Alice Walker

NOVEMBER HEART

IMG_1925I broke routine this morning and put aside my keyboard.  I spent time reading Alice Walker’s Now is the Time to Open Your Heart.

Perhaps November is not the time for such readings – of a woman on a spiritual journey, on an adventure quest, on a search for self.  It is a little disconcerting, for I am such a woman.  I have been on this long and rocky road for many a day, searching for my own lost self.

Our HouseI left my motherland many years ago, not of my own accord.  I followed my mother as she left her house and home.  We left our village.  We left our country and countrymen.  We left the aunties and grandmothers.  We left the cousins.  We crossed oceans and continents to Gold Mountain to join my father and others like him in search of THE DREAM.

Here I am many years later, still in Gold Mountain, still searching for THE DREAM.  I am tap, tapping on the keyboard.  I wonder if anyone can hear my taps.  Is it like Morse Code to them?  Can they decipher my words?

IMG_1886 November is a harsh month.  The cold grey of the sky sends shivers through my marrow. I am not fooled by its watery cool sunlight.  I am wary, on guard against all possibles.  I am warmed by the aromas of soup simmering on the stove.  That is what you do on grey November days.  You bring the warmth of summer and autumn into your house and heart however you can.  All the colours of the garden- the gold of squash, the red of tomatoes and beets, the green of kale – are simmering in the pot.  

 

WHAT I’VE BEEN WAITING FOR

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Autumn has come.  It is in the late rising sun, the cool crisp mornings, the golden falling leaves.  I feel it in the ache of my bones.  But I am finally here, tap, tapping at my keyboard.  It has been a long time since I’ve felt the rhythm returning to my fingers.

It hasn’t been easy, this waiting.  It has been full of un- ease and dis-ease.  Nothing stops except the flow of my words.  Life goes on, as the cliche goes.   But in the process, I have seen and learned the bare bones of life, of what is of the utmost importance.  It is not the money.  It is not the job.  It is not what people’s opinion of me.  It’s none of those things and yet I cannot articulate it in written words.  Yet I know and feel it in my marrow.

Perhaps it is this very moment that I’ve been waiting for, this moment of clarity.  I have been waiting for myself, to steal the words from Alice Walker, who wrote We Are the Ones We’ve Been Waiting For.  It is a book everyone should read.  Forever and a day, I have not thought of myself mattering.  Forever and a day, my identity is as a daughter, a sister, an aunt, a friend, a nurse, and no more.

The waiting is over.  I have arrived unto myself.  And it is good.  It is worth it.  I am worth it.