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Posts Tagged ‘mom’

One with Notes of Cherry

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , on November 14, 2023| 8 Comments »

untouched for a month
empty wineglasses dream
of toasting her return

*

Dear Friends, 

This very small poem celebrates my mom’s birthday! A quick update–she has been in skilled nursing for a couple weeks now, and it looks as if she can go home in another week or so. What a long, curve-ball-ish, difficult path. I so appreciate all your thoughts and prayers for her and for me as she navigated the 
ICU and hospital … 

Also, this poem is a very small nod to some fun news … I have several times submitted to the Judd’s Hill Poetry contest, which caught my eye back in 2016 because the prize is a double magnum of cab! And the contest is for poems written about wine. This year, I won! With a poem about mom’s wine glasses … You can read about the amazing vineyard (I am so moved by their values and how they interact with their community) and the wine poetry contest here, and read the winners from the last many years … I don’t think my poem is up yet, but here it is, below, with a smile for mom. Happy Birthday, Mom!!! I have never been so glad you are having a birthday!! 

While Unpacking Giant Wine Goblets


At first, I wish my mother
would consider giving them away—
her new apartment is shy on cupboard space.
How many wine glasses do you need?
I ask, trying to sound reasonable.
She responds by saying,
But they’re for red wine,
as if that explains it—
as if of course, she needs eight
beautiful globe-shaped glasses
for serving pinot noir and merlot.
And they’re so hard to find
in this exact shape, she adds,
clearly pleased with these glasses
she has transferred
from home to home to home.
And so, I think, of course,
she needs these glasses
round as grapefruits, clear
as happiness. I imagine her
sipping a fruity red with easy-drinking
tannins and a super-soft finish.
I imagine the smile on her face
as she sips from the larger goblet
designed so the wine can contact
more air and thus open up
so its cherry and raspberry notes
shine through. I imagine the smile
on her face—and I slide
the glasses onto the shelf
and move on to the china,
the measuring cups, the spoons.

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The Words I Want to Embroider into Her Hospital Gown

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , on October 20, 2023| 15 Comments »


Thank you for helping her meet
this day, this night.
Though she needs you now
just to take a sip of water,
she was once a volunteer firefighter.
If you were grieving, she would
bake you sweet bread.
If you were struggling,
she would leave a gift at your door
with a kind letter but no name.
Thank you for being the one
who arrives to help this woman
who always rises to help another.
This is the way we guide each other,
like the geese who change leaders
at the apex of the V when one gets tired
or sick. Thank you for flying ahead today.
The distance we must go is long.

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Day Seven ICU

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on October 18, 2023| 21 Comments »




She lets me rub oil into her skin,
massaging it slowly into her feet
till they’re supple and warm
and the skin almost shines,
swelling gone.
She sighs in pleasure
instead of pain.
The room smells of lavender.
Lanky afternoon light
lopes through the slats
to replace the fluorescence
of the ICU.
It’s quiet.
No nurse. No doctor.
No beep to alert us her oxygen is low.
How seldom I let myself
move this slow.
I smooth her arches,
slip my fingers through her toes.
We play this little piggy goes home,
and this little piggy goes home,
and this little piggy and this little piggy
and this little piggy go whee whee whee
all the way home.
Is it strange I love this moment
in a place neither of us wants to be.
The business outside this room
will last forever.
And here we are, so alive
we slip right into the miracle.

*

Dear Friends, 

thank you again for all the support, all the kind notes, all the prayers and love and healing energy. I can’t respond to them, but I read them all and let them go in … all the way in. I read mom a bunch of the notes today–and they warmed her, too. In the ICU, it seems time goes fast and healing goes slow. Mom’s improving, at last. I see a path out, albeit a long one. Wishing you all deep peace and ease in your own bodies.

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Anastomosis

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on October 17, 2023| 15 Comments »


 
It means “connection between two passageways.”
It means “place where two rivers meet.”
It means, “here is where necrotized intestine
can be cut away and a woman can be healed.”
It means, “seam where sepsis might begin
through the tiniest of micro perforations.”
It means, “my mother endured such pain.”
It’s so fine, the line between healing and crisis.
So elusive, the word that means
“I know my own life because it’s connected with hers.”
And I, who never before
had even heard of anastomosis,
I, who even yesterday could not spell
nor pronounce it,
I now know too well the five-syllable word
that means “fallible healer,” “essential danger,”
this word that describes the very place
where a life might be saved,
then nearly lost, then saved again.

