It was the burn that held us. It’s tiny, contained danger.
Trying to understand our mothers as people can feel like an impossible task, but for Nina, the mystery hides in flames. On November 10, 1971, Nina’s mother, only twenty at the time, lit herself on fire bound together with another woman, a decade before she gave birth to Nina. Lucky to survive, her burns were severe, leaving scars that would crawl over her flesh and stop at her chin, a strange blessing amidst the horror. A year after the episode, her mother became a certified TM (Transcendental Meditation) teacher, devoted to Maharishi and married Nina’s father, both true believers. It is the beginning of chasing transcendental experiences, forsaking comfort, and the usual trappings of life to reach pure enlightenment. It isn’t long before her parents’ marriage is over, and she takes off to raise Nina as a single mother. Men cannot seem to keep her anymore than her devotion to TM can.
Nina comes of age while her mother dabbles in esoteric practices and refuses any person, place or practice that attempts to control her. This memoir is about living in constant motion, as people slip in and out of their lives, the constant becomes Nina and her mother trying to feed her spiritual hunger. Moving to new towns, always the outsider living in motel rooms, it was a social nightmare for a kid at school. A baby comes along when they are living in California, making them a trio when her brother Chris is born. For a time, living is communal, women helping each other “pooling resources” like food, like-minded new age believers, it was nothing to hear talk of aliens. But the comfort doesn’t last. Before, she may not have fully believed in what both her parents taught her (her father was in Texas and big on meditation), but as Nina grows up, becomes more aware of the divide between reality and her mother’s delusions, she begins to feel fear. No one is there to step in and recognize her mother’s mental decline, and even living at the foot of a mountain in California that is believed to be a sacred place ‘between heaven and earth’ will not cure what ails her family. Nina explores the meaning of all these departures, sifting through the reasons why her mother bucked convention, and attempts to understand what sinister force from which she was running. Consumed with a burning passion, fire wasn’t done with this family, glowing on the periphery and showing itself again, leaving destruction, ashes and pain in its aftermath. No one understands the burn than her. The romance of the mystical loses its allure when irrationality reigns supreme and yet there is love. Love may be the only glue keeping her mother together at the seams, for a time.
This is a gorgeous, heart-breaking read about mental illness, spirituality, escapism, family, and growing up between two worlds. Yes, read it!
Published May 7, 2024
Penguin Group Dutton
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