GRAPE VINES

"The Grape Vines"

I spoke to my uncle this morning while he stood on the land, tending to his grapevines. He moved among them like wild sage carried by the wind, like someone in quiet conversation with something that knows him back. Every year, he grows grapes not only as harvest, but as continuation. As a message to self. As memory. As something of himself.

We began with the ordinary check in. Daily updates. I asked, did you make sage tea on the fire today? He smiled and said yes, turning the phone to show me the place where the fire had been, where the kettle had rested on the land. And then, gently, the weight entered, the weight I was hoping to keep at a distance!

He told me it’s becoming harder to reach our land. That some days, he cannot go at all. That distance is no longer just space, but something imposed, something felt in the body.

We both fell quiet at the same time.

There are moments when language fails, when words are not enough, not because there isn’t anything to say, but because everything is too full. The silence carried what we could not. It sat between us, heavy and honest, as if it knew the truth better than we could name it.

Before we ended the call, he said, almost softly, the grapes will be ready in a few weeks… "come home".

"When the land whispers our Stories"

And that was it.

After the call, I sat there holding his words, holding the silence, holding the distance. I made sage tea, trying to follow his gesture across space. Trying to understand how all of this can live in me at once, love, longing, separation, الأرض (land), and memory.

How do we carry it all without breaking?