Would Someone Be My Title Maker?
I hate writing titles but love writing.
My hands are changing. They clamp up, the skin is more textured. They hurt and I understand why my mami didn’t want the expensive heavy plates her sister gave her. But Mami was in her 70s when she complained. I am only 50. Did her hands start changing before I noticed?
Yesterday I realized I have to write fast. I have to write all the stories, all the books, finish the ones that I’ve started. Start the ones that live in my head. I don’t know when my hands will make me stop.
It’s raining now. Another storm. It’s May and it is supposed to bring flowers. When it rains, when the air is crisp, I think it is fall and I want to dress in browns and dark greens. I am supposed to want to be in fuschia and bright yellow but it feels odd to dress in those colors. Is this the new normal? Fall-like weather in Spring.
I am sick. Not a cold or a flu, maybe allergies or a combination. This happened last year. I am not the same, or maybe I am the same and I just don’t acknowledge that my body doesn’t want to cooperate with living.
I’ve been looking for a book for decades. One I bought in el DF when I was a young twenty something roaming la Libreria Gandhi. I thought the author’s last name was Ixtebarra but I think I made up that last name. There is a Basque last name Extebarria. She could have been a descendant of Basques but there is no Mexican writer with that last name just a Spanish one from Madrid. I’ve been looking for this book, I don’t remember what the story is about but I remember how I felt reading it. I remember a scene. The main character leaves her office in the middle of the day and stands in the middle of the sidewalk with her eyes closed. She feels the sun rays hit the freckles on her nose and realizes that life is too short to work in an office. I don’t remember if she quits or anything else. I just remember feeling the sun hitting the freckles on her face.
Should I go on Reddit to find this book? If I describe this scene will anyone else around my age remember reading it? She wrote more books. I may have bought them. I don’t remember.
I hate not remembering. Except I sometimes remember too much.
A couple of months ago I got an app to swipe through all my fotos. My iCloud is full and I don’t want to purchase more storage. Right I keep, left I delete. Year by year, month by month, I go through the photos. 2022 is hard. That is the year my ex and I separated, 6 months after moving to a new country. Month after month there was change. My kids were sad. I was too, although there is some happiness in liberation. There are also tons of screenshots. Messages I needed to read.
Should I tell you about the picture from May? The one of me crying. Should I tell you why I cried that day?
It’s May again. Was I sick this month in 2023, 2024, and 2025? I don’t think I was in 2024 but maybe 2025. I don’t even remember anything from 2023. I haven’t gotten to that year in my photos.
I think it was before the pandemic or during when you could get massages again. I went to a woman my friend recommended. She moved her hands slowly, loosening my muscles, I cried I think. Or I wanted to cry. Especially when she told me she felt the grief in my heart. It was in Oakland. We hadn’t left to Portugal yet. I told my then husband and he scoffed. He scoffed like all the times I told him something that was true.
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The birds are chirping, the cars drive slow and I hear the water splash on the street. My ears are ringing. A constant ring, there is always noise. I am told this won’t be forever but what if it will be? Would I have to learn sign language? Will my hands let me sign? Will I just move to the forest and pick plants by the creek? Will my kids visit me and with my future grandkids? Will I be able to hear them laugh and call me abuela?
Why did I go there? Alhamdulillah, I am fine. I am alive to complain about things that may not happen. How do I stop being anxious when there is a constant ringing in my ears when my hands hurt after I type?
Welcome to my Substack where I may or may not write on Saturdays.
You will find posts like this one, a series I would like to begin called, “Writing prompts are everywhere!” and maybe I will actually write about living in Portugal.
I’m usually writing at The Muslim Writers’ Salon if you don’t know me from there already.
May Allah bless all of us writers who write more than what we say. Ameen.
I've missed your dispatches from Portugal! May Allah heal your hands and quiet the ringing in your ears and bless you with many more years for writing.