I watched the river from afar, feeling the autumn breeze at my back, tempted by the cool current before me. I watched until my eyes blurred with confusion about what is possible ad what is not. Then, propelled by a drive that lacks logical reason but is oversaturated with a sense of being, I found myself taking methodically paced barefooted steps toward the muddy bank. As I neared the water, my feet sank into a slippery rhythm: step-slide-stop; step-slide-stop. Toes thus immersed in the chilly ripples, I paused and closed my eyes. There, in the darkness of my isolation, I welcomed her lapping kisses. Lulled by the sounds of falling leaves and the river’s gurgling breath, I lingered in the contrast between warm sun on my skin, overtaken by cold winds, dissipated again by warm sun.

She invited me into her melody and buoyant embrace. I dropped my coat back from my shoulders, caught in the bend of elbows. The sum promised peaceful blessings; the wind threatened regret. The river invited me again like the gentle lead of a lover’s hand and the promise of security.

My coat fell to the earth, a carpet of wet leaves, and my body moved forward. Forward more – and onward still more. my skin grew instantly taught from the icy bites, but the river, she sang to me, relaxing my muscles and luring me in deeper, and deeper, and deeper. 

I leaned back and let her hold me. We cuddled. I disappeared in her love. 

Whoosh!

Crash!

A moment of silence

overcome by another…

Rolling…

Whoosh!

Crash!

The breathing earth

both sister and brother

Rolling…

Whoosh!

Crash!

A powerful pulling

from one to the other

Rolling…

Whoosh!

 Crash!

A rhythmic lulling

like the touch of a lover

Rolling…

Whoosh!

Crash!

A moment of near silence

denied by another

Rolling…

Whosh!

Crash!

But I really, really wish I could control it. And if I could, I would stop it from time to time to experience the silence. Oh, yes! I would welcome the silence!

I would welcome it, no doubt, with words in my head to describe it. Some words would fall together in poetic phrases. Some words would line up in long explanatory paragraphs. And some words, I’m sure, would jump about without direction. All together they would fascinate me with the myriad of ways that they create descriptions of the silence. But then I would really, really wish again that I could control it. And if I could, I would once again will it to stop.

I think this spontaneous thinking stuff is akin to inspiration.

I’m jumping now, no rhyming here, no reason. Just hot, cerebral energy popping me back and forth against the walls of my own mental container. 

Mom was often gone attending rallies and meetings. And when she was home, she read and wrote poetry about women – self discovery, empowerment, pride – these were her themes. She was busy and happy, and as everyone knows, a happy mama makes for a happy family. Our house was buzzing with intellectual chatter. Mom hosted gatherings of women on a regular basis. The phone rang often and she would run to answer it, light up at the sound of the voice on the other end, and delve into conversation that sounded to me more like song. Books, magazines, and documents were scattered about the house, all touting the same message: equal rights for all. The frantic tap, tap, tap of Mom’s typewriter was a common, soothing sound in the house.

Though I didn’t join her cause, this time in her life was very influential on my own development. I took the message to heart. Equal rights for all truly meant all to me – not a gender distinction, but a concept that included racial boundaries, economic boundaries, social, intellectual, and emotional boundaries. I didn’t join Mom’s cause because I believed that she and her friends would win the battle. I was innocent, naïve, and absolutely trusting in the ideology that right would prevail. I didn’t yet know how unfair the world could really be.

When the ERA failed to pass in 1975, I was 15 years old. Mom was devastated, but quickly bounced back with the hope that it would pass next time around. I had already been formed by her efforts. She told me I could do anything I wanted to do and I believed her. I was strong, curious, and opinionated. Quickly discovering my own independence, I truly believed the world was my oyster.

Years later, after countless discriminations based on my gender had defeated me, I felt that the women’s movement had let me down. I couldn’t do whatever I wanted to do! They had lied! And if I had known the truth, I might have made different decisions.

I’ve come full circle now because I understand life as a series of cycling circles that repeat and overlap like a spiral, all in the process of slowly evolving into something new. We seldom recognize change as it is happening, but are always surprised years later to look back and see how different things used to be. I realize that I can’t do everything I wanted to do, but I also realize how fortunate I am to live my life with a strong sense of self and self acceptance. The women’s movement taught me to dream big and reach for the stars. It taught me to believe in myself, and it taught me how to stand up again, time and again, after defeat and disappointment. These skills and attitudes are worth more to me than equal pay for any work I do alongside men.

The men in this world have homes and cars and boats. They have wives and an entitlement to arrogance. I don’t envy any of that. I covet my own passions, passions that bled into me from my mother as she discovered her own voice, her own strength, her own gifts and the joy of sharing them throughout her life.

We should always fight for equal rights: it is moral and humane and therefore the right thing to do. However, we must always know that we are all different, and in our differences, there are inequities. But if you believe in the ying and yang of the universe, you will see that in the end, these inequities find their balance.

Our jeans clung to our legs like hungry little children. Hair stuck to cheekbones like slime slammed against a concrete wall; T-shirts suctioned onto breast and belly. 

We burst into laughter and kicked off our shoes. 

And then, oh baby, do you remember?

 I do.

 And then we danced.

We held hands and leaned back, each pulling against the weight of the other, and we set ourselves to spinning. We spun with the escalating centrifugal force until our hands slipped apart and knocked us each into our own twirling jigs. We threw our heads forward and back and all around, whipping our hair into our spontaneous choreography. Heel clicks high in the air, feet splattering puddles: we danced!

Oh, baby, we danced!

Heavy breath punctuated by delighted squeals, 

oh yeah, we danced.

You fell into a puddle. Then you pulled me in on top of you. We wrestled in the water like two young lovers at the sea side. Heavy breath punctuated by delighted squeals, oh yeah, we danced.

