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Posts Tagged ‘grandmother’




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.

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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.

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Bouquet

  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.
 
 
 
 

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Potica





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.

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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.

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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.

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            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.

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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.

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for Merry Stoll

wahtola - 02

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.

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            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.

 

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