Caught in ferocious snow storms New York came to a standstill last week. But this weekend since I arrived the weather is almost balmy. People are out in T shirts even.
Winter has left the building. There’s a Spring Awakening. I am staying on 48th St off broadway and this afternoon catch the Q train from 49th to Prince. I’m going to Spring Natural on Lafayette and Spring, the last place I met my mother a couple of years ago.
She’s there and so too my brother Mehatem, his partner Simone and my niece Nayenne. It is the first time I have met Nayenne and she is beautiful . Simone is beautiful and
spirited too. It’s a warm hearted lunch on a warm hearted afternoon. I was
nervous at first as I always am when meeting my family. I fear it may disappear again; that I may say something that will make it go invisible again. That I will be left with my own echo as before. In some ways my own echo has been my family, my truth.
But family has nothing to do with truth. My mother’s side of the family are distinct from
my fathers side in that they remain as they always have been towards me. It is what it is and it is all good. We all have a laugh over food and the hours pass easily. Come five PM and I have to run. We say goodbye. There’s no drama. There is in its varying degrees, love. I’m at ease with it all at last. As I leave I think that maybe I have arrived.