When did this happen … I cannot be sure if there was a moment, a specific instance, but what comes to mind is a summer afternoon in Ojai, CA, the Matilija Street, a grassy loan framing the sidewalk. I balanced on a curb waiting for Chris to park. We were heading to the postoffice across the street. I remember this sidewalk, I remember the curb and I remember the brilliant greenness of the grass. And I remember the realization that came: my parents did exactly what they could do.
They did what they could. If they could be more loving, more caring, more supportive — they would be, but they could not. They were in pain, they struggled with their demons and being alive took so much effort, so much energy, so much attention that there was little to spare for others. There was little to spare for me.
I saw them, in that moment, on that afternoon, as humans. People. People I knew — not parents who should and had to and didn’t, and failed. I saw them as people and, in that moment, I ceased to be a daughter. I became Pausha.
That day was the first day of Pausha’s life. The first day of discovering Pausha. Of becoming that which is called Pausha – that which is what I am. Not a daughter, a friend, a wife, a lover, but myself.
No a citizen, a Pole, an immigrant, a legal alien, a designer, a student.
But me. Myself. And a life that is an expression of what I am.
