I remember her waltzing across the living room
singing, Somewhere my love, dah dah dah, dah,
dah dah. She was dancing alone, as she often did,
but oh, could she waltz, small feet like wings, her thin
body gliding past tables and chairs, weaving, spinning,
her arms lifted up in the air around a loving partner
who had never been there. I don’t think
she knew the rest of the words, or at least
she didn’t sing them. Always Somewhere
my love, again and again, like a promise
she wanted to believe in. She danced
like that through my childhood. Perhaps
dancing itself was her love. I can see her now
box stepping, one, two, three, one two three,
each step a step closer to all she did not have.
Posts Tagged ‘grandmother’
Remembering Rose
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged aloneness, dancing, grandmother, music on December 17, 2025| 8 Comments »
Synaptic Plasticity
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged brain, dancing, grandmother, memory, Mimi, synapse on May 11, 2025| 5 Comments »
The way the eagles return to the same nests,
this is the way the mind sometimes returns
to the same memory—as if the mind wings across
all other branching neurons to ever arrive
at the same comfortable place. There are,
of course, many other places to land,
some of them perhaps more beautiful,
more sturdy. Still the mind returns to that
one moment. As tonight when my thoughts again
migrate to the summer evening when my grandmother
and I danced in our old white living room,
a waltz on the radio and her leading me in
the one, two, three, one, two three steps
that she loved. And her hair is white
and pinned up high. And her lips are red
and her nails are red and she smells like
cigarettes and Toujours Moi. There are
millions of other moments we shared,
so why do I always alight here first?
Perhaps for the thrill of her sharing her joy
which so often she did not share.
Tonight, as on that night, the long summer light
streams through the window, weaves into
the nest of memory as if to strengthen it the way
an eagle might weave in new sticks, new lichen,
new grass, so that the next time the mind
wants to arrive here, the memory will be waiting,
even softer, even more home than before.
Imagining Rose
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged generation, grandmother, nothing, transformation on February 20, 2024| 7 Comments »
Red were the leaves
in that Illinois fall,
red was the blood
she did not bleed,
and brittle was the straw
in the hat she did not wear
as she did not walk
to the store. Instead
she sat on the small
metal chair in her room
and did not cry,
my grandmother all those
years ago, and she
thought of the baby
she would have
with the man who
she married but did
not love, and green
were her thoughts
as the child began to grow,
green as the garden
she did not sow.
She did not yet know
how he would learn
to spin all that
nothing she had
into gold.
When My Friend’s Husband Brings Us a Morning Treat
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged grandmother, kindness, mango, service, sweetness, time on October 18, 2022| 11 Comments »
I want to go back in years
and find my grandmother Rose
when she is living in Illinois
with my grandfather,
a cruel and angry man.
I want to meet her
on a cold snowy day
when the world feels small
and she feels smaller,
and I want to serve her
a bowl of ripe mango
with a squeeze of lime.
I would love to see her face
when she tasted it—
the orange flesh
that sings of sunshine,
warmth, and the far away.
Would she love it
the way I do this morning,
astonished by the goodness
that exists in the world?
Would she thrill,
as I do, in the surprise
of being served?
As it is, I delight in sitting
on a deep red couch with my friend,
sighing as we slip the soft cubes
into our mouths,
making lists of people
we long to feed mango—
like Beethoven, like Etty Hillesum,
like my grandmother,
who likely never tasted
a mango, my grandmother,
who knew so little of kindness.
Over sixty years later,
I long to serve her mango
to make her feel seen,
cared for, special,
astonished by the sweetness
of the world.
Remembering My Grandmother
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged grandmother, gratefulness, singing on October 9, 2022| 4 Comments »
for Merry Stoll
I loved those Sundays
when I, a teenage girl,
would climb the stairs
to the church choir loft
where my grandmother and I
would sing hymns side by side.
God, I loved her voice,
rich with vibrato and conviction,
loved her wide warble—
not a pure note,
yet wholly in tune.
Of all the selves I have been,
I cherish that girl
who knew to the core
she was lucky
to sit beside such a woman.
She didn’t yet know
nothing lasts forever,
she only knew
how she loved those moments,
their voices weaving together,
their bodies leaning into each other
like two notes grateful to be sung.
