Threads Lay Bare

The day I have been dreading for the past four years has finally come. I waited too long. I knew this day was coming, and yet I did nothing to change its course.

My grandmother died last weekend. A woman that I feel indescribably connected to but only met once. She is the bearer of my sorted family secrets.  She is a woman who could melt me with a smile.  She represents life in a world of different circumstances. My existence is directly dependent on the decisions she made so many years ago. Decisions that I have never had the chance to understand.

Shrouded in a mysterious sequence of events, my mom was raised in the care of her uncle. Fortunately for her, he subsequently became successful, enabling my mother a world of opportunities that would have been unattainable otherwise. I understand her (and everyone’s, for that matter) admiration of him.  He was incredibly successful because of his visionary entrepreneurial spirit and diligent work ethic. Even now he serves as an inspiration for his grandchildren that never had the opportunity to meet him.  He was idolized by everyone, but especially by my mother. She was daddy’s girl. Without him, my mother would have never left Gondar. Without him, she would have never met my father in the United States. Without him, I would cease to exist. I am profoundly aware that I owe everything to him, in a very literal sense.

All the same, I feel like the silvery threads holding the legitimacy of my heritage together are fraying at the edges, bearing too much weight for such delicate strands. As I try to repair the damage, I carefully avoid the splitting ends, afraid that even the slightest tug may destroy the whole fabric.

I first met my biological grandmother in 2010, a year after my mother died. There was something beautifully touching and piercingly sad about the discovery of my lost grandmother hidden in a small town tucked away in the highlands of Ethiopia. Only aware of her existence a few years prior, I was surprised to see photos tracking the progression of my childhood lining her walls amongst those of her other grandchildren. Unable to understand her words, I understood her eyes. She was overcome with emotion. Never expecting to see us (my sister and myself) in person, she was grateful to meet her lost American grandchildren. Overwhelmed by the situation, I didn’t fully appreciate the magnitude of the visit, unaware that it would change the course of my life.

I felt as if something was coming together. Unaware of my impending identity search, I felt at ease in her presence. Smiling and unable to take her eyes off of me, she told me that I looked like my mother, a compliment that stripped at fresh wounds and nearly brought me to tears. Words that I would never forget.

Sipping on hot tea, my eyes poured over every inch of her small-overcrowded living room. I wanted to remember every detail: every picture, every smell, and every crack in the wall. In silence, I tried to intellectually and emotionally process her existence.  I wasn’t ready to leave her that afternoon. I just discovered a world that I never knew existed and hadn’t yet figured out where I fit in. Although I was reluctant to go, I didn’t know then that it would be my first, and only, opportunity to meet her.

While I am incredibly grateful for my family, I can’t help but feel like something is missing. I feel like I am missing a link that grounds me somewhere, that makes me belong somewhere. I am hovering by thin threads trying to find where gravity will ground me. And the questions keep coming: How was my mother given over to her uncle? What happened all of those years ago? How did my mother feel when she found out?

Upon our first meeting, I was inspired. I vowed to come back and see my grandmother. I would learn Amharic and get to know her, understand her story as a means to understanding mine. I needed to hear her perspective on how she was separated from my mother, an event that forever complicated and confused my identity and existence.  Meeting her solidified my need to go back to discover my roots.

In 2012, I moved to Ethiopia and began learning Amharic. Going back to Gondar was the goal, the payoff to all of the self-doubt, hard work, risks, and uncertainties. The closer I moved towards my goal the more I was terrified of finding out the truth. If she rejected my mother, then was she in effect rejecting me? Already insecure about my legitimacy as an Ethiopian, I postponed visiting Gondar. I waited. Excuses are plentiful when you want them. My Amharic isn’t advanced enough. I’m too busy. I’ll go after the rainy season. It’s too expensive. In my timidity, I waited, hoping for the perfect opportunity to fall in my lap.

But perfection doesn’t exist, and I waited too long. Now she is gone, buried in those same mountains with all of the stories that I never heard. Conversely, I think about all of the stories I will never tell her. Just as I will never know her, she will never know me. I waited too long, and all the while I feel those thin threads splitting around me.