Labyrinth: Portals to Love and Other Places

In which I write to my mother and read some poems she wrote in 1987. ‘What is the matter with aloneness anyway?’ she wrote in 1987.

Thank you to Lexi for feedback before sharing. Thank you to Anna for letting me hold your baby. Thank you to S for keeping me company while I ate my lunch. Terry for family hiking synchronicity and Sunday routines and Suman for a beautiful beach day.

Berkeley, April 15, 2025 

Dear Mama, 

Happy 81st birthday. 

Whenever I meet a new friend I want you to meet them too. Not you now, but you before. I want them to know that I came from you — a chocolate-chip-cookie-making machine who jumped into gear whenever a friend had a bad day, or often for no reason at all. 

I want them to be able to say “sorry for our loss,” and not just “sorry for your loss.”

Then I keep wanting to tell you all my worries, as if you’ll be able to assuage them like a worry doll, tucked under a pillow. I am worried you will die as soon as I start dating someone. The worries and fears spill out even though they don’t make sense. I’m afraid anyone I will ever love won’t understand me without meeting you. I am afraid you will never die. I am afraid that when you die, I will lose everyone I love because I will fall apart. But I am also afraid that when it finally happens I will feel nothing.

In writing about you, I have begun to wonder if there has been some kind of emotional inheritance passed down. Is it grief, or loss? Or just a way of being, and looking at the world? 

A few years ago, I started reaching out to people who knew you before your divorce with Appi and around the time I was born. 

I wonder sometimes if I was a mistake — I know I was unplanned. I try not to be a burden on anyone. I try to ease in without needing or wanting what I cannot have. I recognize there are limitations to love and what people can give you, even if they love you. There are limitations to how people are able to love you, given their own life experiences, given their own self-acceptance and healing processes. 

Maybe this was the gift you gave me, to know that it is work to exist. It takes time to process all your emotions, and it’s the kind of life-work that is never going to be finished.  

I have more worries to tell you. You always said that I should name my worries and my fears. I am worried I will be stuck somewhere I don’t want to be, with nothing to read. I am afraid I will love someone so deeply that I will lose myself in them and wind up halfway across the world (on an island in the middle of the ocean!) and then they will leave me. Or I will realize this intense kind of love only brings an imbalance, and I will forever be left off balance.

I wonder if the love you had with Appi made you feel complete and in balance, or like he tipped you too far in the wrong direction and you might topple over at any minute. 

Why is it so easy to forget that we are worthy of love? And not just general love, but a love that is clear, and honest. A love that makes you feel more like yourself and not like an unsteady boat in the wind.

In 2022, I went to visit Nancy. Do you remember going to Bainbridge every summer? We would roller skating down the big hill at the end of the street. Sewing quilts with your friend Care, another Auntie for me and sister for you. We would make glass art and sculptures with Bob. Our visits to the Gurukula were among my early memories of our trips to Bainbridge Island in the many summers of my youth.

Nancy picked me up and we drove down the long lane — vibrant with green, on the way to the Gurukula. It hadn’t changed much, though it was missing the hammock I remembered. I spotted some blackberry bushes as we arrived. 

The kitchen seemed frozen in time and vague memories of staying in the slanted room above the dining area came back to me. A feeling of coziness more than a memory. Then the memory of sleeping in Care’s loft and you falling into the closet. The sheets reminded me of ones we used to have. It felt like coming home after being away for a very long time. 

I peeked out the window and spotted the labyrinth. I was drawn to it, and started clearing the sticks away almost immediately. Later, Nancy said you had helped make it, and every time you came you would also sweep and clear the sticks and leaves away in the same way I had done. 

While I was there I received a text from Hana, in Prague. She sent a picture asking if it was your handwriting. Yes, so obvious. She had found the love letter while cleaning their home in Prague. A love letter from you to him. It’s not dated.

Let’s always continue on, you and I

Doing the things that give us

memories that will add

to our tomorrows.

If at times you think

That I take you for granted, 

Know that it is only

Because loving you 

Has become as natural 

To me as breathing.

After cleaning the labyrinth, receiving this love letter felt like there was a plan that the universe was executing. It couldn't all be random. But hearts had to be broken to make room for growth. In order to be where we are today. It is obvious that your love was real. And that some love is not meant to last forever, and your ability to let each other go, was also a form of love. A trust in a bigger future.

The labyrinth that brought this letter to me from Hana, was also a form of love. I recalled for a moment how much you loved the movie Stepmother and how nice it was to have Hana as a stepmother, who has known me since I was 12 and watched me grow and evolve into myself. How beautiful that the rupture of one thing allowed for a sewing of something else. Without their divorce I wouldn’t have my little sister, or Hana — this extension of love, of my father’s life and love, coming back to me in the form of a poem from you to him. A poem he had saved and Hana had found, and sent to me when I was cleaning the labyrinth of the Gurukula and wondering what the fuck I was doing with my life. 

How do you trust that what is meant for you will actually find you?

I started writing a version of this letter in Italy, birthplace of grandpa Frank Ernest Saracino, while on a farm observing some baby calves and wondering if I had been repeating your life patterns — Had I spent too much time with someone who had not yet grown up? 

What did you do, or what have you done when you feel as though your heart is actually broken? Is mine so torn in so many places that it makes more sense to throw it in the trash, than stitch it back together?

I know you went into nature and watched the birds and found solace in these simple things. I know you went walking and found company in the sunset and moonrise, and that’s what I will do too, but I also wish you were here with me to enjoy a sunset bike ride to the beach and this butternut squash soup.   

