I've been told I have my grandmother's hands rubbing calendula and rose oil to soothe the crevices forming in my skin. Lately, they've been cracking from the many times I've said “Twinkle, twinkle little star to myself, treating every cleanse as a ritual to celebrate old karma being washed away. Beyond flesh. My bones speak to the future I cannot quite grasp yet, but the feeling is certain. We were made for these times. Grandmother's hands knew how to garden a wilting weed back to life, the ones they tried to remove as unwanted, uprooted from her soil, flown into a foreign land as a reminder that sometimes dandelions serve as medicine. With few words spoken, English broken, her whispers from the garden beckoned me to speak on the things she wished, she could have said before her body turned to stardust and soil.
Kin khao lairang? Have you eaten yet? Hands offering strange fruit reminiscent of her country to say, I love you. What is blooming from these moments will compost and rebirth into the same balm that soothes these dry grandmother's hands today. And I am patiently caring for her, preserving what innocence I have left, as I call upon the elder, I too, I’m becoming. The one unsilenced as loud as an oak tree, as resilient as a lotus with seeds that will carry our stories of a time when the Earth asked us to be still, to be rooted, to savor the moments of cleansing, of compost, of creation. What will you do with your hands, with your heart, with your voice? What are the stories you will tell of how you emerged from the mud as you beamed light into the darkness in these times of change?
It's been a heavy week on my heart. I'm tired and I'm also fired up about the ways we can build bridges across differences without burning out. Of course, last Saturday I had the privilege of being asked to close out a vigil in Little Tokyo, Los Angeles, that was organized to draw awareness to the violence happening towards our Asian elders. And I shared a new spoken-word piece I wrote called Grandmother's Hands, inviting everyone to feel the presence of our ancestors and the elders in our body. There were tears as we felt the grief and the weight of responsibility to protect our elders. Our elders, that carry so many stories many of us are still dearly clinging on to. Our elders are the culture keepers, and they are often the last bridge back to our roots.
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