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Posts Tagged ‘mom’

Things I Learned from My Mother

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , on May 9, 2026| 8 Comments »


 
 
That women can run for office and win.
That a song is a great way to wake a child.
That, in fact, there is a song for every
moment of the day, from packing a picnic, 
to washing your hair, to saying yes when
you ought to say no. 
That scrambled egg sandwiches
are a fast and easy meal
and fresh herbs make everything taste better.
That it’s worth staying up way too late
if it means you can get to the last page
of your book. 
To write handwritten thank you letters
for just about everything. 
To make your bed every morning. 
That my body is not a machine
and it matters that I care for it. 
That it’s nice to have just the right glass
for drinking water or wine or tea. 
She taught me to learn new games,
to make new friends, to try new foods,
to enjoy growing old.
That it matters to say grace
every time you sit to eat. 
That no matter how different our values, our votes, 
there is always a foundation for love.
That if I lived a thousand lifetimes,
in every one, I would choose her as a mom.

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Home Away

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on November 14, 2025| 4 Comments »


 
 
In a city where we meet,
mom arrives with thin
rye crackers, dill Havarti,
carrots, fresh raspberries,
a tea kettle, and packets
of peppermint tea—all
things she knows I love.
And sipping right now from
the slender, porcelain
pansy mug she wrapped in
clothes and brought in her suitcase,
I listen in the dark of the hotel
to the soft, even luff of her breath
as she sleeps, and inside it
I hear the light of her, the
generous light, the tender light,
a nectary of light, a clear channel
of light that teaches me something
of how to live in these long, cold
volumes of night.

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Beauty Lesson

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on May 22, 2025| 9 Comments »


 
It used to embarrass me when my mother
would wear her bright palazzo pants printed
with enormous yellow and purple flowers,
red petals, blue petals—I mean every
single possible color of petal. And she
loved them. Flounced in them. Flowed
in them. Strutted and glided and felt
beautiful in them. I wanted to hide.
Now, when mom sends me pictures
of her dressed in bold patterns and sharp colors,
I delight in her delight. How strange
it would be for mom to slink
around in solid black and gray like me.
Laughable, even. My mother is audacious
in her taste. Now when I say, You look great, Mom,
I mean, You are a garden in full bloom.
I mean, You are exotic bird. A wild
kaleidoscope. I mean, I am still learning
how our differences are gifts. I mean,
Mom, you are beautiful.

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Matriarch

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on November 17, 2024| Leave a Comment »


 
 
From the hallway, I hear her
growl her disappointment
when my nephew’s football team
fumbles the ball. And by the time
I enter the door to find her
riveted to the livestream,
she’s squealing, whooping,
calling out his name,
her voice a bright wing
that careens through the room,
a raven let loose from a cage,
and I can’t help but fall
more in love with my mother
who crows with wild, unparalleled joy,
a noisy, exuberant ecstasy,
and I realize I am sky—
as if the wings of her love
shape the terrain where they fly.
She cheers louder for my nephew;
that love makes the space inside me
even more vast, even more beautiful.

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Preserving Sweetness

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on June 27, 2024| 13 Comments »


 
 
The whole house smelled
of ripening then the day mom
made apples into sauce.
The heat from the stove
made the small kitchen
swelter, and the autumn air
almost shined with the bright
scent of Jonathan, Pippin,
Winesap, Cortland.
Her arms were strong then,
straining to push the blushing
pink mash through the sieve,
slow and stiff with the effort.
Perhaps there is a language
somewhere that has a word
for this: the way something sweet
can linger, how it flows over,
around and through the body
like the cidery scent of apples
till it lodges itself in the memory.
Oh Mama, I want to serve this
sweetness to you now,
the memory of you stirring
with two good, strong arms,
the way you put all of who you were
into the smallest of acts,
how fifty years later,
what you did that one afternoon
still matters.
 

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Legacy

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on May 11, 2024| 10 Comments »

Far away my mother
reaches across the bed
for my father’s hand
that isn’t there. Still,
she says, she almost
feels it, just as I almost,
even now, feel her hand
rubbing the gentle pad
of her thumb across
my own thumbnail.
Perhaps someday
when I am gone,
my daughter, too,
will almost feel a whisper
of a kiss on her brow
that reminds her how
I kiss her tonight,
as always, with my lips
pressed to that place
just above her eyes
as I murmur that I love her.
Perhaps it will surprise
her how real it still feels,
the words no longer audible,
but I hope by then
she will know them by heart.

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One While Flying Away from My Mom

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on March 26, 2024| 4 Comments »

longing to love you forever
I watch the sun go down
desperately red

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Lessons from a Small Bush

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on March 25, 2024| 6 Comments »

Because it brings her enormous joy,
this pink-petalled flowering quince
that grows just outside
my mother’s back door,
I long to give her a thousand
such quince bushes,
all of them long-blooming,
voluptuous, thornless,
all of them lining her walk.
Though the other part of me
wants to honor how
it takes only one plant
to bring her such elation.
I am instantly stunned
with the wisdom of enoughness,
astonished again at how praise
needs nothing more than a crumb.
Somehow letting go of a thousand
imaginary quince bushes floods me
with a emptiness so great
I fall more wildly in love
with a single pink flower
and the luck-drunk awe of my mother.

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Cleaning Mom’s Blue Glass, I Think of My Son

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on March 23, 2024| 9 Comments »


 
 
Barefoot, I balanced
on mom’s counters
and I handed her
the blue glass
plates and vases
from the highest shelf.
They were dusty,
as all things are
when unused. Now
they shine, draw
the eye upward,
bring beauty to the room.
It makes me wonder
what parts of my life
I have not touched
for too long—
like that wound today
I brushed so tenderly
with my thoughts.
What was dust
now gleams this evening,
has become the only thing
my eyes can see.
And though I might
avoid it if I could,
somehow the wound
makes everything around it
all the more lovely,
as luminous as newly
polished blue glass,
as shimmering as any tear.
 

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One Reunion with My Mom

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , on March 22, 2024| 2 Comments »


 
 
while going seventy
we make of the car
a sanctuary

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