We choose life (and they can’t kill that)
Alternative title: We choose life (and they can’t kill that, but they will try)
Alternative title: We choose life (and they can’t kill that, but they will try, so learn and run)
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Sometime late 2021 after my birthday, I laughed when I caught myself singing along to the 4 Non Blondes song I had belted out for the past decade, but now, was finally 25. Heyy. (-ey-ey-ey)
Twenty-five years and my life is still
Tryin’ to get up that great big hill of hope
For a destination
Alright miss gia, next question: what’s your destination? Um, well. Moving into the third year of this pandemic… feeling the heat of a fire and not knowing if it's the sun or the United States… assuming it's both. I laughed some more.
Whether I laugh at my own followup questions is not the point, I’m learning. I’m also not trying to name a destination beyond the universal orbit that we have been on. We (humans) often wonder about life outside our orbit. What is it? How do we get there? Do we want to get there? When will we get there?
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In Berkeley, there is a plot of grass near a big intersection. I think Adeline and 63rd. A huge steel art installation was commissioned 20 years ago; it’s made of 8-foot steel letters that spell out the words: here and there. Homeless people used to make home on the grass around these words, until an almost-as-tall black metal gate was built around this grass, some people’s homes. (Now, they make home on the grass between the sidewalk and zoom cars, outside the gate that surrounds the art.) Here, there.
This feels important to me.
I don’t know if I’m looking for my destination, more or less than learning that I am here. Falling, crashing, grounding—all get me to the same place. Here. Aqui. And there (?) I am learning that I am also getting there. Moving there. Dying there. Being born again there. There. Here.
And in order to get there, whether there is, I am making home. In between here and there I am making home. In between here and there I am choosing to make home. Choosing to grow a home, to make the conditions livable, in between here and there. Choosing to live in between here and there, wherever I find myself. Choosing… choose, chose, choice. I kept coming back to this word. Verb. Action. Followup question, who chooses?
I wrestle this followup question a lot. And maybe that’s the question’s potential, to ask me who makes the home that makes my life possible.
Who makes the home that makes life possible? A mother, sometimes. My mother did for as long as she could. So did hers. I’m making home for my beloved now.
Motherhood, like experiencing homelessness, demands that I know who makes the home that makes life possible because in motherhood, like in homelessness, the answer is you. Me. We? (Yes.)
To mother life is to grow a home that sustains life, every day.
Surviving homelessness is to somehow do the same (here, there, wherever), every day.
Responsibility is scary when it becomes life and death. This may be why young people learn to be scared of getting older before we’ve had the chance to be young. Both living with no home and growing a home for my beloveds did me the favor of cutting to the point: to live, come home. To come home, be home. To be home, become home. To become home, choose to live.
For the last twenty-five years, everything I have learned about the United States has looked me in the eye while 100s of thousands of humans die and the eagle’s eye has not budged. To this death-machine, I am to pledge my allegiance?
Science teaches me that life (the literal magic that is keeping me conscious/breathing/existing) is not for granted. History shows me how life is not for granted. What chaos. What choice.
Amidst this chaos, choosing to continue is choosing to get as close to life as we are guaranteed, which is only right now. And there, right there, for right now, I’m making home—come on in.