ROOTEDNESS (AND LACK THEREOF)

By Neya Krishnan

“you don’t get rid of the pain, you just make room for it” shares a six-year-old girl as she narrates the way she placed her small hands on her mother’s flailing chest, how she pumped life into her mom’s frail frame and failed, how she resented her hands for not being enough. how she carried the memory like an anchor around her ankle and fell into a “deep depression.” and I wonder how a child comes to learn depression— how she could so intimately know the cruel enormity of that sensation, that painful existence. but I suppose these are the casualties when a child becomes rootless.

“she was killed at home, cooking dinner with her cats, by a Russian missile” a journalist confides in an audience of undergrads at 10:30 a.m. on a Saturday morning; they sit in cushioned auditorium seats, munching free bagels and muffins from the lobby outside, eager to feast on his words too— but grief traces his tongue and caresses his words as he aims to fossilize his friend’s memory. I try to picture the mundanity of the moment, this woman pacing around her kitchen in search of ingredients in her cabinets, her cats carefully tracing her steps, and the precise second a monster missile

erased the scene in an act of violence. is that all it takes to remove a legacy? “it’s important to have a long-term commitment to places” I heard a woman say once— I’m not sure that’s true but it makes me question what makes a place worth the long-term commitment— the same woman spent six years of her life documenting a village in the Congo where three-year-old girls were viciously violated by men who believed a baby’s blood would offer them supernatural protection. what rooted her there? how do we decide to stay in a place that isn’t safe? I’m not sure I know.

“if he was here, he would...” my mom’s best friend whispered as we spoke about the loss of her husband over strawberry margaritas— and I realized then there is nothing more painful than the series of possibilities that are born and simultaneously die within that singular conditional “if.” mom’s best friend is family, and I think that status change happened after the loss— she is the kind of family that waits outside the airport, plans the surprise party, drives to the middle of the highway when our car breaks down. and I find it sort of strange and wonderful how roots can burn, blister, break, and still, still remain ever-growing.