There are four photographs (that I know of) of my great grandmother. I am placing them around us in a circle, lighting the candle, and calling her into it. Ready?

1. Taken outside the house, during one of the wars — it’s the same one every time, so it makes keeping track easy. She is all in black and the smallest one there, apart from the children; even with most of them sitting, she is tiny. She looks like a small fierce bird.

2. At the side of my great grandfather in a studio portrait, they have been told to gaze up and to the left. This is where the spirit world is, up and to the left. Whoever she is looking at is unrecorded. There are always gaps in a record, or places where it skips. She is up and to the left herself now, but comes back to me in the soft light of dawn where I look down and to the right at one foot and ask her how to let go, how to lose and be graceful, how to stay generous in spite of. In spite of. But there was no spite in her, no room in that little body. She doesn’t answer, but sometimes the leaves of my tree move gently although there is no wind. I imagine. This is the photograph that stands in front of shot glasses filled with rice to hold a beeswax candle upright in fewer and fewer houses now.

3. In the garden of the house on Windsor Street, reclining in a deck chair, she has been caught reading something, maybe Politika, or a diaspora rag. It was not the custom in her girlhood for women to be literate but she was. She never learned english beyond hello goodbye howareyou. When people would call the house, they could leave a message: she would carefully transcribe the round and vowelly words into a more upright cyrillic: jedan glas, jedno slovo.

4. In this one, my favourite, looking right at the camera, smiling, her lips slightly parted and eyes wide as though she has just entered a dark room and the lights are flung on to reveal everyone she has ever loved. Surprise! There is something expectant in her look too — she is going to receive good news, her whole self is poised for it. When she had her citizenship interview, the canadian official asked her, who is the prime minister?/Tko je premijer? and the little bird of my great grandmother paused thoughtfully then sang, kennedy,

kennedy kennedy kennedy

She learned it on the television. This the power of her, that the canadian agreed and stamped the paper and signed the form, and just like that she was done crossing and being crossed by borders.

It’s her birthday, today.