I’m in Manhattan eating a bagel as big as my head. We’re at a serviceman’s hostel: mom, Elaine and her boys, me and mine.
9:30
They’re all also except me. Typical.
But here I am writing like dad would while on his travels. It feels right.
It’s quiet.
Mom sprang for this family gathering. Elice and Brahim couldn’t make it. It’s the end of Ramadan. We’ll see them later this summer.
What is it that makes us different when we are removed from the context of our every day? There was a quote by Stephen Frye i read a week ago. Something about how we are not a noun. We verb.
Not an actor, but one who acts.
Deconstruct some known simplicity to see what is underneath in its glorious messiness. There is something powerful in that. Instead of saying I am a professor, a word of persistent identity, I profess. What? I profess… Different things at different times. Some times. And I am freed from professing all the time, because I do not profess all the time. I am an occassional professor.
In the same way I mother at times. It occurs to me it would be bad to mother all times. That maybe that got in the way of loving (as in lover).