September, 2022 A story of braving this new world
I don’t know why I’m talking to you. Well, writing. Who are you?
You and I, at this moment, world population 2. But I’m not real, just an idea in your head
Other people would start with ‘Dear Diary’, and write as if ‘Diary’ was a therapist who could help them figure out who they were. I doubt many people keep a diary or a journal these days. Instead they write to an unheeding world through vacuous screens, looking for what is going to make them the person they want to be. Few seem to write on paper any more. Not the way I’m writing to you, writing late at night, in secrecy, with my curtain open to a sky full of stars.
12, I think, or maybe 13. My diary was a girl’s emotional zigger-zaggery tied to really, really important events that belonged to an inconsequential teenage world. A world of mixed truths. Does anyone that age know what is real? Giggling friends gather to compare notes until one becomes quiet, closes her cover and goes home. These are rehearsals for life to come, played until either boredom sets in, facades develop or untruths become realities too much to share.
Too much to share, both the precious and the harsh. Words in the diary could not truly protect the precious, and nor fend off the harsh. Time comes for each diary-writing girl. They will lift eyes to the world. And surely, in different ways, subtle or extreme, in different places and different times, girls, boys or other, leave behind an existence for an existence to be.
Rawriri age 8, 1634, world population 36, and 73 ancestors
To be what in their new existence? Does anyone know? Can they see where their feet would touch? Who would you have become?
Isn’t it wonderful that we teenage girls found things to giggle at, even with dirt under our nails, with backs tired from bending, in sweat soaked cotton dresses. That cute boy who grinned and raised his dark eyebrows at us, and then cockily lifted a basket too heavy for him, stumbled and dropped the lot. We still went to help. It’s what we did. It’s what everyone did working on that planation down in Mexico, helped each other. I’d go home at dusk full of stories to share with Abuelita and together we’d giggle some more. During the week, my abuelita, my grandmother, made sure I’d get to school, and she’d help me with my reading and writing – a gift girls around the world would say is the greatest in life.
Arabella age 16, 1803, world population 978 million
I see now that it was Abuelia’s strong will that kept us going. My smiling grandmother would always, somehow have enough food for me and my three primos. She could make what maize we had into tortillas that we’d stuff with her spicy stewed beans and whatever fresh vegetables we cousins had been able to get with our smiles from the bosses. My primos and me, we knew how the bosses got all loose on Saturday nights drinking their latest brew of cerveza.
Cousin Lazaro was the oldest. He had the loudest laugh, keeping us awake at night with his foolish stories. Abuelita would bang on the wall, ‘dormir, dormir, sleep, sleep.’ At work though, Lazaro was grim and angry. He’d stick around with bad boys. One day he went off with them and didn’t come home that night. My pink covered diary was my only special possession along with two coloured pencils, happy red and sad blue. ‘Lazaro brought me a new dress,’ in red, ’it has yellow flowers on it and is the prettiest in the street.’ ‘Lazaro didn’t come home again’, in blue, ‘Abuelita is quiet, I think she is worried.’
Haoran age 49, 1912, world population 1,756 million
Even today I can hear the banging late at night of a hard fist on our wooden door. I don’t remember much of those next few frightening days, and little of the following weeks spent in shadows. The only way Abuelita could make me go was my insistence that she keep my diary until I could return. I was a seventeen-year-old girl travelling with a kind young couple who were very much in love with each other, who knew my abuelita and watched over me. Thirteen of us were in a crammed yellow truck. Tired and hungry we bumped and thumped bruised butts across the border.
That is my story, Lobita, of how I came to this world. How my abuelita sent me away before I was taken, ‘my little precioso, there is this place, el ensueño, Mateo knows someone there, you’ll get work.’ I remember the kind young couple arguing, her voice persuasive, ‘You must honour your promise Mateo,’ and Mateo putting money, my abuelita’s money, into the palm of another man’s hand.
