One day, I will walk into the quiet,
calm of the empty home. No TV.
No pinging of phones.
No one asking what there is to eat.
No one wondering if I can drive them.
No one telling me their dreams.
I will hear only the sound
of rain, of thunder,
of the wind rattling the inner doors.
Perhaps I will hear my own pounding heart,
the heart I thought belonged to me.
But there, in the dim light of the storm,
I might at last know for certain
the heart is made for giving away.
There are many ways to love.
Some of them are clearest
when I am most alone.
Posts Tagged ‘parenting’
On a Quiet Day, I See the Future
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged love, parenting, silence on June 29, 2021| 4 Comments »
Recalibrating
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged mother, parenting, pillow on June 13, 2021| 2 Comments »
I would like to go inside your pillow, hear
your breath and know you are okay, catch
the tears you cry when no one else is looking.
Today, you told me you don’t want to be held,
but I still want to hold you—want to meet you
with gentleness, support. How many years
have I been the one to comfort you, the one
you would run to, the one who could make
things feel better with a kiss and a shhh
and slow rocking of our bodies.
A pillow wouldn’t take it personally
if you didn’t use it. A pillow wouldn’t wonder
what it did wrong or wrestle with letting you go.
I try to invite that softness into myself,
try to transform my woundedness into feathery
acceptance. There is some unlikely magic in this—
a downy inner quiet that doesn’t try to fix anything,
that is content with being soft. And nothing changes,
and everything changes, oh terrible surrender,
oh beautiful tenderness that appears inside this loss.
In the Heart
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged parenting, rain, thunder, weather on June 3, 2021| 2 Comments »
your
words
a clap
of
thunder
lightning
striking
close
and
me
without
an
umbrella
down
these
cheeks
it
must
be
the
rain
Love, Like Mint
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged garden, love, mint, mother, parenting on May 10, 2021| Leave a Comment »
Of course I knew the mint
would take over the pansy garden—
I planted it anyway.
Now the garden is overrun
with thick ropes of roots
and there’s mint in everything—
the garden, the lawn,
my hands. Even if I tried
to pull it all out, it would return
with its cool, bright scent of resilience.
It is, perhaps, similar to the way
a mother thinks she knows
just how deep the roots of love
will go. But I, I had no idea
how, despite drought, despite
poor soil, love’s runners
would spread through every
inch of my life, untameable,
and just when I might think it gone,
new sprouts erupt
fragrant and green,
sweet and fresh,
everywhere, everywhere.
Motherhood
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged beaver, home, mothering, parenting, resilience on April 30, 2021| 1 Comment »
—with thanks to the wise Rebecca Mullen
Today, again, I praise the beaver
who spends her life building,
rebuilding, rebuilding
her lodge where her young will live.
With small sticks and big sticks
and tall solid trunks,
with logs and rocks and mud,
with her teeth she builds a home,
builds it on moving water.
Because rain, because snow,
because warm, because cold,
because flow, because flow, because flow,
her home is forever in need of repair.
And so on a day when a surprise storm
has flooded the stream
and washed much of my lodge away,
I honor the beaver,
stalwart, resilient, habitual.
I notice the longing to move to land,
then I gather new sticks of courage.
Stones of forgiveness.
Logs of compassion
and the deep sticky mud of love.
I wade to the middle
of the current.
I, like all the other mothers,
I build this home again.
The Day My Son Told Me He Hates Where We Live
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged parenting, place, son, tension on March 26, 2021| 5 Comments »
I try not to take it personally.
The country is not for everyone—
lazy stream and open field
and airy glades of cottonwood.
I walk out in the dead grass
and realize how much I love
the dead grass. How much
I love the red stained willows,
bright squawk of jay and scent of mud
and lack of pavement, lack of horns,
lack of benches and stores and street lamps.
I prefer the bustle of birds at the feeder
to any human throng.
It isn’t wrong for him to love something else,
the heart loves what it loves,
though I long to defend the smooth flat stones,
the hawk that even now circles the field,
the mice making arteries through snow.
I wish he were happy here, says the heart,
unable to reconcile the rift.
Across the river, snow sifts in thin white wisps,
escapes through dark red cliffs.
Strange Balance
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged balance, joy, parenting, scale on March 3, 2021| 12 Comments »
When the boy is sneering
or the glass is breaking
or the woman is weeping
or the streets are crowded
with anger and rage,
it is hard to believe
a small joy
has any real value,
hard to believe
a single red gerber daisy
or a cup of grapefruit-scented tea
might have any relevance,
could bear any weight on the scale
that measures what it is to be alive,
but last night, while I was steeping
in worry, aching with injustice,
my daughter created a stage
between the threadbare couches
and hummed herself a soundtrack
as she leapt and spun
and shuffled and flapped,
and oh, how her brief flare of joy
changed the flavor of the night,
an improbable balance,
the way even the smallest amount of sugar
transforms the bitter sauce,
the way just one note
resolves a minor chord,
the way the barest hint of rain
makes the whole desert
erupt into bloom.
