And then I remember that I can.
Canon’s full documentary is online now, so I pull it up and watch it from beginning to end, ninety minutes of wisdom and fearlessness. Knowing her son is the one holding the camera makes the way Remy looks into its lens—with so much love and pride—that much more meaningful. Over the course of the documentary, she goes from standing on her own two feet and running to the edge of the pier, to wheeling herself, holding her camera with increasingly shaky hands. But she never fades. The fire, the fight, the zest for life never vacates the dark eyes that seem, even years later, to see right through me.
“Tomorrow,” she says from the screen, from a wheelchair precipitously close to the edge of a pier, “is the most presumptuous word in the world, because who knows if you even get that. Yesterday, spilled milk and old news. You can’t do nothing about how you messed up or fell short or didn’t do yesterday. Even when you mess up and make it right, it has to be done today.”
She flashes a wide smile, so much like Canon’s an invisible hand squeezes my heart.
“Whoo, child, today we can work with. It’s all I have and this thing.” She bangs the wheel of her chair and then bangs her chest. “And this thing, this body, won’t take away today. The only thing you can do with today is make it count, because soon it will be tomorrow. And I already told you about them tomorrows. Better todays make better tomorrows, and if you don’t get tomorrow at least you had today.”
For the entire documentary she has been all smiles and sunsets, but it’s near the end. She’s near the end, and tears fill her eyes.
“This body is a shell,” she says, her voice sober. “No matter how beautiful or what size or how healthy, every single body inevitably returns to dust. It is not your legacy. It is not what you leave behind.”
Her eyes shift just above the lens, to the man holding it, and her smile returns. “I love you, Canon,” she says, addressing him directly by name for the first and only time during the documentary.
And you can see it in her eyes, the pride, the assurance that he is what she has done. He is what she leaves behind. He is the best part of her legacy.
“That’s enough for today,” she says, turning away from his camera and lifting her own to the sun disappearing into the ocean. “I’m getting tired.”
It’s the final sunset. A montage of home videos and photos follows, revealing her life beyond the piers. We see Canon at birthday parties and first days of school and graduations, and his mother is there in every frame. Watching the documentary, seeing her obsession with sunsets and chasing magic hours, one could be fooled into thinking her art was all she had. Canon’s choice to include the rest pulls out the camera for a wider shot of her life beyond her art. Her life with him.
Hers was a race that had already been decided, a race against time, but the beauty was in how she ran. And I think that’s the point. Every single one of us is in that race, and a race against time is one you’ll never win.
But how will you run?
It’s not an existential question of immortality, of living forever, but a challenge of numbered days and what we do with what we have. It’s not a string of todays that become yesterdays and aspire to tomorrow, but living like there is no guarantee. Living with an urgency to say what needs to be said, do what needs to be done. To no matter what, live with what you’ll leave behind in mind.
I want to reach through the screen and touch her in hope that her zeal, her assuredness of life in the face of a diminishing future, would rub off on me. I wish I could turn back the clock, find them on one of their piers as the sun dipped into the ocean to thank her for all she sowed into the remarkable man her son has become.
Some days I feel like that powerful, vibrant girl, the painted butterfly who flitted through the Savoy Ballroom, the wind of trumpets beneath her wings. And some days I’m that broken ballerina from Dessi’s jewelry box, my twists and turns a lurching revolution to a song composed from dust and regret. One thing I’m sure of. On any given day, the look in Canon’s eyes never changes. It’s as constant as the refrain of rising and setting suns.
I’m still sitting in the middle of the studio floor, staring up at the Polaroids of us he pinned to the line, when he comes home.
“Hey.” He leans against the doorjamb, hands in the pockets of his dark jeans. “How are you feeling?”
“Better.” I smile, gesturing to my laptop on the floor in front of me. “I was just watching your mom.”
“My mom?” He walks over, sits on the floor beside me and peers at my screen. “Oh. Wow. I haven’t looked at this in years.”
His eyes soften and a smile crooks one corner of the stern line of his mouth.
“She was something else,” I tell him. “I see so much of her in you. It’s funny. When I was diagnosed, I only thought about the fear of dying, of living a life that was somehow less than what other people lived. Your mother embodied the opposite. She seems to become more fearless. The more the disease tries to change her, the more she becomes completely herself.”
“That’s it exactly. I think my mother was one of the earliest examples I had of looking beyond the surface. When we would go out sometimes, as her disease progressed, I would catch people looking at her with something like pity. And I would just think, you have no idea who she is. That she gets stronger every day.”
“Is that why you look at me the same way no matter how my appearance changes?”
He studies me for long, silent seconds. “No, baby.” He caresses my cheek with his thumb, smiling into my eyes. “That’s just love.”
His words, spoken with such surety, untie the last knots of anxiety and self-doubt tangled in my thoughts. He’s right. When you love someone, you truly see who they are beyond the surface. And whether I look like the headshot I proudly passed all over New York when I auditioned, or I look the way I do right now, I have to see and love myself beyond the high gloss. That first taste of unconditional love and acceptance—we should feed it to our own souls.
I reach up to pull the headscarf away, and then I peel off the sweatshirt covering the silk camisole I wear instead of a bra. For a moment, the air kisses my skin, cools the heated plane of my self-consciousness, and then, under the heat of his stare—an equal, unwavering mix of love and desire—I grow warm. I lean back on my palms and stretch my legs in front of me. I am battered. This body is a battlefield, and my limbs, once flawless, carry the scars. I trust, I hope that they will fade in time, but I must accept who and how I am right now.
Today.
“You said before that you’d like to photograph me,” I say.
“Whenever you like,” he replies, his voice soft, subdued.
I connect my eyes and his by a single thread of no turning back and nod to the cameras displayed on the wall. “How about right now?”