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Posts Tagged ‘generations’

Reunion 

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , on October 17, 2026| 1 Comment »


 
As if there is nothing more important to do,
Mom and I play cards. For hours, we shuffle
and deal and keep score. We scowl. We gloat.
We shuffle and deal again. A portrait of my great
great grandmother looks down at us. She is 
a round-faced German woman with thin oval
spectacles. Her eyes somehow smile, though 
her lips do not. I want to invite her to join us, 
this woman who raised on her own a daughter,
this woman whose choices equal the reason
my mother and I are here at all in a small room 
in northwestern Georgia playing cards and laughing 
and letting the game do its work, which is play, 
which is an essential way two people become closer
despite distance, despite difference, which is, 
of course, the most important work of all. 
In a hundred fifty years, I hope there’s a photo 
of my mother and me in some other room 
where my great great grandchild is playing 
cards with her mother. I hope the look on my face
says, bless you, family, for playing together. 
There is nothing right now more important to do. 
 

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Dear Mimi,

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on March 3, 2015| 3 Comments »

Last night while I was washing dishes,
I said to my daughter, “How do you like them apples?”
and she said, “What does that mean?”
which means she never knew you.
Funny how when I said it, I heard your voice,
not my own.
I told her, “Oh, that’s something my grandma
used to say. It just means, How do you like that?”

I didn’t cry then, thinking of how you never met,
but I did cry about it later. She wears your name,
just as I do, you know. Rose. There is sorrow and honor
in that one long-stemmed syllable.

I know you would love her.
She likes to dress up, even wears the shiny blue sparkling
clip on earrings I saved from you. Someday
perhaps, when she is a mother,
standing beside the kitchen sink,
her hands warm with soapy water,
she’ll be telling a story and finish it up with
“How do you like them apples?”

And if her child looks at her
in that curious way, she’ll reply,
“It’s just something my mother used to say.”

Love,
Rosemerry

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