My daughter dangles
her legs over mine.
I rest my head on her
shoulder. Is it true
every film is an exploration
of how growth depends
on letting something go?
Or is it simply the glasses
I wear, lenses grubby
from tears, that make it
seem this way? All I know
is it’s easier to practice
letting go when
we’re curled in together,
her hand pressed into mine,
tears sliding down
both of our cheeks,
scent of popcorn
thick in the air,
and all around us
others sniffling, too,
the light blue against
our upturned faces.
Posts Tagged ‘mother’
In the Dark of the Cinema
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged audience, cinema, daughter, film, letting go, mother, movie, snuggling on September 1, 2025| Leave a Comment »
Dressing for the Wedding
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged arms, body image, dress, mother, strength on July 29, 2025| 21 Comments »
She doesn’t want to wear short sleeves, she says,
because they will show her “old woman arms.”
Sometimes worry is just another word
for wanting to be loved just as we are.
I want to remind her how her arms
have been cradles and rocking chairs.
They’ve been cranes that lifted children
and grandchildren high. Her arms
have been levers and ladders and lifeboats.
They’ve been flagpoles and bridge makers
and chapels. Her arms kneaded the dough of my life
and still hold me when I am tired, broken,
scared, depressed. I hope she wears a sleeveless
dress for no other reason than to show
the whole world how her arms are still
in service to love, and damn, how they can flex.
What Can’t Be Lost
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged daughter, gift, lost, mother, spoon on July 22, 2025| 4 Comments »
Again I search the drawer
for my small silver spoon
with the Space Needle
on the handle, the one
my mother bought me
when I was not yet two
and we lived in Seattle.
How I loved that spoon,
bringing it with me everywhere
I’ve moved—to college, grad school,
to the top of a mountain,
to a low river valley. I love
the shape of it, sure,
the way the bowl of the spoon
is pointed and shallow,
perfect for small bites
of vanilla ice cream.
Mostly, what I love
is thinking of how my mother,
who had so little then,
wanted to buy her daughter
a treasure. It’s been years
since the last time I touched it.
It’s disappeared many times,
my own young children as enamored
with the spoon as I, and so
I have found the spoon behind the couch
or beneath their beds or left outside
on the arm of a lawn chair,
sometimes even back in its slot
in the drawer.
So for years, I’ve assumed
the spoon will return.
To this day, I don’t think of it as lost.
How could I, when every time
I eat yogurt or ice cream or oatmeal,
I look in the drawer for the spoon,
which is to say every day I touch the spoon
with my mind, every day I remember
the way a mother bought her daughter
a treasure, I think of the love, and every day,
even when it’s not here, it’s so here.
Just Before We Say Goodbye
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged hiking, letting go, mother, presence, time on July 22, 2025| Leave a Comment »
The song we’ve been singing
is gone from the air.
We walk in satisfied silence now.
And it’s beautiful,
the trail lined with sego lilies
and purple fireweed.
This morning’s raindrops
cling to leaves.
How easy it is in this moment
to believe in forever,
the wild roses
endlessly blooming,
the sound of your footsteps
keeping time in front of mine.
When I’m Feeling Serious
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged daughter, joy, laughter, mother, wildflower on July 18, 2025| 4 Comments »
Curled up beside me,
my girl studies the laugh
of a man she admires
and the more he guffaws
the more she guffaws,
which of course,
makes me laugh, too,
and soon the evening
is a riotous bouquet
of giggles. I gather
the sound in me like a field
of wildflowers, a pleasure
that reseeds itself,
lovely as lupine, common
as blue flax that thrives
along even the busiest road.
When I say, I miss you
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged daughter, missing, mother, parenting on June 24, 2025| 2 Comments »
I mean there’s a silence
here where your voice should be,
an emptiness beside me
where your warmth is not.
I mean your cereal bowl
is not in the sink.
No scent of lavender candles
burning in your room.
I might say, I miss you,
but it’s code
for I miss who I am
when you are here.
Miss giggling until we fall
on the floor. Miss
the way my fingers
pull through your hair.
Miss holding your feet
while you sit in a chair—
that strange thing
that only we do.
I say, I miss you,
but I mean I miss
you humming the Eagles
while making chia seed pudding.
I miss the here of your hand
in my hand. I miss the here
of your feet on the floor,
I miss the here of your eyes.
The here of your sneeze.
The here, right here, of your sigh.
It Makes Me Want to Look Again, Again
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged daughter, emergence, growing up, mother on June 7, 2025| 2 Comments »
It’s like living with the same painting
for years and then one day seeing in it
something I’ve never seen before,
that’s what it’s like tonight when we’re walking
along the river and I see my girl as someone new
emerging from the daughter I have known
her whole life. It is, perhaps, because the slant
of light is just right for such seeing—
the source of the shine coming not from the sun,
but directly from her, from within.
For Now
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged contentment, daughter, happily ever after, happiness, love, mother, movie, music, story on June 5, 2025| Leave a Comment »
Driving home from the movie,
our blood still charged with adrenaline,
my daughter and I move through
the dark just under the speed limit,
our eyes trained on the red taillights
in front of us, and we talk about plot holes
and how we would change the ending.
Neither of us would have chosen happily
ever after, which somehow felt false
to the greater story. It’s not long before
we’re singing along to her favorite song.
I harmonize on the chorus, and
a “Peaceful Easy Feeling” grows in me
as we drive through pouring rain.
I may not believe in happily ever after,
but I do believe in content for now,
as in this moment when she reaches
for my hand and I slide mine into hers.
I can’t see her face in the dark, but
in her voice, I can hear it, her smile.
While Staring at My Flag on Memorial Day
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged flag, memorial day, mother on May 26, 2025| Leave a Comment »
I think of those who died fighting
for our country, and how
when a child dies, a part
of a mother dies, too.
Tonight, as the low sun streams
through the red and white stripes,
mothers of soldiers, I honor you.
Right Now, Mid-Story
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged bookmark, college, daughter, mother, story on May 22, 2025| 2 Comments »
I am placing a bookmark on this page
in which my daughter and I drive
highways and turnpikes and green
curving backroads, singing
our way past tree farms and smoke
stacks, past sheep and cornfields,
grand estates and collapsed barn roofs,
this page on which, in every moment,
we are driving right up to the blank
edge where the story is still seeking
its setting and the narrator is still
seeking her voice and the page is
still seeking the fingers that will turn
it and those fingers are still so soft
as, with total trust, they hold my hand.