Breath, Bottles, Memory

In between breaths are the memories we pour and the stories stored in silence until they’re not

“…the daughter is never fully a woman until her mother has passed on before her. There is always a place where, if you listen closely in the night, you will hear your mother telling a story and at the end of the tale, she will ask you this question:

‘Ou libere? Are you free, my daughter?” 

Edwidge Danticat, “Breath, Eyes, Memory”

In the last week, four women I know have passed away. Not all of them, friends–just one. Two of them, mothers. Two of them, I went to high school with. One, the mother of a friend and amazing dancer I met while I was at Howard University. The other, my editor, Nancy Ancrum.

Nancy and I were not the type of friends that shared secrets in the way women and girls do, faces leaning into one another, hot air against the lobe before words meet the drum…

”Don’t tell anybody but... 

Girl, did you hear?

You have to take this one to the grave…”

The lines we say to lock in the pact, the pretend safe that is the other. That’s what we do–pass it on, sometimes in whispers, in snickers and laughter, other times, in wailing, more often than not, in silence.

Nancy and I were not those types of friends, but what we shared in between sips, in between the clinging glasses, the unsteady pours, what we shared between daunting edits and hungry ideas was our own kind of sisterhood. Also, fuck was our favorite word. And we both really loved our mamas. 

I remember the last bottle I had with Nancy and her husband, George. It was a Ryme Cellars sangiovese and tocai friulano blend, a style of wine we’ve come to describe as a chillable red. But aren’t all reds, in their way, chillable? When Miami’s heat could melt your car seat or fry an egg on your forehead, they’re all chillable. 

George, Nancy, and I shared that sangiovese-tocai friulano blend at brunch at Rosie’s–a soul food-inspired spot west of what Miami is becoming, east of what Miami has always been–a cornucopia of swirling accents and southern tongues, its own solar system of economic imbalance. But over that an ambrosial brunch, breaking bread and sharing space with one of the most beautiful couples I know, Miami was paradise.

“Light with starfruit and dragonfruit notes,” I wrote in my notes about the wine. “Also, wild petals stomped in the rain.”

 I loved being in the presence of Nancy and George’s love. There was an ease and a finesse, a oneness, a coolness. They moved like music–Lee Morgan’s trumpet, Etta James’ swag. Their notes were contagious.  

At brunch, I took a picture of George feeding Nancy. I can’t remember the last time I saw that kind of love-gesture. No white dresses, no orchestrated movements, no pageant of onlookers (friend and foe). No proving. Just love. Sweet, sweet love.

 It would be the last photo I took of Nancy. 

And ah, the menu–deviled eggs with crispy chicharrones, warm southern biscuit with apricot preserves, grilled sausage, southern polenta, charred green onion with gremolata, crispy catfish with grits, collard greens, roasted tomato, and smoked ham hock.

George was curious about natural wine, and I did my best to explain. “The wine feels different in the body,” I told him. That’s what I tell most people. “It doesn’t weigh you down. It doesn’t sit hard inside of you. It moves lightly, whimsically through the senses.” Beyond the technical definition of putting maximum effort into minimum intervention in the winemaking process, is the way the wine feels inside of you, the way the wine can move with you.  

 The styles of wines we’re attracted to often reflect how we feel at that point in our lives. I really believe that. When my mother died, my palate changed. I changed. I longed for wines that were unassuming and irreverent, quiet yet declarative. 

Performative wines became passé. People, too. For the past few years, I have been really fixated, obsessed with the word–”natural.” What does it mean? Really. What does it mean to be natural? Didn’t Aretha Franklin already tell us?

Looking out on the morning rain

I used to feel so uninspired

And when I knew I had to face another day

Lord, it made me feel so tired

Before the day I met you

Life was so unkind

You're the key

To my piece of mind

'Cause you make me feel

You make me feel

You make me feel

Like a natural woman

I was fresh off the plane when I joined Uncle George and Auntie Nancy (not sure she’d like that title) for brunch. I had spent two months in Playa del Carmen, a month in Tulum, and a few weeks in New Kingston. 

I resigned from my job, packed all my shit, stored boxes at a friend’s house, and left. Folk thought I was crazy. One of my closest and oldest friends thought I had joined a cult. “”You’re going to get kidnapped by the cartel,” my uncle said repeatedly in a WhatsApp message from Singapore. Not Auntie Nancy and Uncle George. They were so supportive.

When people asked me why I went to Mexico, I said, “I went there to sleep.”

The people who understood that answer knew what it felt like to be rest-deficient, to be so far away from your natural state that rest seemed as distant a luxury as millions of dollars in disposable income.

Trauma-seeped, fear-fried, I hit an emotional impasse.  I hit it hard. I was a recovering professor, an ink-dry writer, a burnt out human, Covid-death hot on my heels, injustice pressed against my throat.

“You have to make a decision if you’re going to be the professor with food in her belly or fire in her belly,” the chairperson said after a parent complained about an abortion lecture. “The dean wants you gone.”

  Trauma-seeped, fear-fried, I hit an emotional impasse.  I hit it hard. I was a recovering professor, an ink-dry writer, a burnt out human, Covid-death hot on my heels, injustice pressed against my throat.

Money was an issue. The rent for my dream apartment near the bay went up $300. Then the new landlords wanted me out. I emailed the provost and president about raising my salary and what they  gave me was comparable to what professors working in the early 90s made.

Trauma-seeped, fear-fried, I hit an emotional impasse.  I hit it hard. I was a recovering professor, an ink-dry writer, a burnt out human, Covid-death hot on my heels, injustice pressed against my throat.

George and Nancy saw me before I left. Trauma-seeped, fear-fried, I dropped off the last box of wines at their house–a mix of small production Sonoma pinot noirs and wines from South Africa. I had spent the last couple of weeks before my trip, offering wines I had kept over the years for donation and also giving them away. 

I had several Grgich bottles–a couple fume blancs and zinfandels, merlots and cabernets, a 2013 Opus One, 2016 Château de Nalys Châteauneuf-du-Pape,  2014 Piaggia Il Sasso Carmignano. I was so happy Nancy and George got those bottles. 

I imagined that I would hold on to these wines for years to come, popping them open on special occasions. What were these “special occasions?” These premeditated moments that arrange themselves perfectly in the middle of the beautiful and often unbeautiful chaos that is life. 

The title of this month’s “Sipping Lovely” is inspired by Edwidge Danticat’s first novel “Breath, Eyes, Memory” which was released three decades ago. What continues to bring me back to Danticat’s page is the way she tells stories. There’s a raging simplicity that cuts right into the bone of the human experience. 

In the book, the Caco women are navigating unspeakable pain. The silence is exquisitely detailed then released into the atmosphere in the most gruesome way, mother dying to find freedom so her daughter can live in hers.  

“Love is like rain. It comes in a drizzle sometimes. Then it starts pouring and if you’re not careful it will drown you,” Tante Atie says in the book.

What are we but stories between pours. The loving, creating, reminiscing, and raging. I dedicate this “Sipping Lovely” to the women we loved, the ones we whispered secrets to, the ones we laughed with, the mothers and daughters who gathered silence between them, silence pouring from one generation to the next until it explodes beneath the oceans under our skin, into the universe, onto the page.