Miss you, love you and see you in our dreams,

Your youngest darling angel daughter,

Laki

Bentonville, Arkansas, 2023

As I was skimming through my mom’s writings I found this journal entry from 1987. This is the year my parents divorced. I see how she wanted to hold on and make it work. I appreciate how she examines her solitude. 

Morning Solitude at Windy Hill

Josie Saracino June 3, 1987

I’m winding the hills through the redwoods in my new VW van. I’ve been driving this road for 15 years. I feel the same steadiness and strength and peace and beauty I have felt from it always.

The tears come and I let them flow. The sorrow must come out, before the joy can come in. What are the thoughts that bring the tears, and how can I respond?

1. I picture my mom and dad hugging before he goes to work and when he comes home — that represents to me affection and care in a relationship—in a family. It’s like the acorn and the oak, a little affection grows to be a big feeling. It’s not sexual, though in an intimate relationship between a man and a woman tenderness is the groundwork for a more mutually satisfying sexual experience. Why does it bring tears? I want this affection and caring.
2. Another thought that brings tears — the family — keeping the family together. Guru told me once, “make it work this time” six years later, I can’t make it work any more. I have sacrificed so much physically and emotionally. I came to the end, not of my capability but of my willingness. My capability of “making it work” became just a fixation, ego trip, stubbornness. The appearance of real, so finely disguised I could no longer see the difference, though my friends did.

The whole notion of family is so tricky. Guru taught me this so simply, “if your sister is gone, reach out for another, if your mother is gone, reach out for another.”

Friendships need cultivation and caring. They need honesty, and they do grow. I used to have only two sisters, now I have more, and even brothers. It’s not a trick, it comes from real caring. 

3. The idea of being alone, this is the greatest, most evil trick of the mind. What is the matter with aloneness anyway? It’s the state of mind which cultivates ideas. It’s the state of being where we find our rest, to continue our work. It’s a place where we can draw on our inner well of strength to face our troubles with a sense of harmony and balance. 

I came to Windy Hill to be alone. The lizard walked in front of me, the butterfly flew around me. The quail crossed in front of me, the sun warmed me and the wind cooled me. 

Where is my aloneness?

A Windy Hill Poem

My dearest Windy Hill, I have come to you today without my friends… without my children… without my kites… I have come for your teaching…I sit for a long time with my eyes closed…

I feel the breeze cooling the hot sun… I heard the birds chirping and the tall grass blowing… 

I open my eyes and receive the first teaching. 

The orange poppies speak to me gently and firmly — ‘look at all of us in a semi-circle around you now. We are delicate orange blossoms — this time of year we give color and life and brightness to the tall dry grass on the hill. We close in the darkness and open to the light — some of us already have petals falling. And soon there will be no blossom — we do not worry or feel sorrow, this is our nature. Another day or week or month you may come here and you will not see us, for our blossoming will be finished, but we are not dead, we are at rest while the earth is nourishing us for our next cycle… ‘you are not unlike us,’ said the poppies. ‘Come and enjoy the moments with us.’

I look up and receive the second teaching — two hawks are flying above me, ‘watch us fly so freely above you,’ they seem to say — we can soar, and glide, and dive, but our flying is limited. It has boundaries. We must find food, build our nests, learn the wind currents. ‘You are not unlike us.’

I closed my eyes and received their teaching. 

April 9, 2025

Dear Mama, 

I went with my friend and her family to visit Pescadero State beach a week before your birthday. I went to honor you and celebrate you. I wore layers. It was a beautiful sunny day. 

I’ve been thinking about layers. Layers of skin, layers of grief, layers of defensiveness, layers of sand that meet the ocean. And the way the layers look next to one another and how pain is remedied by slowly rebuilding layers of trust over time.

And maybe grief needs sun, sand and water to help it morph into something more textured and strong enough to hold onto in the midst of a turbulent storm or rough waters. 

Love you and miss you,

xoL

ps — just read this and thought you might enjoy:

In my darkest night,
when the moon was covered
and I roamed through wreckage,
a nimbus-clouded voice
directed me:
“Live in the layers,
not on the litter.”

— The Layers by Stanley Kunitz

This post is part of a series of essays called Josie's House. This is part of a larger work-in-progress-project I envision as a book. Previous essays can be found below.

1. New Beginning: In which I try to figure out how to tell people that the doctor at my mother's assisted living facility referred her to hospice care — meaning that based on her weight loss and decline, she is expected to be gone within six months.
2. Mom Rocks: In which I attempt to introduce my mother and this project.
3. 'Are You My Sister?': In which my Josie-mama thinks I am her sister and I find a letter my mother wrote to her sister after she died in my mother's arms.
4. Mandala's Tiles and Poetry: In which I go looking for tiles in India and re-discover my mother's love of mandalas and some poetry-letters she wrote after my grandmother died. 
5. A Purple-Infused 80th Birthday: In which I marvel at the passage of time, birthdays, and garden metaphors.
6. The Cottage and The Blue Couch: In which I share a draft of an essay about friendship, love, a cottage, and a blue couch.
7. Wearing Pantsuits to Church: Values Search: In which I look at my mother's values alongside my own.
8. A Dream Realized: Journey to India, 1979: In which I share a draft of an essay about my mother's first trip to India, and the next trip when she met my father. 
9. 'Cry Tests' & Journey to Peninsula School: In which I examine a piece of writing on how Josie got her dream job at Peninsula, thanks to the supportive community around her. 
10. Submerge!: In which I veer off from the aim of this newsletter and share an essay I wrote about my father's death. 
11. More Mandalas & Self-Acceptance Training: In which I take a deeper look into the self-acceptance work my mother did and also appreciate the beauty of a Korean spa and friendship.