Monstrous Joy

Powerfully full of weight and time

There’s an Indian Hawthorn bush growing beside the mailboxes out front of the complex where we live. A dusty bush growing by the sidewalk. In the year of so that we’ve lived here I’d overlooked the plant. Passed the bush every time I’d left to go anywhere, to walk our dog, to climb into our truck to drive away. The leaves so dusty, gray green and spiky. In spring pink and white flowers boomed sending fragrance into the air. Sweet to walk by. Didn’t stop. Not until I noticed the ancient looking berries peppering the dusty bush. Purple chalky skin thick as scar tissue, peeking out from dark green leaves. Those berries. I stooped to pick one, rolled it between my fingers, and remembered how I used to pick them when I was a small child, living here in San Diego.

They grew in the alley behind our rental in City Heights, near our backyard where I used to play at cooking. I wasn’t a kid who played house with dolls. I played at cooking, writing stories, being a hobo. A wanderer. A witchy shamanistic child plucking berries off bushes in alleyways and serving them to my siblings; my younger sister and our younger brother.

I did eat a few of those berries. But I didn’t feed them to my siblings. They were sour, not sweet. Like an unripe apple. I simply picked them off the bush in the alley, put them in a can, and thought about nurturing people. Turning berries into jam and syrup. Pouring them on toast. Then, feeding people. Like I love to do now. Now here again on the streets of San Diego. All these years later.

Every morning, I walk the streets of our neighborhood thinking. How best to keep going, to help others, how to keep my ears open, listening to others, no matter what. How to keep my heart open. I walk, I brood, I wonder.

What if you, me, we, meaning all of us, finally achieved or were given all we ever wanted whatever that might be: the truth, transparent trust, safety, justice, acceptance, love, health, day after day every evil defanged. Neutered. What if we were all of us so taken care of we’d all of us become goddess like. Able to intend and be simultaneously. What if all of us, not simply a few, could finally cease to struggle. Would we become more willing and able to be here now together on this earth, if all of us, fully ourselves together, were safe and fed, cared for and caring for in this moment in time on this planet. What if we could become plantlike and grow alongside each other, reaching upwards, sending down roots, straining towards the light.

Every morning, I wander the streets wondering what it means to say, to anyone really: find the joy. Find your own joy. Is it that simple I wonder. When so many are joyless?

In my twenties whenever anyone, usually a man, would make bossy proclamations like all we have to do is____ fill in the blank, back then fresh out of foster care I would react instantly.

I would make an “O” shape with my lips, tightening the muscles round that letter. Then, with my palm turned away from my face and my thumb pointing down, I would raise my hand to my lips, curl my pointer finger slightly to form a hook, insert that finger into my mouth and push towards the inner part of my cheek. I’d tightly wrap my lips around my hooked finger. Then I’d blow out hard as I pushed my finger out of my mouth with a loud sound.

Pop!

That was my response to too easy answers back then. Now I am old and even more questioning of too easy answers. Decidedly less tolerant of too easy answers, my own included.

Seems monstrous to question joy. I know. I have become monstrous in old age. I come by it honest as the saying goes. The women of my family are monstrous, as in powerfully full of weight and time. We grew up like children in fairy tales; burdensome mouths to feed. Searching for food, warmth, safety. Easy victims of strong men. The preacher behind the podium, the bossman at the head of the dinner table, any man behind the wheel, of a car, a ship, a nation.

A nation of trauma. We live in trauma nation.

At first I only heard voices, hard to identify. Two distinct voices just up ahead as I walked down 5^th Avenue. One voice higher than the other. Plaintive. Asking to be left alone. Asking for the person standing in front of them, over them as they huddled on the sidewalk between the crevice two buildings made, hidden from my approaching sight.

“You got rid of all your stuff,” the person standing over them said. “Why’d you do that?”

“Because I don’t need it where I’m going,” came the reply.

I passed by on that same sidewalk.

“Where you going?” the standing man asked.

“To death,” the seated person replied.

Like my brother.

I kept walking. Didn’t look back. Didn’t say anything. I just kept walking. I wanted to cry. I wanted to scream. I wanted to take my clothes off and fling them into the gutter.

To feel the warmth of the morning sun on my own skin if only for an instant.