jennyjenp

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Fri Feb 13

Letting Go

It got me wondering, this whole business of letting go,

What a thing to say!

I’m hearing it everywhere:

On the street someone whispers it into their cell phone,

Girl, you have to let it go. He’s horrible to you. You deserve better.

The yoga teacher insists upon it: Inhale, and with the next exhale,

Let it go, relax your shoulders, melt your heart toward the mat.

The books, the endless books on the “ art of letting go”.

It got me wondering what it is exactly that I am letting go of?

I imagine fighting with my sister as a kid,

She has what’s mine and I want it back.

Let it go! Before I sieze it and hit her in the head with it.

I fantasize about swinging from a rope and letting go,

Falling without landing.

I see myself working at the restaurant, carrying a stack of plates

I just drop them, let them go crashing on the floor,

Something I yearned to do every time I worked.

Before I walk out the door forever, letting that job go.

I am afraid that if I let whatever it is go

I might come unglued.

What if this thing is what is holding me together?

Maybe my heart has hardened around it like a shell

And it will crack in half if I try and extract the thing at it’s center?

So, how can I let it go if I don’t know what it is?

I ask my Mai, Vietnamese manicurist extraordinaire .

She tells me lay back on the couch covered with an old blue towel.

I look tired, she tells me to sleep.

She will paint my nails while I lie.

You work hahd, every day. Lie me, 24 year in same spot

Mahvelous Nail. I make my sons go school school school.

So they don’t have to work hahd like parent.

I pick a shiny mauve for my feet, pale for my fingers.

They are getting longer and stronger

( I must be letting go of something?)

Everyday let goof something.

Make room for new.

She cracks open a few peanuts, reflects on the shell.

Peanuts are my favorite.

When I not busy, I sit back, take my time, relax and eat my peanut.

Mai has let go of a country filled with war,

But sometimes if you look close enough you can see it

In her fingernails, in the yellow ridges

Worry lines on her hands instead of her face.

Sometimes I call my granddaughter because I miss her but she won’t talk.

She say “ I too busy. I love you Noi Noi but I too busy.”

Too busy? She four year old. What she busy doing?

I’m holding on to some things

Because I am afraid if I let them go,

I will not remember them anymore.

She so nice. She so smart. Her daddy read her story and it’s a good one

So she say she too busy to talk to me because she don’t want him to stop.

She so smart.

If I try hard enough as I lie on Mai’s fake leather couch

Letting my nails dry

I can remember the last story my father ever read to me.

I have to squint my eyes tight and start humming the beginning of

“ You are my Sunshine”

before a glimpse of his beard , then a line of the story, then an arm-

and that’s it.

That’s all I have to let go of.