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.
Posts Tagged ‘grandmother’
When My Friend’s Husband Brings Us a Morning Treat
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged grandmother, kindness, mango, service, sweetness, time on October 18, 2022| 10 Comments »
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.
Decorating the Tree
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Christmas, grandmother, mother, ornament, parenting, poem, poetry, tree on December 17, 2018| 7 Comments »
And usually, at some point
in the tree trimming, when the living room
is covered in twenty-year-old tissues
and my fingers are raw from the needles
and the rest of the family
has long since tired of the project,
around then, I start to wonder
what it’s really for, all this bustle
and embellishment and then,
like today, I’ll pick up an ornament—
say the one my grandmother made
from a metal cookie cutter trimmed
in blue ribbon and angel hair,
and inside it sleep two baby figurines,
a pink one for me, a blue for my brother—
and I am weeping,
remembering how I would stare at this ornament
as a child, how beautiful it was
dangling so high on the tree
where all the more delicate ornaments would go.
I was small then, but I knew
my grandmother made that ornament
with me in mind and I loved her for her thoughtfulness.
She is gone this year, and I marvel
at how present she is in this room
as I sing “Oh Little Town of Bethlehem”
with Aaron Neville and remember singing
carols with her in the church loft,
her soprano warbling and true.
And I climb the ladder to hang
the ornament high on the tree,
where the more delicate ornaments go.
And suddenly I see it is my son and daughter
sleeping in that ornament,
there where I thought it was my brother and me.
And I think of my mother’s hands
all those years she hung that ornament
reverently, and how the spruce needles
would have pricked her, too, and I
sing with Aaron about peace to men on earth,
and some of that peace slips into me,
so silently, so silently.
In the Garden
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged beauty, garden, granddaughter, grandmother, merry stoll, planting, poem, poetry on May 26, 2018| 6 Comments »
for Merry Stoll
After I learn that she died,
I go to the garden, grateful
that there are petunias,
cosmos and snapdragons
to plant. Salvia, pansies, and
verbena that will drape its purple
kindness down the sides
of the planter. I don’t
put on my gloves. I let my hands
enter the soil and feel
how good the earth is.
This is how I best remember her,
with a trowel or a scissors in her hand,
ready to transplant, to trim,
to harvest the blooms
into a bouquet for the altar
or table. Flowers hung
in her garage to dry. Flowers
in her bathrooms, her dining room,
her kitchen. It came easy to her,
which stem to place where.
Which color, which ribbon,
which grass, which vase.
She left beauty all over the place.
Once she sat with me
on her green and white couch,
and let me read her poems,
a whole book of them.
We sat there for hours,
and she listened and laughed
at Shel Silverstein’s antics,
and as I read, I felt like a flower,
like something just at the edge
of bloom. Her attention
made me beautiful.
Today, the garden is just starting
to find itself after winter. I cannot help
but weep into the holes I have dug.
It is tender, this moment, and fragile
this life. I feel like making wild pledges—
to honor her legacy—to find
and share beauty everywhere I go.
I feel determined to keep my word.
Moon River and Me
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged grandmother, moon river, poem, poetry, song on May 20, 2018| 8 Comments »
for Merry
Though she could barely carry
a conversation, she could still sing,
so I would sit by her nursing home bed
and sing Moon River and her eyes
might not even open, but
her lips would start to move,
wider than a mile, I’m crossing
you in style someday.
Her voice was wobbly, perhaps,
but her notes were true,
and she’d smile as she sang.
Old dream maker, you
heart breaker, wherever you’re goin’,
I’m goin’ your way.
She’d been nowhere but
this bed for years,
but I could see behind her eyes
she was aiming toward some
imperceptible future,
a drifter, off to see the world
beyond this one.
And I would hold her hand
and she would squeeze it.
If she could hear the tears
in my voice, she didn’t say so.
We’d sung together since I was a girl,
show tunes in her kitchen
and hymns from the choir loft in the church.
Her soprano, a beacon of my childhood.
Now, in a room far from her,
I light a candle as she drifts away,
and sing as if she could hear me,
there’s such a lot of world to see,
my voice cloudy, as if any moment
it might start to rain and that
rainbow’s end might appear,
and for a moment, we could
look at it together before
she goes around the bend, alone.