Posted in Uncategorized, tagged daughter, fairies, mother, poem, poetry, purpose, river, rocks on November 17, 2019| Leave a Comment »
Hundreds of smooth red stones—
we gathered them that summer
and spent days carefully laying them out
into a wide and winding red path.
It had no real starting point, no destination.
We tucked white daisies between the rocks.
We said it was for the fairies.
I wouldn’t have said it then, in fact,
I hesitate today to say we didn’t believe in them.
They gave us so much purpose.
Even now, I’m following that path.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged daughter, humanness, mother, parenting, poem, poetry, strength on November 3, 2019| 4 Comments »
It surprises me she is fragile,
this woman who labored for eighteen hours
to birth me, this woman who cared for me
every time I was sick, who coached
my soccer team, who led my Girl Scout troupe.
This woman who went hunting and fishing
and still often comes home with the biggest
catch. This woman who walked ten miles
to raise money for hunger. This woman
who prays for everyone, everyone.
And so tonight when I walk her
to her room and she needs to stop
a moment to catch her breath,
I marvel at how human she is,
this woman who has been more
than human to me my whole life—
a super hero, a champion, a star.
And somehow, knowing this, and
understanding that it’s been true all along,
I fall even more deeply in love with her
as she leans back on the bed, lets out
a long sigh, closes her eyes, and smiles.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged daughter, father, poem, poetry, teaching on September 11, 2019| 7 Comments »
He taught me you can never have too much love
or too much ice cream in the freezer. That it matters
how you shake someone’s hand. He taught me
to pile wet seaweed on a bare patch of dirt
so the earthworms will come to the surface.
He taught me how to cast, to set the hook, to filet.
He taught me to cheer for myself. Once,
he taught me to say no, and to mean it,
and we shouted it over and over into the phone,
our voices a joyful chorus of refusal. He taught me
that despite unceasing pain, you can still
be grateful to be alive. That it is possible
to love someone very different from you.
That you can go to different schools together.
He taught me to take life seriously, and then
to speak in made up languages and giggle till you cry.
He taught me you can’t save everyone, but
you can save a few. And it’s important that you do.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged cooking, daughter, kitchen, love, mother, parenting, poem, poetry on August 31, 2019| 2 Comments »
First, you must weigh everything.
Precisely. The butter. The water.
The sugar, the salt. You must
catch the mixture just as it boils,
then add the flour, sifted and weighed.
You must set the timer to dry the dough,
must add the eggs slowly, must not
let it be too dry, too wet.
There’s more, my friends. The angle
of the pastry sleeve, must be 45 degrees.
You need to use the French star tip.
And then, you must not open the oven
lest the steam escapes and the eclairs
don’t crust. So many musts. So many dos.
And still they don’t always turn out.
It is not at all the way I love you. Though
sometimes I’ve tried to find the recipe.
Though sometimes I’ve wished it
were as easy as measuring well and using
a timer. I have wanted to do it right.
I have studiously wanted to make yours the best life.
But the only way to be a good lover
is to love. It has nothing to do
with following directions. Has
everything to do with the doing.
Like making choux pastry dough
together. Taking turns at the stove.
Reading the directions out loud to each other,
four times. And then watching the dough,
astonished as it goes from slimy to smooth
to something sturdy that shines.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged airport, daughter, grief, impermanence, parents, poem, poetry, tears, vulnerability on July 25, 2019| 9 Comments »
It wasn’t until I had passed through security
and found my way into Concourse B
that I found myself sinking into a chair
across from a giant Vienna Beef poster
and began to weep. And once they began,
the tears wouldn’t stop. Nor did I try
to stop them. I had wondered in the ICU
where they were. Had wondered
again at my parents’ home. It was strange
to be so level—not cold, really, and not numb,
but oddly steeled. It was a relief, really,
to sob into my hands. To let grief take over.
To be a maidservant to fragility.
What a gift to be sideswiped with the truth
of our vulnerability. What a blessing
to be baptized in my own helplessness.
Over the loudspeaker, they announced
that a plane was delayed. As if any of us
really know when we’ll depart, when we’ll arrive.
When the tears dried, I stood. Walked
to my gate recalibrated. Called my parents
again because I could. Because I could.
