after having been through so much I have had the pleasure of being confused and made whole again by listening to my use of the comma when I write and when I speak, all the while taking care to look closely in the mirror every day to see what age and discipline can do to human form. That is the power of books. So don’t look away from that picture up there. Know that it was taken after a primary school and a graduate education, after starting out in the world, making friends and learning corporate structure, after seeing the world and coming home again, after going abroad and returning to my country of birth only to lose everything just to get my own peace of mind. Know that in reading these sentences here you are seeing a black woman. Rather than struggle solipsistically on a whole essay about Harold, the rest of my work does all right in terms of explaining to you exactly what it means to be who I am having learned from folks willing to teach simply by being themselves.
True story? When I came back to New York on a visit and met my birth mother, we both knew who we were not looking at. And when I told her about the world of books it is that I come from — how my mother made sure I was reading by the age of three to get to whatever ‘here’ I needed to get to in order to be safe — her response was, “I don’t give a damn about that.” Without a second thought. And, just like that, I was done.
There was more in the conversation even darker. But that time doesn’t belong to me. It was hers to do with whatever she chose, and she chose to do nothing. And when you are this Deborah Cowell you know there is not any more to say on that matter.
Look, no one wants to walk back and forth across a hundred plus year-old suspension bridge every single day carrying books just to get a bag of rice for food. But if you have to, you will. You can. You do. And you make it look easy over time because the weight of the books makes you stronger. The distance becomes shorter as you remember lessons you’ve read about endurance. The folks who sell water in the summertime on the Manhattan side don’t know you by name but they do see you walking.
So much makes more sense to live instead of tell. The most quiet among us call it the editorial process. We do have something to say about our place in this world and we paint pictures first in words. Believe me when I say to you there are few things more humbling than looking at how far you’ve fallen when you are seeing it first in the mirror. What it is a person must live through to be able to write and then read this sentence is the magic of written work. You read, Deborah. When the only capitol you’ve got for a while is intellectual, know that for a while you’re gonna be hungry in a way that never fully leaves, no matter how much food is eventually on your plate. And that is your context for how things can — do — get better. It happens slowly. Over time. Right in front of people’s eyes, whether or not they see you. Hold your pen. “To know the swordsman, first study the artist.” Life gets real bizarre, and you do lose a lot. All of us want that second picture. Or maybe ones in between that might not be as extreme but still have…you know…that aesthetic jam folks are looking to capture in stone.
The evolution of strength and healing? Coming back to myself started in a library. This one:
Back in the 1970s, before it got all fancy with automatic doors and self-serve kiosks. And from time to time when I am in that part of Brooklyn. It also started at home. Because at some point my mother looked at me, as mothers of children sometimes do, and she knew one day she was no longer gonna be there in person to protect me. She wasn’t going to be able to keep me from seeing the harsh reality that is actually the human condition. Folks want good stories with happy endings but they shy away from what it takes getting there. The only person at all who would have welcomed me into their home after having reached the point where my skin was burned, my teeth were broken, and the only thing at all that was clear about me was my state of mind, would have been my mother. In my universe the news of my mother’s death was…palpable. It was the last of what I had to lose. If, as human beings, we are more honest with each other about one simple truth when it comes to people dying — that everyone is entitled to go through their own pain — we might see more diverse examples from people figuring out their own way. The world is our classroom.
For good measure, I say to you again as my universal truth: Woven into the fabric of this work is the knowledge that my audience, first, is myself. One black woman. Do with that knowledge what you will, knowing I give you my best.
I have learned a lot in this era about the ethics (or the lack thereof) of silence. If I did not continue to put my work into the public sphere — publish — would I be believed? Cared for? Remembered? Taken seriously? Should a person have to open their notebooks, take pictures of themselves at their worst, and publish everything on-line to prove they are a human being? In at least one instance we know the answer needed to be yes.
I think objectively about conversations I tried to have in comparison to posting in quiet with time stamps. How the experience of writing my thoughts down helped me be more clear with myself about what I needed to do to get better. And now I wonder, having the documentation, what does social connectivity mean for our potential? Maybe it is about making a home in our hearts first for ourselves. The rest just becomes. I know, without having to ask, what I see.
If there is an epilogue to everything I live, it is this:
I’ve grown tired of narratives where people are constantly missing out, too late, left behind, cast aside, or forgotten. I am fed up with everything shaped as a cautionary tale where things get difficult, life becomes “bad”, and then there are wrong turns and nothing more — beginnings, middles, and ends full of poor choices, followed by a tombstone. Real life is not a cautionary tale. People do make it to the station on time. Most often after having lived way more than what can fit in just one book. Really hard work is discipline that, in time, produces its own reward.
When we love ourselves, it’s a revolution. :: “…and it must follow, as night the day…”
