No. 21 - A Skirt for Little Bear

As beautiful as it was, I could not get anywhere in the Ethiopian kaftan. I needed, instead, a wide-hemmed skirt, one that would allow a suitable gait to get from here to there. You see, sometimes, a skirt will have a proper flare, forgiving towards the curiosity of the leg, generous towards distance and discovery, and sometimes, a skirt will haw you in–sans space or movement. Little bear, know that which you need; discern that which you do not.

Using this metaphor of a dress’s hem to help visualize a span of boundaries and limits came readily to me as I recently spent a good part of the day contending with such a dress. On my way to meet one of my godmothers, Mama Nia, in order to widen my gait I had to keep lifting the dress, a long one with a very tight hem. The dress chastened my pace, as we, Mama Nia and I, wound ourselves from the upper reaches of Saint Nicholas Terrace eastward and southbound toward the quadrangular park bordering Madison Avenue & Mount Morris Park West in Harlem.

Under some degree of renovation, some of the park’s natural entrances were closed. A man with a coil of locks wrapped in a knitted cap directed us to an entrance with a newly cemented ramp. We brought ourselves, Mama Nia and I, towards a bench on the outer skirts of the park; the park, named for the pan-Africanist Marcus Garvey, sprawled downwards from an acropolis originally built in 1856. With two large pin oak trees before us and volunteers drifting by sweeping, we sat and we spoke, as godmothers and goddaughters do, about a series and sequence of things; mirrors to each other, we spoke about journaling and unlined paper, about knowing the length of your capacity and boundaries, and about breath as a measure of life. We found a bit of time between time.

To get back to this dress though, the hem of which, determined how far or how little I would or could go; it also demonstrated, for me, at least, a point and way of directionality. The width and span of the hem offered how far and where to go in any particular direction or action. It gave clarity to how a boundary can dictate the certitude of your compass.

Though a free form dress would have worked a bit better for me on this day, binding and chastening the self’s generosity in a situation, towards a commitment, or in a relationship, ultimately does serve us.  We both agreed that we need boundaries to reign in our personal lives. Mama Nia shared advice from a colleague:  determine your limits and boundaries, and communicate them frequently.  Make them live. Make them ready. Make them real.

And yet, we equally both desired a free breath form in our journaling and note-taking. We wanted to expand on the page as we might walk in a good proper dress, at our own will and sway. As Mama Nia shared her delight in receiving a new journal, unlined and only marked with dots on its pages, I remembered my own choice, in college, for blank sheets of paper to take notes in my science courses.  Indeed it was a trio or so of black women completing pre-medical requirements at Amherst, that at some point decided to start using blank sheets of paper for our notes. With this small radicality we chose a learning modality, we decided to do without the stricture of lined paper, as we scribbled and jotted down the secrets to organic chemistry in our own way.

As we sat for an hour or so, I did not feel the time moving in the way that it was until Mama Nia looked at her watch and said, it’s forty-eight, that is, 10:48 A.M. in the morning, and I had a 12 P.M. appointment. Time, she added, is always moving, you know. And, of course, when bits and phrases of the word, time, come up in conversation, my mind sometimes wanders, to the herb known as thyme. 

I learned in reading that night that there are over 400 varieties of thyme. And, I learned, that some of its flavor gets lost if the herb is harvested too late. Known in Greek as thymári, it means smoke or spirit, or as aromatherapist Elizabeth Ashley puts it, the herb can also refer to 'spiriting, as if the spirit has come back and brought back the breath, brought back the blood.' Thyme, then, restores the breath.

Would that the herb guide us in our breathwork. For at the end, Mama Nia shared, just that coursing air, not the frills of life, not our careers, just an inhalation, an exhalation remain. It seemed, she wanted to say, just your breath remains, little bear, take note. So, how do we breathe in life, how do we make a worthy pursuit, such that the table of balance is at ease?

I could not help but wonder and think if I, myself, have been in a place of balance and restoration. I underwent a transplant surgery this past May, and while, so far, I have recovered well, if I am honest, I have also over-activated. I have given myself in the last weeks especially, little rest or reprieve.  Indeed, my little spirit seems to be winding itself into the lives of others, winding, my spirit, in the initiation of new projects. 

Nzingha, my bear, why wind so much in the ways of others? Wind not, pray tell, into your own way, and hold thy ground and steady there?  In this, a new skirt, make of life a boundless love.