In the window, I smiled at my watery reflection,
how it almost wasn’t there at all.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged daughter, flowers, help, helplessness, medicine, mother, poem, poetry on July 23, 2019| 5 Comments »
Because I cannot fix her heart,
I plant flowers in the two empty pots
on my mother’s high rise patio.
She’s always loved flowers around the house—
peonies and petunias in Wisconsin,
succulents and larkspur in Colorado.
She taught me when I was a girl
how to deadhead the plants
to produce more blooms,
how to make the snapdragon
open its reptilian mouth, how
to tell the story of Cinderella
by carefully dissecting the bleeding heart,
how to make touch me nots spit their seeds,
and how a few flowers around the home
bring immeasurable joy. And so
I pick out white and blue lobelia and
a soft gray vine and a hot pink begonia
and other flowers and vines I can’t name
and we sit on her patio together
in the late afternoon sun
and arrange the potted plants.
There is something about planting flowers
together that changes the way
you see the flowers—the same way
a soup tastes better when made
by someone who loves you—
and I thrill to think of her
looking out the window and seeing
the bright red geraniums surrounded
by purples and blues and greens
and thinking to herself, wow,
that girl really loves me, and
surely, surely, though it won’t
fix her heart, surely it will do some good,
those draping pink petunias
so familiar, so new.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged daughter, father, hospital, icu, love, mother, parents, poem, poetry on July 21, 2019| 4 Comments »
And as my mother steeped toward slumber,
her thin body wired to monitors,
there, surrounded by incessant beeping
and the red and green mountains and valleys
of pulse and pressure and the slow drip
of IV tubes finding her veins, yes,
there as her speech became mumbly and her
eye lids heavied, my father leaned over
the rails of the hospital bed to smooth
her gray hair and kiss her lips and whisper
I love you. And she rallied a smile and
whispered it back. And there, in the sterile room,
with all its instruments of cardiac measurement,
there was nothing, nothing that could chart
how open my heart, how—unable to hold
all the love I felt for them both—it broke
in the most beautiful way. How I prayed
it would stay that open, that broken, that whole.
**
Dear friends, thank you for all your good wishes. After having a heart surgery go wrong a few days ago, my mother was released today from the ICU and is now resting at home, and though she is not out of the woods yet, she is not in imminent danger. It’s been very scary and I thank you for all your thoughtful messages and prayers and thoughts. Rosemerry
*
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged dad, daughter, dogs, father, love, parenting, poem, poetry on June 30, 2019| 8 Comments »
I should have raised dogs.
That’s what my father always said
when I did something stupid.
Like when my friend and I were twelve
and we snuck into Raiders of the Lost Ark
with two seventeen-year old boys.
And there was dad, waiting
outside the theater looking like
exactly what he was—a rabid dad
hellbent on scaring the shit out of any boy
who might have unvirtuous thoughts
about his girl. He never said
what kind of dogs—poodles or labs
or mutts. I can just see him
walking the corridor of his kennel,
all the dogs barking. But dogs weren’t
his calling—the crates, the training,
special diets, vets. No,
he was the master of loving me
through my crazy mistakes
and my hormonal angst and my sudden refusal
to eat meat. I still smile thinking of
the way he would sit on the couch
and hold his arm open for me
to come sit beside him then snuggle.
The way he bought me a book
to decode my dreams. The way he took me
to piano lessons every Saturday
morning, then took me out for brunch
so we could talk. The way he still listens
when I’ve done something stupid
and then tells me he loves me.
Never once, despite all his lamentations,
did I think he would exchange me
for a chihuahua or beagle. No, there
was something almost sweet in his wish,
a hint of surrender in it, the sound
of his heart opening just a little bit wider
to let in the world, unleashed as it is.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged daughter, mother, poem, poetry, road trip, singing on June 10, 2019| 3 Comments »
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged daughter, flowers, lost, mother, poem, poetry, road on June 5, 2019| Leave a Comment »
Beside the dirt road
we find a whole bouquet’s worth
of purple penstemon,
pink wild roses, orange
globe mallow, and countless
yellow weeds. My daughter
picks them, a bride to joy,
and though there is thunder
it doesn’t rain, except for petals,
yellow sweet clover, that
she sprinkles along the dirt
to leave a trail behind us,
just in case we get lost, Mom.
she says. Sometimes love
seems to rise right out of the dirt
and damned if somehow
on that one-way road
I didn’t get wholly, beautifully,
heart breakingly lost.
