Sometimes I expect to see him walking by the river,
to see his tall, thin body move through the willows,
camera in hand. I don’t see him, of course, but I do,
I see him as a young man in a blue button-up shirt,
his hair cut short, his movements doe-like as he
picks his way through the rocks. And sometimes
I see him a young boy, still blonde, still shrieking
with joy at the splash he can make with a big river rock.
And sometimes I see him as the willows themselves,
as if he’s come back in everything—the willows,
the river, the stones, the trees, this woman
who is standing at the window, looking.
Posts Tagged ‘mother’
Out of the Corner of My Eye
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged absence, grief, mother, presence, river, son on May 8, 2025| 10 Comments »
In Second Grade
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged childhood, commerce, money, mother, music, work on March 30, 2025| 2 Comments »
I wanted that plastic recorder.
Wanted it so much that when mom
suggested I could earn that two dollars
by defrosting the freezer, I sat
on the black-and-white tiled kitchen floor
with a blow drier on high. For hours.
Sat there watching each drip.
Sat there longer, perhaps,
than the cumulative time I played
my recorder, but I tell you,
I cherished that brown plastic tube.
Every “Hot Cross Buns” I played
was an anthem to self-determination.
Almost fifty years later I don’t remember
what I read yesterday, but I remember
one a penny, two a penny.
I remember the drip, drip, drip of the frost.
I remember my mom saying,
No, not yet. Keep going.
I remember my lips on the mouthpiece,
the flesh of my fingertips
pressed on the holes,
the shrill music filling the kitchen.
And It Is
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged ballet, dance, daughter, moment, mother on March 23, 2025| 10 Comments »
When you were small
I watched you dance
on the sidewalk, your arms
raised high as if inviting
the world to meet you,
rain and sun and all.
I watched you dance
in the living room draped
in hand-me-down dresses
and colorful scarves,
watched you dance
in small windowless rooms.
Now you dance on the big stage,
floating in on pointe shoes,
your hair in a perfect bun
you pin up by yourself.
I wonder if every other mother
sitting in the dark also forgets
every second of her life save this one,
this second when you raise
your arm with such grace,
this second when your effortless smile
sweeps across the crowd,
this second when you are so shiningly
yourself, a radiant being dancing
for the love of it, as if this is
the only moment that matters.
Letter to My Son, Over Three Years Since He’s Gone
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged daughter, grief, love, memory, mother, siblings, son on March 5, 2025| 9 Comments »
You would be jealous, I think,
of how your sister is learning trig,
speaking Spanish, playing bridge.
You’d probably tease her, but really,
what you’d be thinking is, She is so cool.
And she is, sweetheart. She’s fun
and silly. Like you. Only like her.
We talk about you, of course.
Just this weekend, we remembered
how once you said if a 99-pound person
ate a one-pound burger, they
would be one percent burger.
I wonder what percent of your sister
is grief? And what percentage love?
Tonight a girl asked her if she had any siblings.
She said, yes, a brother. When the girl
asked her how old you were, she told her
the truth. That you were seventeen
when you died. What a terrible gift
to learn how to say the hardest things straight.
I can’t help but think if you are watching her,
you, too, must be in awe of who she’s becoming.
Oh, how we learn to grow from whatever soil
we’ve been given. I do not pretend to know
how this works. I only know she
is learning to transform ache into beauty,
nightmare into dream. I only know
I long for her to know love from you
the way a garden feels loved by sun, by rain.
Somehow Inside This Day
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged daughter, forever, mother, now, puzzle, time on February 16, 2025| 4 Comments »
Every day has something in it whose name is Forever.
—Mary Oliver, “Everything that was Broken”
The snow falls forever
into deepening drifts
and forever the mother
and daughter are fitting in
pieces of a puzzle that is
forever unfinished
and the cat purrs forever
in the lap of the girl
who is laughing forever
about the smallest
of things and the song
on the radio lasts forever
and the mother harmonizes
though forever she forgets
the words, and her tea
is forever not quite warm
in this sweet buried day
that she prays will last
forever though she knows
the other name for forever
is now, and now the snow
has stopped falling
and now the cat is asleep,
but how is it that
as the mother goes
to brush her teeth those
strands of forever have
stitched themselves into
her being and she carries
them into her dreams
with infinite other threads of forever,
even as forever carries her.
Tale of Two Moments
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged daughter, death, love, memory, mortality, mother, parenting on January 24, 2025| 2 Comments »
Holding my girl
on the couch,
came a moment
so tender because
I remembered
I will die—
what grace when,
minutes later,
lost in the bliss
of her warmth,
came a moment
so tender because
I forgot.
Celebrating Timothée Chalamet’s Birthday … Again
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged baking, cake, daughter, joy, mother, Timothee Chalamet on December 28, 2024| 1 Comment »
Keep some room in your heart for the unimaginable.
—Mary Oliver
I could not have imagined
how every year my daughter
and I would bake a chocolate beet cake
for Timothée Chalamet’s birthday—
nor could I have foreseen
how it would thrill me—
this sweet ritual in which we celebrate
the life of an actor who brings
us joy. Joy needs such a meager
door through which to enter and reveal
itself. A door I can’t imagine
with a handle I can’t find
except by loving the world
and the people in it.
I would have thought loving
made the heart more full.
And it does. But it makes
the heart more spacious, too,
a place where anything could happen,
even what is real: a daughter,
a mother, and hours in the kitchen
singing and stirring, the scent
of chocolate, earthy and nutty,
floating in the air like a song.
Kinetic Joy
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged billiards, daughter, joy, mother, physics, science on December 21, 2024| 5 Comments »
for my daughter
It’s perhaps like billiards,
in which the cue ball collides
with another ball, and the kinetic
energy passes on to a second ball—
that’s how it is when you,
in your joy, collide with me in a hug,
and your joy passes on to me,
my every molecule vibrating
as your bliss becomes my bliss,
your joy becomes my joy, until
I’m dizzy with it, spinning with it,
rolling around the room with it,
in fact it’s what I was made for,
to be moved by you, by your joy.
The Man Who Rings Me Up at Target
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged dream, hope, labor, mother, transformation, work on December 19, 2024| 4 Comments »
tells me he used to be mean.
Tells me used to not like
who he was. Tells me he dreamed
of his mother after she died
and she told him that though
she was no longer with him,
she still could teach him
how to be alive, which,
in practical terms, meant
how to be kind.
In the time it takes for me to buy
lint rollers and lip balm,
I am so moved by this woman
I will only meet through
a dream and a checkout lane
conversation that I walk out
into the night with a smile
on my face. This is the way
we share hope with each other,
one thin strand at a time.
By the time I get to the car,
I’m still smiling, wholly tethered to life
by a gift that appeared so slight
at first I didn’t even know
it was there.
Falling Asleep with My Head in My Mom’s Lap
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged age, daughter, mother, relaxation, trust on December 16, 2024| 11 Comments »
Mom slips her fingers through my hair;
my eyes close, and I am again
a sigh of a girl, a wisp made of trust,
and I don’t know where she goes,
the middle-aged version of me
who works, who carries, who forges on.
It’s not that I ask her to leave,
she just disappears as I curl deeper
into the den of dreams, my body limp
as a kitten picked up by the scruff.
Maybe I purr. I nuzzle in deeper.
I forget to remember there is anything
else to do. It’s a lifetime before I wake.