Soy de soul y soil

It began that Spring. The voice nudging me didn’t look or sound like anything I had experienced before. Listening closer I began speaking into voice recordings when I could not capture it immediately with words on the pages of mi libreta.

We all have pandemic tales. We could be cured if we could collectively weave them into one. My pandemic tales left me with a space to grieve and so many moments of longing to see my grandchildren as an abuela, took me back to my own inner child wishing to see mi abuela. Abuela Marina. The undercurrent, a rip tide really, whipping me to unfamiliar land and sea, going farther back still, to ancestors seen and unseen, with stories needing to be told. Not always with words, but with sounds and images all being played out through the movie of my mind and theatre of my body.

It would take walks in ready-made familiar land, the labyrinth of a pond trail where I spiraled in and out of awareness, gathering it all, while being held in place. Breathing in chlorophyll green, trusting in the refertilization of all those imprinted memories. Imprinted moments, then, now. Mine, theirs, ours. These love letters from the earth and the cosmos, gave me the connection to come back again and again. Soy de soul y soil and I play a part in this never ending life giving cycle. I still come home to this healing hour.