Sarika age 22, 1961, world population 3,082 million
Working in the sparkle and swirl of el ensueño, the fantasy world, soon had me put aside an existence left behind. My goddaughter, my friend Amelia’s daughter, tells me that single independent women are the happiest demographic in the world. Free to be who they are, how they want to be. It’s not selfish, it’s being true to oneself and having choice ‘after all, our mothers gave us this life, not to give away to someone else to own, but to grow, and share, and nurture our world. To love yes, but not surrender our identity’. If only when I was young, I had had this wisdom.
I nearly had it though. I’d made friends, and laughed. Amelia, aka Minnie 1, and I, Minnie 2, were the same height, and thin but strong. We’d rub each other’s sore necks after a long day wearing that head piece with its perennial smile, while joking with each other about how we’d love to hide a mouse trap under our skirts to catch the fingers of the naughty men and boys who thought it funny to see if we were ‘a real mouse and really had a tail’. You would have liked Amelia. She was funny, and she baked the most amazing chocolate fudge cakes! Amelia died of cancer last year.
Jake age 18 months, 1976, world population 5, plus Alfie the dog and Puddles the cat
The hours at el ensueño were long and the energy expended each day left me drained, but it was nothing to a young woman in love. In love with the joy of existence, in love with what may come, and soon in love with him. To look back at those times now, how did I miss it, miss that crucial element? He’d raise those dark eyebrows over dark intense eyes. Perhaps I was longing for a past, for a cute boy and laughter. This amor of mine was older, educated and knew so much. To him life was a serious matter if we were ever to have our own house, our own piece of land, our own garden, to have a future on a planet that seemed to be racing towards its own demise. He was driven. He never laughed.
He’d paint pictures of our future. We could have a small farm and life in the countryside. ‘We’ll make it, the two of us’, he’d say when it felt like the world around us was crumbling. We had read the news about greenhouse gases, melting glaciers and warming temperatures, but in those days, few took notice. He and I loved the natural world and hated the cities that crawled with ever-growing numbers of thin minded people.
Antoine age 55, 1997, world population 5,898 million
I was not at ease, that time in my past. I looked through windows, but they were windows I found myself not daring to step through. It was like the moment I had an independent thought I’d get yelled at. Then my tears would be hugged away, ‘I’m here for you. You’re safe with me.’ In a crumbling world of unstable existence, the idea of safe would appeal to anyone. Today, that bleak future is at least understood. The sky above holds an enemy born of us. There are paths we can take. Ameline, my goddaughter, crusades against this crumbling world, whereas all I had seen was a dangerous and unknown future. These days there are Amelines who push against restraints. It was not so for me. Money was tight that time my period didn’t come. I feared the test result, but when it did my heart couldn’t help but glow. Then I cried.
Emily age 18, 2019, world population 947 social media friends
If I had had my abuelita with me it might have been different. But there was only twenty-two-year-old me with a truth too much to share. Like so many women I suppose I’ll never know for sure if my choice was one forced upon me by a dominant other, or if alone I would still take that same path.
Afterwards the sense of loss is one no words can describe, for no words are allowed us. We make our choice and live on with hidden grief. Despite all that, if you were here I would want you to have that choice open to you. I would have loved you but I did not want you to feel the resentment of your other parent, nor live a future of global despair.
Thomas age 36, 2022, world population 7.96 billion people
So, I had my choice and after twists and turns, some years later I made more choices. My books sell well enough and I have money to give those who fight to save this crumbling world. A world not of despair but a world with a will to live.
Who are you? Who would you have become? My abuelita’s name was Lupita – River of the Wolf. She believed names connected loved ones through space and time, no matter what. To her one’s name was an anchor. Her son’s name, my father, was Lobo. He was killed by a drug cartel before I was born and my mother soon ran off with another man – we never heard of her again. My name is Lupe.
With these words now on a page I know why I am writing to you, you who never touched the earth and went straight to the stars. Your name is Lobita Estrella, Little Wolf of the Stars.
You, present time, world population... 1
©Bice Grace Lapin
Bice Grace Lapin 