Beth Bornstein Dunnington
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A Circle Of Women

February 2, 2018

Something extraordinary at LAX today… (writing this on the plane). I was at the gate, waiting to get on my plane to Portland. Flights to two different cities were boarding on either side of the Portland fight. A toddler who looked to be eighteen or so months old was having a total meltdown, running between the seats, kicking and screaming, then lying on the ground, refusing to board the plane (which was not going to Portland). His young mom, who was clearly pregnant and traveling alone with her son, became completely overwhelmed… she couldn’t pick him up because he was so upset, he kept running away from her, then lying down on the ground, kicking and screaming again. The mother finally sat down on the floor and put her head in her hands, with her kid next to her still having a meltdown, and started crying.

Then, this gorgeous thing (I’m crying just writing this)… the women in the terminal, there must have been six or seven of us, not women who knew each other, approached and surrounded her and the little boy and we knelt down and formed a circle around them. I sang “The Itsy Bitsy Spider” to the little boy… one woman had an orange that she peeled, one woman had a little toy in her bag that she let the toddler play with, another woman gave the mom a bottle of water. Someone else helped the mom get the kid’s sippy cup out of her bag and give it to him. It was so gorgeous, there was no discussion and no one knew anyone else, but we were able to calm them both down, and she got her child on the plane.

Only women approached. After they went through the door we all went back to our separate seats and didn’t talk about it… we were strangers, gathering to solve something. It occurred to me that a circle of women, with a mission, can save the world.

I will never forget that moment.

​Marena’s 27th birthday

6/8/2020

 
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Today, June 8th, is my daughter Marena's 27th birthday.
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In the photo she's three, waving to me from across our long ago east coast lawn. She knows I'm within reach; she knows she can run and throw herself into my wide-open arms.

Time was endless in that Northern New Jersey moment, the years of ballet slippers and school plays and parent/teacher conferences having not yet begun... sprawled out ahead because years were long, substantial, tucked deep into a pocket like a solid heart-shaped stone not going anywhere, until you spin around three times and your child is grown up and she lives somewhere else, somewhere across an ocean.

The high school, college, grad school yearbooks, they're packed up in boxes with everything else that already happened, that played out, and the remembered tears as I tried to walk her all the way up in a Hawai’i airport security line, hoping she'd turn and look at me one more time, and she always did, before disappearing out of sight. Back into her grown-up life.

And the heart stone in my pocket has long ago moved onto a shelf with other reminders of those endless years that lasted only a minute. Now she's a young woman teaching theater to elementary school kids in San Antonio, Texas who live way below the poverty level, because this is what matters to her. In the photos the kids are laughing and reaching out to her, as she once reached out to me, and she's bringing much-needed joy into their days in the form of art. She knows that art saves lives.

My girl is 27 today. She spent this day making Black Lives Matter bracelets that she gave away on Instagram in exchange for donations to organizations that support black trans individuals. I know that she knows what matters... she protests, she speaks up in a loud voice, she calls it out, she is firmly an ally as she gets ready to move to New York City to work in a school with other kids who have very little, but in her care, they'll have theatre and they'll know they matter. Because she'll tell them every day they do. And she'll put them on a stage, shining a light on them so they're seen.

My girl is 27. My girl, faraway. I feel such pride that she's my daughter. I haven't seen her in so long, since before the world closed down. But she's an inch away; she's everywhere I look.
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Happy Birthday, Marena. I love you beyond words that exist.❤️




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  • Home
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