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Another Night in the ICU

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on October 16, 2023| 22 Comments »


for Ally
 
 
So tenderly, the night nurse lifts
the blankets from my mother’s limbs
and notes the drainage—
its serosanguinous color, its volume.
She checks mom’s vitals and does
whatever she does with all those plastic tubes
that now tether my mother to her life.
How quietly she moves, like a wraith,
she whispers, as if she’s a wisp,
something insubstantial, a midnight trace.
Yet the gift of her work is great
in this moment when all depends on care.
I marvel at her gentleness, her humanness,
her kindness as she works
and my mother’s chest rises and falls,
rises and falls in hard-won sleep.
Like a killdeer, able to make a nest
in bare soil, gravel, even a paved parking lot,
the night nurse makes of this sterile room
a soft-enough place, a place where my mother
can be safe. Like a mother killdeer,
the night nurse stays close to the room,
her eyes and ears trained for danger.
She’s tracking everything,
determined that all will be well tonight.
 

*

Dear friends, 
wow, thank you for the generous outpouring of love, prayers and well wishes for my mother and for me. I read every single one and thanked everyone out loud by name, and I am sad I won’t be able to respond individually to you, but please know how your kind words and good thoughts are carrying me and Mom. I have a deep abiding peace, despite the new curveballs the day brought. She had another (third) surgery today, and I hope and pray this will be the last and she can now rest and recover. She’s been in the hospital since Oct. 6. She’s had an intestinal surgery, a cardiac event, sepsis, a vascular surgery for lack of blood flow in her arm, an ulcer in her duodenum, dangerously low blood pressure, and today a third surgery to repair perforations that occurred at the point of the original surgery. Amidst all this she is a marvel of positivity, resilience, and kindness. 

And as I said last night, thank you to all who care for those who need healing. I am so so so so grateful. 

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The Humming

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on October 15, 2023| 26 Comments »

And there in the ICU, amidst the tubes
and rubber gloves, amongst the pillows
and the scent of disinfectant,
we build a house of song,
a house with rafters of “Moon River”
and a foundation of “Amazing Grace.”
There are lintels of “Wild Mountain Thyme”
and a hearth of “The Water is Wide,”
For an hour, we live inside the tunes
as they surround us, familiar rooms
where laughter is welcome,
where sleep might come,
where we live not outside of time,
but inside its melodic chambers,
not escaping the fear and the pain,
but companioning it with so much love,
so much beauty that somehow,
even in the halls of distress,
we nestle deeper in and feel safe.

*

Hi friends–oh my sweet mama is having a tough time–multiple surgeries, so many side swipes. It’s been a crazy time. At this moment, she seems to be stabilizing. Tonight I am so grateful for everyone who works in the medical professions–from those who leave home in the middle of the night to do emergency surgeries to those who keep the hospital floors clean–thank you to all who help those who need healing. 

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New Prayer

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on October 14, 2023| 17 Comments »


I cannot hear it, the beep of the IV
or the tick of nurse’s pen on the chart
or the wheels of the gurney as they roll
into the operating room, can’t hear
the voice of the doctor or the anesthesiologist,
can’t hear the soft tide of her breath
as she drifts into blackness nor the dry
mumbling from her lips as she comes to.
So I listen to this room and the silence
that holds it, listen to the only words
that rise up in me.
I love you. I love you. I love you.  
I whisper it into the silence
as if a thousand miles away she could hear them.
And then it is only silence.
It wraps its sound around me
soft as a mother’s embrace,
gentle and strong as wings that fold me in
until silence itself becomes prayer.  

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December 17, 2022

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on December 18, 2022| 9 Comments »




Mom makes the chocolates
while I chop nuts and make dough—
we listen to carols and sing along
as we have since before I remember.
The kitchen smells of mint and sugar
and I try to press the memory
between the pages of the day.
Perhaps it is a blessing
to know how fragile it is, this life.
I let myself fall all the way into the moment,
the sun long gone, but the house
still pulsing with love, still warm.

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When Mom Suggests I Could Rest My Head in Her Lap

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on December 14, 2022| 8 Comments »




I resist. There is so much to do,
but soon my eyes are closed
and Mom is pulling her fingers
through my hair the way I love
and I am ten again, or four,
or twenty-five, or two,
lying on the plaid couch
in our old house
with my head in Mom’s lap,
her fingers in my hair.
I wake up drenched in forever,
this timeless stream
I sometimes can see for what it is—
like a fish that leaps for a fly
and sees, oh! an infinite world
beyond the world it knows.
Is it any wonder, this water
clinging to my cheek
as I rise from the couch
and swim back into the night.  

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Sunday Night with Mom

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on March 7, 2022| 6 Comments »



Sitting on folding chairs
in the dark, we talk
in hushed tones
as night birds swoop
and call across the lake.
The evening air is warm
and though I can’t see
the pale purple flowers
on the rosemary bushes,
I know they are there—
it’s the kind of night
I will someday miss most,
the kind when we speak
of plans and weather
and what’s for lunch tomorrow,
the kind of night
when we know full well
how else a night might go,
but for this night we
sit with the stars
and the sound of the train
and we snuggle deeper in.

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