To Nani…

As my grandmother (my mother’s mom — Nani in Hindi) whose body is now over 80 years is suffering the pull and pushes of her body’s age, going in and out of hospitals over the last 2 months, I sit here thinking of how do I honor her life? How do I console her soul? How do I capture her essence for eternity? Of how her life as a woman and the many sacrifices she had to make just because she was born in patriarchal India before me, have taken the shape of the freedoms I as a woman can today take for granted? How do I tell her I am standing on her shoulders? The lack of words but overflow of emotions leads to empty pages and eyes full of tears.

And then…

A poem pops into my life…

I will not attempt to say what has been so beautifully said by you Jeannette Encinias. Thank you for penning these words to help me express my current emotions to the beloved matriarch, the living source of my story.

Dearest Nani, these words are not in a language you speak, but the energy of the emotions I hope, this ether will carry into your consciousness.

Beneath The Sweater And The Skin

How many years of beauty do I have left?

she asks me.

How many more do you want?

Here. Here is 34. Here is 50.

When you are 80 years old

and your beauty rises in ways

your cells cannot even imagine now

and your wild bones grow luminous and

ripe, having carried the weight

of a passionate life.

When your hair is aflame

with winter

and you have decades of

learning and leaving and loving

sewn into 

the corners of your eyes

and your children come home

to find their own history

in your face.

When you know what it feels like to fail

ferociously

and have gained the 

capacity

to rise and rise and rise again.

When you can make your tea

on a quiet and ridiculously lonely afternoon

and still have a song in your heart

Queen owl wings beating

beneath the cotton of your sweater.

Because your beauty began there

beneath the sweater and the skin,

remember?

This is when I will take you 

into my arms and coo

YOU BRAVE AND GLORIOUS THING

you’ve come so far.

I see you.

Your beauty is breathtaking.

~ Jeannette Encinias

__________

Nani, You brave and glorious thing. YOUR BEAUTY IS BREATHTAKING!

With this amazing woman many years ago, when we took a visit together to a doll museum in my birth town of Chandigarh.

My nani is the second woman from the left as a young mother of three daughters. She went on to have 3 more children.

On a rare trip with Nani and her 4 daughters. I was the only lucky grandchild who came along on this trip.