365 Attempts (At Life)

It’s so hot on this Roman balcony that my tears evaporate as they hit my cheeks. I’m in Italy. Beautiful, stinking hot Italy.  It’s dusk. It’s golden hour. It’s so perfect that it hurts.   In the last month of her life, as if knowing the end was nigh, my mother handed me a 5x7 white envelope with a handwritten letter and a cheque. Telling me “although I wish with all my soul that I could have had another trip with you, life had other plans. Please spend this money on memories. Go to Italy, toast to me and I will be with you.”  Cut to 1 year and two months after that letter was placed in my tear stained hands, and here I am - toasting her with prosecco, some fresh figs (which she adored) and listening to Renato Carosone.  It’s a cheerful Italian song from the 50’s. I can hear her singing along off-key, like she did in the hospital those last days, when I played it for her on my phone speaker. We were outside on the cafeteria terrace in the sun and she was in a wheelch...

I’m at the beach today. Not the sandy kind, the rugged, cliffside kind. We are in Polignano A Mare, laying on sunchairs under a yellow umbrella. It’s nice to hear Italian spoken by the other beach goers. Nice to finally assimilate.   I survey our sunchair neighbors. An elderly woman with silver hair and lean, golden limbs gets up in search of food. There’s a young couple beside her, both tanned and toned. The girl, in a revealing leopard print bikini, sunbathes with a blank expression. Her boyfriend surveys her body admiringly, making suggestive glances. She rolls her eyes and waves him away as he leans in for a kiss. He seems to enjoy this more than if she had complied.  Two chairs over is a man with three young children. He’s in very tight blue bikini briefs. His legs are matted with black curly hair, damp from his swim. I happen to catch his eye as he yells at his kids to stop running, and his stern expression quickly becomes a polite smile. He nods his head and calls me “s...

There’s something about being on the west coast that gives me a reprieve. A little more time to mull things over. To assess what I'm feeling. Time that the east coast might have already fumbled. A chance to catch my breath and see my thoughts accumulate above me like those cartoon bubbles. A chance to be an alter ego. A chance to be bolder. A chance - period.

I thought I did it. I didn’t fall apart during Christmas. I got through my mother’s Christmas Eve birthday. I dug deep for the type of joy she brought everywhere and tried to spread it at the various family Christmas gatherings. And I succeeded. We had a nice Christmas. We laughed. Almost magically. We bathed in the suspended relief of laughter. It's a few days later and tonight, after singing along to music, I cooked an excellent risotto. The type I would have sent her a photo of. And when I sat down and took the first bite, out of nowhere, I dissolved into the guttural despair I thought I had tricked myself into bypassing.  First comes the panic. How can she be gone? Like, really? How? And why? Why her?  And then comes the cruel flash of those last days and moments hitting me like bullets. Fast. But the type of bullets that don’t kill, they just leave gaping wounds. Remembering the way I hid in that bright, sunny hospital corridor and begged every angel to take her. To take ...

When you held me close, you smelled like love songs.

I drove down the old main road where I grew up. Past where the first cinema used to be. Past the Chinese restaurant that is now a healthy breakfast place. Past the vacant lot that was once our Royal Bank, the one where my mom got me my first bank book. Sitting there at the stoplight, I looked at the sidewalks I used to walk on. I squinted and saw myself there. The ghost of little girl me. She was kicking at pebbles in the heat, waiting for mom to come out of Steinberg’s grocery store. I could hear her humming a tune to herself as she drew hearts on the wall with her hand. She turned suddenly, shaded her eyes from the sun, and looked at me in my car. She didn’t seem to recognize me, but waved anyway. The light turned green before I had a chance to wave back.

You are not here. You're a mirage of accumulated pixels.

A lot of things are revealed, when it unravels. So when you find yourself disappointed by the big pile of yarn at your feet, ask yourself why you keep pulling the thread.

I haven’t felt every feeling. Surely there’s something left. Not just glimpses that get swallowed up inside a vacuum when I’m dreaming. And what is a dream? If not a feeling you had once that morphs until you wake up. Pieces of everything and remnants of fiction. Scattered and strange. Were you a dream? Or did you just feel like one?

There's something about you and the moon that I can't quite separate. 

