I.
December 29 2021. The night I came back from visiting my aunt in Maryland. I’d spent Christmas with my mom’s sister, Aunty Bene, who I hadn’t seen in the two decades since she left Nigeria. It was everything I hoped it would be: we went for long walks, we cooked, we gossiped, we exchanged gifts. I took this photo standing outside my apartment building after getting home on the 29th at almost midnight. A lady at the airport had asked if I had anyone coming to pick me up, and if she could give me a ride, and I had said yes. Yet, once I saw the two hippy guys who came to pick her up from the airport, I felt a wave of terror run through my body. They were skinny and had long hair and wore oversized clothes and earrings and nose rings and big black shoes. One had tattoo all over his arms and was so slim, so slim he almost looked like a stick. For a while, I worried about my safety. Three white people, one black guy. I thought about Get Out. If they scooped me away to some strange place and did something to me, what would I say? No one would be able to trace me: I’d told none of my friends that I was getting on a ride with three strangers. In the car, they talked freely. The lady who offered the ride drove the car. She talked about a “boy”, her boyfriend, who didn’t want her to meet his parents. Her friends called him “asshole”. They talked about orgies and parties in which people had sex while some others watched and people got so high and did “all kinds of crazy shit.” They asked if I would like to come someday. I said I wasn’t sure, that I didn’t go to parties, and they said they’d invite me still. They often had it at the lady’s place, the guy sitting in the back with me told me. The lady looked into the rearview mirror and said, “You’ll love it! Trust me,” and I looked out the window and whispered a prayer, even though I am no longer religious. Outside, everything was covered in snow. I had seen it from the sky as the plane touched down at the airport, the whole city doused in white, a beautiful thing to behold. The lady tried to maneuver the car through the snow, which tried to pull her away from the road. Snow had been cleared off the road, but there was still some on it, and sometimes, the road was slippery, the car swerved this way and that, and she had to drive very carefully and slowly too. After thirty minutes or so, we arrived in front of my apartment building. At first the door on my side of the car won’t open, and the lady said, “Ah, now we are going to take you away with us,” which I imagined was a joke but took seriously given all that had been going on in my head. She got out and tried to help me open the door – – and eventually, after much ado, and thankfully!, the door gave way, and I got out, happy to finally be out of the car and home. She gave me a quick hug, brought out my suitcase from the trunk, got back into the car, and drove off, and I stood there for a while watching them drive off, and when I could no longer see them, I walked to the door of my building and took this photo, of the snow, at night, on everything – – the sidewalk, the road, the trees, the cars, the roofs. Everything, doused daintily with snow.
II.
April 18 2022. Spring. Here comes spring. The snow is gone, but the wind is here and the trees are still bare. One of the things I love the most about living in the US is watching seasons change. So far, I have experienced everything: I have seen a little bit of summer, and then fall, and then winter, and now spring. I loved fall the most. I loved watching leaves take new colors. Oh, they surprised me with their golden and red and neon green and yellow leaves. They were just so magnificent! I loved fall. And then, I had to watch the leaves fall off, they came down with a sense of urgency, as if saying, “off we go! off we go! off we go now before winter comes!” And off they went! Truly. The leaves fell off, leaving the trees bare. And what are trees without their leaves? What are trees without their bright green leaves? And when my aunt told me that trees shed their leaves to protect themselves during winter, shed their leaves to conserve resources and survive harsh weather, I thought, “how brilliant! how brilliant these trees are!” I must have said it out loud because I remember her saying yes. Yes, she said, isn’t mother nature wondrous? My aunt – – who did yoga and often bowed slightly to trees when we went for morning walks. She was always excited to be with nature, and I learned that too. I learned to be aware of nature and to appreciate nature, and I have not stopped being amazed that trees, trees!, can work to preserve themselves during winter.
III.
May 6 2022. I had a lazy day today. Spent most of it in bed doing absolutely nothing. I woke up in the morning and watched a movie called The Innocents, then I watched some YouTube videos, and then I had breakfast. In the afternoon, I prepared lunch and talked on the phone with a friend who never says goodbye before hanging up. Then, I watched more YouTube videos. Honestly, I had no idea what to do today. I’ve often felt in the past couple of days the need to slow down. Yesterday evening, I went to a friend’s place – – the only friend I have in this town – – and we talked about hate speech and abortion rights and first loves and Catholic priests and academics who like to make up fancy words in order to convince themselves and others that they are making a real contribution to the world, and after all the talk, my friend walked me to my apartment at past 11pm, and we stood in front of the building and chatted some more before he hugged me and left. He’s my only friend in this town, the only person I hang out with, and sometimes, I have noticed this, sometimes I feel very lonely. Sometimes I wish I was the kind of person who went out and made friends casually and also very casually fell in love. But I am not that kind of person. All of life is serious business to me, sadly. Anyway, today, even though I did not plan to, I gave myself the day off. I lay in bed and watched random things and ate ice-cream and then this evening I went outside my apartment to take a look at the trees. I have two final papers due next week, and I have not done half the work I need to do on any of them, but I am giving my body the rest it deserves after months of hard work. It has honestly been a long school year, with so many things happening in between, and I am grateful that I am almost at the end of it. I am exhausted but I am thankful. I am thankful for stability these past months. I can’t say whether I have been happy, but I have been stable. I kept the work going. I kept doing my assignments, my readings, my classes, my teaching. I held everything together, and for that I am thankful. I am thankful that my body and my mind and my heart carried me through these months, that they were my closest friends, and they did not let me down. And I am thankful for hope, for there were times when the hope for spring kept me going. There were times when I looked at the trees and thought, “One day, the leaves will grow again, and the flowers will bloom again, certainly, because that is the way of life.” And I waited – – oh, I waited. I waited for the leaves and I waited for spring, and now, here we are.
IV.
And can you imagine? Can you just imagine?? Even grasses flower too!
THE MOON-CAVE BLOG 