Dessert
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged chocolate, cooking, daughter, dessert, love, parenting on February 14, 2021| 1 Comment »
Tonight it is cocoa powder, flour, sugar and vanilla that bring me and my daughter together. The kitchen our mixing bowl, time our whisk. The more we’re together the more we laugh. How easily distinct ingredients become a whole. Easy as following a recipe for chocolate cake, we slip into the familiar banter, the joyful two-step, the sweetness we’ve been distilling since she could first hold her own spoon. In the air, hum of the oven preheating, sound of us teasing, clang of the whisk against the glass bowl. The cake, it’s basically a delicious artifact, a testament to this scent of intimacy, like chocolate cake, only much, much richer. |
Evolution
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged daughter, driving, evolution, mother, parenting on January 31, 2021| 6 Comments »
We drove seven hours,
and half the time it snowed
so I kept my eyes fixed
to the slushy road, but
there was the moment
when I looked at my girl
in the passenger seat
and fell in love in an instant
and stroked her hair
and she, catching my gaze,
offered me her open hand—
for this the first tetrapods evolved
in shallow and swampy freshwater,
for this the ichthyostega formed
arms and finger bones,
and for this, though it took
thirty-million years
of primate and homo sapien change,
for this we learned how to smile.
Driving with My Son the Night Before His Driver’s Test
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged driving, parenting, politics, togetherness, unity on September 29, 2020| 6 Comments »
We turn off the music. Practice left turns
onto the highway. Park on the bias.
Park on the street. We get gas.
Drive backwards. Use the median.
Change lanes. Use the blinker.
Slow down. Full stop.
There’s a rule for everything
and a comfort in knowing the rules.
“And you can practice everywhere,”
notes our DMV guidelines, “so have at it!”
Imagine if we all practiced everywhere.
If we all signaled before every turn—
turn of heart, turn of mind, turn of plans.
Imagine if we all agreed, no matter where
we’re going and no matter where we’ve been,
that we are all travelers on the same side,
knowing we’re on this road together.
Imagine if we agreed to stop in an orderly way—
no drama, no shaming, no blame,
so that someone else might take their turn to go.
Imagine, getting along with others,
no matter what they believe,
could be as simple as keeping it steady,
looking over your shoulder,
making eye contact in a crossing,
giving each other some space.
Meeting Myself the Day My First Child Was Born
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged birth, meeting the self, motherhood, parenting on September 10, 2020| 9 Comments »
I meet her at the Peace Garden gathering
where she’s singing and dancing for peace.
It’s September 11, and her belly is round
and moon-ish. She has no wrinkles yet,
no flashes of gray in her hair.
She is so sincere as she recites poems,
as if with right words and right songs
and right moves she could help
create a peaceful world that her baby will enter.
She’s a month away from her due date
and I don’t tell her those cramps she’s feeling
are contractions. I don’t tell her
he’ll cry for a year. I don’t tell her
about how they’ll laugh too loud together
how they’ll both thrive in the small night hours,
how sixteen years later she’ll marvel
at how love rules her life
in the fiercest and most tender ways,
how the boy will have grown to six foot four,
how he will teach her about fast cars and graphic cards
and forgiveness and humility and apps.
Sixteen years later, she will be less herself
and more something larger, more
driven by love than ever, though it
is nothing she could have imagined.
No, I just say, Nice to meet you. You look familiar,
like a woman I used to know well.
And she smiles in a dreamy far off way.
She thinks she knows what will happen.
Yes, I remember that well.
Still Swimming
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Corona Virus, death, hair, mom, parenting, river, son on May 4, 2020| 2 Comments »
And so I pull the purple comb
through my son’s thick hair,
the same way I’ve seen
the stylists do at Great Clips.
Wet the hair. Comb it through.
Part it. Hold it between
two fingers. Cut vertically. Snip,
and his hair falls to the floor.
Comb it through. Snip. Snip.
We both know that I
have no clue what I’m doing.
So we laugh as the hair
piles up on the floor.
We chatter, the way
a stylist and customer would,
talking of school and his friends
and his unruly cowlicks. Snip.
I remember that time
I was trapped underwater
by the river’s hydraulics,
how I stared up at the light
shining through the surface
and thought, I don’t think
it’s my time yet to die.
And the river spit me out
and I swam hard as I could
through the rapid toward shore.
I don’t think it’s my time yet
to die. Nor my son’s. Though
all around us the news of dying—
the numbers increasing every day,
stories of beloveds who are gone.
We ask ourselves, how do we
go on? And meanwhile, we do.
We go on. And because my son’s hair
is too long for his taste,
I learn how to cut it by cutting it.
How much more will we learn
as this goes on? How to share?
How to grieve? How to let go? How to live?
And meanwhile, life spits us out
into sunlight, and we come up
spluttering, gasping, surprised
we’re alive, and we swim, what a gift
to find we’re still swimming.
Making Apple Turnovers with my Daughter
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged cooking, directions, life, parenting, time on April 30, 2020| 4 Comments »
My own fault for not reading all the directions
on how to make puff pastry from scratch—
how after the shaggy dough phase, you shape
and then chill. And then roll and fold and roll
and shape the dough. And chill. And then roll
and fold and roll and fold. And chill. Then roll
and slice. And chill. And fill. And chill. So often,
mid project, I find myself thinking I would never
have started this project had I known
how long it would take. Flour on my pants,
on the floor, on the table.