Bouquet
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged flower, garden, grandmother, love, step mother on September 16, 2022| 4 Comments »
for Shawnee
This morning, knowing you were coming,
I went to the garden and cut the largest sunflower
to put in a vase on the table.
It was the loveliest of all the garden’s flowers,
planted from seed four months ago.
When I was younger than you are now,
my grandmother gave me voluptuous roses
in a simple blue glass vase.
I felt so connected to her this morning
as I made a bouquet for you.
I understood something new of devotion.
Unable to thank her, I thanked
the sunflower. Her love from three decades ago
pulsed through the stem like sunshine.
How did I not feel the full magnitude then?
I give all that love to you.
Potica
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged bread, daughter, food, grandmother, memory, parents on July 23, 2021| 2 Comments »
Sitting in Colorado
I think of my parents sitting
in Illinois,
how tonight in different
kitchens together we savor
the Slovenian sweet bread
of my father’s childhood,
the sweet bread
his mother would make—
savor not just the taste
but the memory of the taste,
the paper thin crust,
the ground walnuts,
the honey.
Savor not just the loaf
but the memory of the hands
that once made the loaf,
the happiness as we ate it,
the communion in the joy.
Tonight, I break the bread
into tiny pieces, eat it slow,
imagine us at the same
loving table now
and years and years ago.
We are alone, not alone.
The bread tastes
like family, like home.
If you are unfamiliar with this Eastern European nutroll delicacy (pronounced puh-TEET-suh), you can read more about it here.
January 1
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged connection, death, grandmother, language, loss, new years on January 2, 2021| 3 Comments »
When I say Happy New Year,
I hear my grandmother’s voice
inside my voice, the way
she slapped the first syllable,
the way silence hung for a moment
before she finished the rest of the phrase.
HAP-py New Year!
Each time I say the words, she
is so alive in that moment—
the syllables themselves
wear her bright red nails,
her signature updo
and her rhinestone earrings.
HAP-py New Year!
I sing out again and again,
loving how she enters
each conversation this day.
There are small ways
to bring our beloveds back,
little rituals so strong they
defy the loss, so strong
that each time we do them
we become more and more
who we love. Her voice
becomes my voice and her
joy becomes my joy.
I don’t have to look in the mirror
to see she is here, her smile
my smile curving up from the inside.
I Return to the Night after My Grandfather’s Funeral
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged death, grandfather, grandmother, grief on October 10, 2020| 6 Comments »
My grandmother asked me that night
to sleep with her in her bed.
Though I was thirty-something,
I knew little of loss. I remember
the great weight of her as she slipped
into the soft white sheets—
a mountain inside a woman’s body.
I wore a long flannel gown with tiny violets
and she a thin flannel robe, slightly pilled and well worn,
with tiny embroidered roses.
We hardly spoke. She did not cry.
Any night stitched with that much sorrow
will linger in the heart for a lifetime.
I did not hold her—nor did she seem
to wish to be held. And when I return
to that night in my mind, I don’t try
to rewrite it. She sleeps on her side of the bed.
I sleep where my grandfather used to sleep.
I listen for the eventual slow tide of her breath.
But I am not the same version of myself
who shared a bed with her then.
Now, when I lie down beside her,
I know something more of how vast
an emptiness can be. How it can feel as if
a whole garden has been ripped up by its roots.
How sometimes in the dark, though we know
there are stars, we simply can’t open our eyes.
Remembering My Grandmother
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged granddaughter, grandmother, softness, time on July 15, 2020| 3 Comments »
for Merry
I loved to sit on that green and white swirled couch,
loved even more to sit on it with my grandmother.
Everything about her was soft. Her wrinkled hands,
her sagging face, her bosom-y body she was forever
trying to slim. Her voice was cloudlike. Her laughter,
fine gauze. And her eyes ever met me with silk-strong love.
Why do I always return to that one afternoon
when she let me sit beside her, reading her poem
after poem, as if she had no garden to tend, no meal
to make, no hymns to practice for Sunday’s service.
Forty years later, in my kitchen, I’m still with her on the couch,
hoping we’ll stay that way just a little longer.