family – Alyssa Bittner-Gibbs

The Last Known Address

Thirteen years and an ocean separate me from Massachusetts, yet somewhere in its democracy there is still a place for my voice. I no longer live with the consequences of its elections, but I cannot separate myself from the history that made my vote possible. Between the women who fought to be heard and the country I have learned to call home from afar lies a question of citizenship, conscience, and belonging: what do we owe the places we have left, and what do we owe the people whose struggles made our choices possible?

The Climb

On my forty-sixth birthday, I see that human life cannot be understood only from where the person is standing now. During the climb, I know the grain of the rock, the doubtful foothold, the salt in my eyes. Then something catches me. I lean back, and the years open into a landscape. Earlier selves, worlds I have come to carry, a life I once lacked the imagination to picture: each changes what the others mean. Where their views meet, I begin to recognise the life that could only be mine. Each of us carries a world assembled in an unrepeatable way, still widening, still coming into view.

Nonni

Our relationship begins somewhere beyond the reach of my memory, in those first days when being loved was something other people would have to remember for me. Today, my grandmother turns ninety. Between us is the entirety of my life, nearly half of hers, and rather more geography than I would like.

Customs to Declare

Where I grew up, toughness included turning up when someone needed a hand. In the Nordics, I found beauty in making that care a public promise. I want a society that offers both without making obedience the price of belonging. Perhaps steel, smoke and social democracy have more to offer one another than either of my homes suspects.

Conduct Your Blooming

Apples, onions, children, and a bucket of dahlias. My worries came home with us, too. As I approach forty-six, a harvest afternoon and the words of Gwendolyn Brooks bring me back to the question of flourishing: what we gather, what we give one another, and what keeps opening in an imperfect world.

familyA collection of 8 posts