More Than Miriam

I recently stumbled across this photo blog and then the writings of Nikaela Peters. Her photos made me want to be a mother to chubby cheeked children, to make big bowls of overnight oatmeal for a family table which I’d spoon into mismatched bowls on Sunday mornings, to kiss the tops of heads, and eat fruit in sunshine. I smiled at her description of her children’s relationship – that competitive, craving, intimately close understanding between two entirely different individuals who at the same time know an obscene amount about each other. And this paragraph from her writing about a road trip took my breath away:

And oh! the land and how it lay, soft in parts, like fat, swelled and dimpled.  I thought I could see it yawning – the rise and fall not just of hills but of breath.  The word “lay” felt appropriate; isn’t that just what land would do next to the ocean, wild and numinous, what you would do, if you were the land?  Lie down?  Surrender to that which you cannot change or control?

In one of her writings she quotes Marilynne Robinson, author of Gilead and Home and more. I read Gilead just before I fly away from England, and read Home shortly after arriving, finishing it last week. When I met Chrispy on Saturday and we spoke about books (I love conversations about books) she mentioned Gilead, and when I called Naomi last night she said she’s reading Gilead too.

Reading Home shortly after arriving back to Singapore has been a great comfort. In Home Jack Boughton, infamous black sheep of the Boughton family, returns to his childhood home in small town Gilead. Things don’t change much in Gilead, and Jack is still mistrusted. But the inevitable shifts like his Father’s aging, and the loss of his mother, and dissipation of his father’s old church also mean that coming home is a shock of expectation unmet, and a fear like the fear of the uncanny, settling in.

Yesterday Naomi asked me how it was to move back into a familiar yet unfamiliar place. I couldn't answer her immediately thought I tried, talking about the shift in a relationship of dependence to one of equals with my parents, and yet still living in their house, and the blessing and challenge that is. I talked about the relationships with friends which have been molded apart as life circumstances and priorities and interests diverge. It's weird, I said. I lament, I said. But the closest I could get to articulation was at a remove, watered down by articulation itself, like the removed third-person perspective of Home which then feels truer than any sort of intimacy with its characters.

Third person and first person existences - I believe I live them both. There is the reflective John Ames me that paces my mind in the mornings when I go on runs underneath a soft opalescent sky. Then there is the narrating self that looks at me and tries unsuccessfully to make sense of existence in language.

A first person/third person journey last - last Thursday - walking up dark steps with the fear of the abyss in my heart and the warmth of Jacob's hand in mine. I don't know why the childish fear of the dark never really left me. When we get to the top I want to cry with relief and also embarrassment at my foolishness, and also joy at being there, overlooking sea and buildings and trees with Jacob. We share lunch boxes of essentially the same thing - rice and tau gwa and vegetables. Maybe that is what love includes - you share what you have, not out of need, but for the giving. (My consumption of tofu has gone up exponentially, not that I'm complaining.)

(I'm writing this on a bus that smells strongly of McDonalds chips, and I am trying not to be here.)

Fireworks go off, unexpectedly, and I lie down on my tote bag and look up at faint stars.