We danced in the puddle.

We danced in the rain. 

We danced with our emotions, 

and we danced with each other.

Do you remember when we got caught in the rain?

Oh baby, I do!

In 1685 an young Scottish boy by the name of Charles McAnally was playing on the bank of the Perth River with some friends when they discovered a large earthen pot filled with money. The father of one of the boys sent young Charles back to find his father to help them divide the money amongst them. The father and the other boys stayed to guard the money.

Charles ran enthusiastically back to his home. On the way, he encountered a stranger on horseback. “What is your hurry?” the man asked. Charles told the stranger what he and his friends had discovered and that he was running back to get his father. The stranger told Charles that it would be faster if he hoped on his horse and let him take him back to his house. The young Charles trustfully mounted the horse and was taken, not to his house, but to the port and put on a ship about to embark to America.

Several months later, 10-year-old Charles McAnally arrived in Philadelphia. He grew up on the estate of an unnamed man as a live-in unpaid worker. When he became an adult, he married and settled on the Susquehanna River in Pennsylvania. This is how my ancestors came to be Americans.

I tell this story in March at the time of St. Patrick’s day even though the origin is in Scotland, not Ireland, because my ancestors came from both Scotland and Ireland. the Irish stories are not nearly so dramatic. Charles McAnally is my ancestor: he was the great, great grandfather of my great, great grandmother, Eliza Potts. That is seven generations away from me. In a way, that isn’t so long ago, and yet, not many of us can trace our roots that many generations back, so I believe it is important to keep this story, sketchy as it is, alive.

This story was passed down through the generations orally, but is also found recorded in an 1837 document by a Bishop in the Methodist Episcopal Church, David Rice McAnally.

I met a homeless man in New York City while working an internship at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine with the Omega Liturgical Dance Company. I was 20 years old, trusting, naïve, and impressionable. The young, skinny black man, just a few years older than I was, captured me with his eyes as deep as the ocean. He didn’t speak very much, but when he did, it was always something profound. He hung around my office and offered a thought from time to time. Periodically he’d ask me a question and seemed to ponder my replies. In time, we became friends. He sat silently with me whenever I went to the Cathedral gardens and watched the peacocks. Between long silences, we talked about the goodness of humanity in spite the violence and injustice all around us. He was a mystery to me, and his resilience impressed me greatly.

He drew pictures and gave them to me as souvenirs . He signed them "Artooz Fungie". I finally learned that his name was Tino.

  A few months into my internship, I went to volunteer at a youth center in Harlem that was actually housed in an abandoned building shared with drug addicts. My friend, Tino, walked me into and out of Harlem every day. I never knew where he went while I worked with the kids, but he never failed to show up when I was ready to leave and he ensured I that I never walked in Harlem unchaperoned by him. I was moved by his kindness and naïve enough to never suspect that he had an ulterior motive. He never gave me reason to doubt him; and now, nearly 30 years later, I still do not doubt the sincerity of his kindness.  

Still sorting through old boxes and settling into a new home, I recently found this poem in my New York scrapbook and I’m pretty sure I wrote it about Tino. It’s terrible, but nonetheless, I am sharing it because it represents a young woman’s tender, safe, and protected experience in a potentially dangerous environment. I am older, wiser, and much less daring now than I was then, but the questions remain about that young homeless man and really, about humankind: what is anyone’s source of perseverance and endurance? What makes any of us move and love and think?    

beneath your breast?

Note: written on a cold winter night in mid-December

I don’t have to have shoes. Cold mud is my least favorite sensation, seconded by a cold damp hem on my jeans that knocks against my bare ankles when I walk, but both are bearable, and neither lasts too long.

I so much savor the freedom I feel in my heart when my feet are bare that it is worth it to me to bear the discomfort of cold mud and damp hems. When the ground is cold and muddy, everything about my body is miserably uncomfortable. I mean, it’s spikey, icy rain that creates the muddy ground after all, and I don’t like how that feels on my nose and in my bones.

I stray. My point here is that I don’t have to have shoes. I have thick soles so rough surfaces do not bother me. In contrast, I find that the many textures of the world serve me with miniature foot massages all through the day. Tingle, mingle, surprise! Hot, cold, tiny prickles, dull, wide thumps. It makes me aware of my environment and puts me in touch with the interaction between the earth and me – even the every day dull moments that make up my life. I get this constant loving touch from the earth all through the day. These sensations coming to my consciousness through the soles of my feet provide for me an awareness that gives me a certain kind of energy that pulsates in my soul

A secret massage – a dancing soul – oooh! Such joys!

I don’t have to have shoes, but I do have to go barefooted!

                      

Gone  

Who are those kids in that picture?

Do you remember them?

They are us

from four very different places

united in one,

and scattered again

into many.

We collided for one small moment,

meshing the sounds of our laughter,

the thoughts in our head.

Touching

tender flesh to tender flesh

we knew no past; we dreamt no futures.

For a moment,

we were one.

Did it hurt when we split apart?

I don’t remember, but I think

it was inconsequential –

a natural movement of time.

I think it happened like an exhalation.

Where did you go?

What happened to me?

Where are the others?

Calloused flesh

now separated by thousands

of unnoticed exhalations,

broken pasts,

longing for touch.

Those kids are gone.

Do you remember them?

She took the rose from the singer’s

lips

and held it between her teeth.

She teased him with her smile,

the twinkle in her eyes,

then slipped into the crowd

and vanished

before he ever got her name.

The crowd is gone, but the image remains

                           etched into the silver paper                           

of a fading photograph.

As the sea turned to sediment,

she to dust,

time changed the colors of the season

and the shape of a woman.