To Tata, on the eve of Something I Do Not Understand

This is hard. I'm back at Stanford now and I know I need to write about my visit with Tata. I know I want to write about it . . . it's just not easy.

I have been so afraid to visit her. What if she does not recognize me and I can't talk to her? What if she does, and I have to? What do I say? How much can I handle? It is not easy to see a dying person.

She is sitting in her chair looking small. She has thin grey hairs dotting her wrinkled scalp and I say, I got the same haircut as you! And she laughs. I tell her I can give her haircuts from now on. I motion with my invisible electric clippers around my head. Zip zip zip.

And this is hard to write, and this is close to the chest, and this and this and this—

She says to Dad, Mira que grande es—Look how big he is. She asks me about my girlfriend and I say that we're not dating anymore. She nods her head and says, She holds too tight, and I say, Yes. We chat about some things for a while and then she asks about my girlfriend and I say that we're not dating anymore, careful to be just as invested in my response as the first time. She says, You are young, and there are so many, and I say, Yes, and she doesn't remember to ask again.

I show her the front of the journal Dad and Shakti got me in Tulum. It says, El tiempo ne elige lo que se lleva—nosotros elegimos lo que se queda—Time does not choose what it takes—we decide what remains. She says, Bonito, and I say, Yes.

I tell her about the dream I had, about her in the ocean swimming, diligently smoking a cigarette, about me flying over on a kite, about her asking, What are you doing? and me saying, Estoy volando—I'm flying. I tell her about the way she chased the escaping gray sinews of smoke and inhaled them back in, making a big show of it, and she laughs and laughs.

And this is hard, so hard, I can't get the creative juices out of me, and it feels like trying to pull essential things from out of my chest and I just can't get them out. When I wrote about my dream earlier, I relished the moments when I could make it sound beautiful, when I could observe things, when I could twist those words around my tongue and light them delicately on the page. Now—I don't want to. Because it's writing about someone who's disappearing right in front of you, who's disappeared a little more every time they ask you about your girlfriend, and you tell them and you can see they had no idea.

...will finish later~