Eat

I don't know why I make decisions out of the blue, maybe because I can. I wanted to stop blogging but I keep missing my sisterfriends. I really had no reason other than I said I would. In the past it did not bother me that I changed my mind every few seconds. Now I am having a hard time being fickle. I am bothered by it. I am getting old. I want some constancy, but right now, I shall eat the words I said to Bella about not blogging for a month. With the long post below, you probably wish I stayed away, so...

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Modern medicine and American society, I can only say American because I can’t say much about the others, have given melancholy a bad rap. I can understand why depression requires chemical therapy but melancholy?
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I grew up in a home where introspection and pensive mood was a welcome and necessary state of mind. It allowed us to evaluate and reflect on our lives, our being and existence. I grew up in an introspective and reflective thinking family. Just imagine a slow Saturday morning before we started our chores. There we were in the shaded garden. My mother was sitting in the canopied swing talking to the fish vendor whose high pitched voice pierced the crisp morning air. My eldest sister M was walking with her head held up gazing into the horizon, thinking. I knew in her head there is some discussion going on or paper being written. My brother D was standing by the palm tree blowing smoke from his cigarette with eyes narrowed, thinking. I hated the fact that he smoked. My sister L was sitting in the wrought iron chair under an umbrella canopy reading and writing. My brother E was pacing back and forth, thinking, gesturing. He sometimes stopped and smiled at the young helper who meekly returned his smile or said something funny to him. My younger sister L was in the outdoor kitchen toying with and feeding the fire. I don’t know what was in that pot blackened by the soot from the burning firewood. My sister R was speaking softly, giving instructions to the two young female helpers who also spoke in hushed tones. My sister F… my sister F, she comes out smiling, says something and everyone turn their heads towards her. She is a catalyst for the fun and mirth that exploded in laughter or a chorus of loud and happy voices all speaking at once, conversations crisscrossing. My mother and the fish vendor stopped their conversation and my mother was proudly looking at all of us. Tia Aurea, the fish vendor admiringly looked at everyone and sometimes made a comment at one of the children. She was always complimentary to my sisters and brothers. With me she was free to tease and criticize. She said things like “Cee-cil look at you! You look like you are going to war in that outfit” or “Go to your mother and help her!” It never bothered me. People think they can say anything to me or command me but that is only true of the ones who are dear to me. Otherwise, I had the foulest, most sarcastic mouth to accompany my bellicose teenage decorum in that house. I gave Tia Aurea deference. She was our laundrywoman and the mother of one of my classmates in high school.
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For my part, I was with my father who was tinkering with his camera. He asked me questions and when I was younger I replied with an argument or defiant answer. The older Ces, the one who came back for a visit with her husband, was now swelling with love and desire to give him a hug or a kiss. My heart was pounding and telling me “Kiss him! Just grab him or hug him from his back and kiss him like you do so naturally with your mother.” Instead my body was frozen, it did not move. Instead I just answered his questions methodically with extra gentleness.
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Dear God! I loved him so much, my father, and I was so proud of him but it took me to leave the country to tell him I loved him. The last time I saw him, he looked so peaceful in his coffin. He looked like a thinner version of my grandfather, whose photograph of him in a white suit leaning by a tree, I used to gaze upon. I can’t remember my grandfather. He died when I was a young child.
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My children only met my father once. My son was four years old and my daughter was one year old. She screamed her heart out when I put her on his lap. As a toddler, she only preferred her father’s company and mine. Thank God my son sat with him, lingered, touched him and hugged him. My father beamed with pride. My son celebrated his seventeenth birthday two weeks ago.
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So back to melancholy, it takes me to some unknown journey. I did not mean to talk about my father; he just popped into my mind and in my heart.
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Today is my daughter’s birthday. She is fourteen years old today.