#19 summer summit 2021

I used to imagine the day I was born but later I realized all the images I pictured were from my father or my older brothers’ perspective, not from my Mom. When we cleared out my parents’ NYC loft we had huge arguments about who should house my mother’s journals. Eventually my oldest brother agreed that I should keep them on the proviso that I also took the years of Museum of Modern Art date books my parents always used to keep track of their lives. Last year I paged through to look at my Mom’s notes leading up to my birth. I found these little daily notes had way more information about my history than I had imagined. There were the dates of when she had been exposed to German measles and when it was no longer a threat. There were doctors appointments and end of school celebrations for my brothers, visits with her siblings. These specific events are what shaped my life. My mother taught me to celebrate the everyday, the flowers on the side of the road, the city gallery, the candle at dinner, and the fireflies off the porch. She taught me that we are making this life up as we go along, between sunset and the clay between my hands holding tight.

won’t you celebrate with me
what i have shaped into
a kind of life? i had no model.
born in babylon
both nonwhite and woman
what did i see to be except myself?
i made it up
here on this bridge between
starshine and clay,
my one hand holding tight
my other hand; come celebrate
with me that everyday
something has tried to kill me
and has failed.

-Lucille Clifton, won’t you celebrate with me, from “Book of Light,” Copper Canyon Press, 1993