That’s the thing with emotions, just when you think you have reigned them in, something, unexpectedly, sets them off.  And your feelings run amok.  Coloring your night an entirely different shade. Of red. Blue. Or grey. Until they are satisfied that they have your attention. And that they've left enough paint on your hands, to finish the job.

I met him by the pool in Miami. He was a few chairs away from me and happened to see me mumble a ‘fuck you’ under my breath while violently throwing my phone into my bag. “That can’t be good,” he said. I looked at him, and I don’t know why, but I told him. I had just found out, via text, that the guy I’d been seeing on and off for years, whom I was desperately in love with, was dating someone new and that it was starting to get serious. He winced, then chuckled, “OK hold on, I think I can beat that. I’m here in Miami for a friend’s wedding. Well, just prior to coming here, I had asked my girlfriend to move in with me and instead she dumped me.” “Yikes,” I replied, “What a sad pair of tourists we are.” He offered to buy me a cold beer, but I noticed he was drinking something stronger and I said, “No. I want that. What is it?” "Scotch." "Yes. I want scotch." He smiled. We commiserated our individual love stories in complete detail and talked about our li...

Yesterday on my flight home I re-watched Before Sunrise, a movie that epitomized love and romance for me when I was 18. Twenty years later and I still got butterflies at the same parts. But it felt so strange now. To understand how time and experience can alter your perception of a love story. To understand how much easier optimism is before you've really loved.

It’s still a novelty to me. Being in the sky. Flying. Watching the world below. The airplane casting the tiniest blip of shadow from 40,000 feet through candy clouds. I’m flying with my mama, taking her to Florida for a little vacation. I’m immensely grateful she was granted leave by her doctor to have a warm getaway. Some happy normalcy in a year that has been anything but. Her smile comes fast and easily when our eyes meet. She’s so damn cute. Wearing her running shoes and pearls. You would never know of her struggles. Not by looking at her. Sun fills the jet and, for now, everything feels just like it was before cancer made its presence known. I’ve said it before, but we don’t appreciate the “normal ordinary” moments enough. They might be mundane and boring but they mean everything is ok. You’re not in crisis. You’re not diving into worry, stress, anger or sadness. You’re not feeling sick. You’re just living and breathing. Like normal. Or in my mom’s case, you’...

I was taken by surprise that he made me blush. As if my skin knew something I hadn’t figured out yet. Realizing he noticed, only made the shade deepen. Then even my mouth betrayed me with a smile.

It’s the heartbreaking thing nobody tells you. That growing up is mostly learning to cope with loss.

It’s been a rough week. With very limited sleep. I just wanted to hurry through my busy day and get home to take care of my mom who has been fighting the flu and fever. When my sister texted and asked me to pick up my nephew after work I was a little annoyed. It was a detour and I was exhausted. But the minute I arrived and saw him waving and excitedly doing his fortnite dance in the freezing cold, I couldn’t help but laugh. He threw his bags in the backseat and began babbling about his day. After a while, Bruno Mars came on the radio and he just started singing along. Loudly. With all his heart - and he sounded great! I looked at him and marveled. I don't have kids, but seeing my nephew sing the way I used to at his age made me so proud and nostalgic. I started to harmonize with him. He seemed pleased. Before I knew it, we were on the highway in traffic and both of us were singing at the top of our lungs. If you would have told me this morning that by nightfall I’d...

I was telling someone today that I felt 'under the weather’ and when I got off the phone, the thought struck me that I don’t really know what that expression means. I know I’ve always used it to express not feeling well but is that the proper use? And why is it ‘under’ the weather? Who came up with it? And when? What kind of shitstorm was there that day? A few months ago my friend was over for lunch and we were talking about how certain places in the world still drive on the left side. We got to wondering how this is still happening when a greater portion of the world drives on the right. And how did it start? None of us could really answer the question. So we did the obvious thing: HEY SIRI!!! Why do some countries drive on the left side of the street? I remember that the answer had something to do with how the cavalry used to ride on the left because most swordsmen were right handed. We had a laugh because it was absolutely the last thing we thought would be the answe...

It’s delicate. To reveal any kind of love.

Hearts are landmines. And technology is not on our side.