Six hours later, nearly midnight, my daughter
and I baste the chilled triangles with water,
sprinkle them with cinnamon and sugar,
then put them in the oven at last. We are tired,
but the house fills with the sweet scent
of baking apple, the home-rich scent of crust.
What is life, but a big project we are in the middle of?
A project I’m in no hurry to finish.
In fact, these days are like puff pastry dough,
guiding me to take it slow, slower, to rest
between steps. I haven’t read all the directions.
For now I am laughing. It’s so much more
than I thought I was in for. But I’m here,
hands ready. I’m willing to work, to clean up the mess.
- photo by Finn Trommer
The Inner Cupboard
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged bread, grace, love, parenting on April 22, 2020| 6 Comments »
No one else knows, as they eat the bread,
what’s been slipped into it,
how in with the flour, the yeast, the salt,
a stubborn devotion has slipped in.
It hides in an inner cupboard. Even the baker
doesn’t have the key. But when
she would rather not be loving—
because she is tired, because
she feels wronged, because she’s distracted—
that’s when the cupboard opens itself
and mixes into her the kind of devotion
that cannot be manufactured, the kind
of devotion that rises up not out of duty
but from some mysterious, infinite source
that guides her hands as they knead
the soft dough. It infuses her with a longing
to be big-hearted, a longing to love, even when love
feels unreasonable. She can smell it
as it fills the whole house with its generous
scent. Even now, as they sit and eat the bread,
it astonishes her, how ferocious
this drive to nourish, to love.
They pass the butter, the jam. She smiles
as they eat it together, slice after slice.
What I Can Do
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged children, Corona Virus, parenting, saying yes to the world as it is on March 24, 2020| 3 Comments »
for my children, for all children
I want to give you the kind of day we didn’t have today—
a day when the wide blue sky makes you rush outside,
when we go to the park and meet your friends
and you run to greet them—you hug and play chase
and tag and tackle and whisper in each other’s ears.
I want to give you a day warmed through by laughter,
with crisp green leaves already on the trees.
And on our way home we could stop for ice cream
and joke with the women at the counter
about how there’s not much news to share.
A day when you can’t imagine being afraid. When
you fall asleep not wondering when someone we know
will die. Instead, the world gives us this day—
this day with its fears and its warnings—and
I give you what I can: A scarf to play dress up in.
A homemade pumpkin pie. Dance party in the kitchen.
Three tired and perfect words. Open arms.
A reminder the sleet will make the grass green.
Secrets I will keep for now to myself. The slow tide
of my breath beside you as you fall asleep.
Tucking in my Daughter in the Time of Corona Virus
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Corona Virus, daughter, mom, parenting, story, wisdom on March 13, 2020| 6 Comments »
And because she is wise
in the ways the young are,
my daughter, frightened and weeping,
asked between sobs
for a happy story.
There are times when a story
is the best remedy—
not because it takes us away
from the truth but because
it leads us closer in.
I told her the story of her birth,
and we laughed until
it was my turn to cry as I realized
no matter how scary the world,
what a miracle, the birth of a child.
Then, as fear made a sneaky return,
we whispered a list of things we
were grateful for, falling asleep with these
words on our breaths: cats, books, rivers,
home, family, soft blankets, music.
This Being a Parent
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged motherhood, parenting, taken for granted on January 25, 2020| 10 Comments »
(with thanks to Rebecca Mullen)
The way the tangerine never thinks
to thank its peel, the way the button
doesn’t appreciate the thread
that tethers it, the way the water
doesn’t honor the shore
for encompassing it, this is the way I want
you to take me for granted. As if
I will always be here to hold you. As if
you are so safe you forget
that things change. As if you are so sure
of my love that it’s as assumed
as air, as unremarkable as birdsong
in summer, as given as the gravity
that keeps you from floating away,
as constant as the sound of the river
that you need to leave before
you remember to hear it again.
One Sideways Conversation
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged conversation, parenting, poem, poetry on December 24, 2019| Leave a Comment »
I’m Thinking of an Ornament
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Christmas, mom, mother, parenting, poem, poetry, questions on December 16, 2019| 2 Comments »
The rules are simple. One person chooses
an ornament on the tree. The others ask
yes/no questions until they guess it correctly.
It was my mother who taught me.
I taught my own children. It’s a ritual
as important as the tree itself. Is it red?
Is it round? Is it cloth? Handmade?
So many questions we never can answer.
So many questions elude yes or no. But here,
in the soft glow of Christmas tree lights,
we share moments when every question
leads us closer to a treasure, where
the moments are treasures themselves.
When the Impulse Is to Grieve
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged autumn, cinquefoil, flower, grief, parenting, poem, poetry on November 9, 2019| 2 Comments »
Now dried and brown
the cinquefoil where once
bees danced in gold flowers—
recalibrating the heart
to find in brittle clusters
another invitation to dance.