Welcome back to the tightness in the chest, the almost-frantic voice demanding, Hurry, from between clenched teeth. Hurry means wrong again, means miscalculations in the intricate morning mix, ingredients that must be layered in particular order, precisely measured, a cake that never rises, a dance the whole household knows and nobody greets with joy. Hurry means measured wrong again, one shower too long, or shampoo in somebody’s eye, lunch boxes left on yesterday’s bus or we’re out of bread. Again. No one can find a pen for the permission slips that appeared in the night and so they pile up, years of field trips, from zoos to Shakespeare festivals, signed in crayon or eyeliner or not at all. But there are shoes on every single foot and each delivered to its proper place to spend the day. By the time you reach the office, someone should be there to greet you with a medal, a fanfare, at the very least a gold star and a mug of coffee, crowds applauding all you’ve achieved before 8 a.m., followed by space inside a quiet room with a soft chair where time stops sprinting towards the finish line. This room is yours for as long as you need to breathe, to settle your racing heart, a room where absolutely nobody ever says You’re Late.
Again.
Category Archives: Family
Late, Again
My Work In This World
My work in this world
wanders its cities in two bodies,
his, hers, once mine.
Bodies given, year by year,
all I knew of patience,
kindness, how a sense
of humor eases the rough patches.
But also captive witnesses to all
I knew of frustration, grief, anger.
Everything I had to offer
carried like a package inside their
own true selves.
And they go traveling
Half-formed and half-dressed
never bothering with a warm coat
determined not to shiver
and admit their mother was right.
They set off into this world that
will please and praise and batter them.
I chase them down the street,
waving mittens and advice, calling out,
Wait, there’s one more thing I forgot to tell you.
Flat Tire
Conjuring combinations with my capable son,
who took a deep breath and set to work
as we compared owner’s manual
and all the tools we had, we taught ourselves
how they fit together.
Coatless, he worked, with breaks for heat
and the loaf of olive bread in the grocery bag.
Now, hours later, warm and dry and home
my mind stops for breath in
its endless effort to sort things into bins
Luck or Fate, Blessing or Chance.
Whichever punctured our tire, held off the rain,
sent strangers and the summoned
friend of a friend with a better wrench,
What I hold to now is the way everything happens
and then wraps itself with meaning: My son in the world
calm and hungry, knowing what he lacks
and ready to smile and open his hands
to welcome what he needs. I even know exactly
what he would say reading this, rolling his eyes:
Mom, a wrench is just a wrench.
Spring Crop
I come to compliment you on
loading the dishwasher without being asked,
proud of my continued efforts in the field of
Positive Reinforcement,
only to wind up yelling at you
for putting your muddy boots on the couch.
But why take them off, you ask, mystified–
when I’m leaving any minute now?
These are the conversations
that will
soon
walk out the door with you
and I’ll wait,
a hopeful, nervous gardener
to see how what I planted mingles with
what grows wild in this soil.
Watered with praise and benign neglect
and exasperation, I wait to see if
the spring crop sprouts into kindness
or tolerance, skill at negotiation
or laziness
or just mud on all your furniture.
The Recently Learned Difference Between Haiku and Senryu
Senryu: According to Merriam-Webster, “a 3-line unrhymed Japanese poem structurally similar to haiku but treating human nature usually in an ironic or satiric vein.”
Haiku
Goodbye to brown hills,
trees who scrubbed the spring blue sky
bristled like hedgehogs.
**********************************
Senryu
There are things I’ll miss:
Burping contests at dinner
isn’t one of them.
Senryu For Moms Too Tired To Count
City street at dusk
Eyes closed, she holds her sleeping
daughter in her arms.
Through the rain, I pray,
mother to mother, to ease
the long, cranky night ahead.
Talkable
You won’t be good at living alone,
my son tells me, because
you are too talkable,
his word combining
talkative and sociable.
And I am.
Talkable
describes me, plunging
into any conversation,
dipping my toes, paddling around,
always these same waters.
Now scared but almost ready
for the hidden pool
behind the waterfall
where the surface is still
and I am able
but do not talk.
Casting Spells
In that moment I glanced away, some witch cast a spell on my children. I remember one golden flash of light. I blinked against the dazzle while they grew tall and secretive, lean with a hunger to be Away. Now there are whole days when they are strangers, sweet or surly, prowling this world we shared, looking for a way out.
What else can I do but study every spell I find? With luck and diligence, and so much time now that I’ve worked myself out of this job, each day is patched together with spells I cast myself. They are listed in the book we all received, along with Dr. Spock in his serious dark cover. The other book at every baby shower is Spells For Moms, with teething, tantrums, and chicken pox full of notes in the margin, recipes adjusted to taste. But now I’ve reached the back of the book, with all its untested spells. One marked Acceptance, another called New Chapters Blossom Like Wild Violets. And the last spell, the one I practice every day, titled Good Fortune For Their Roads.
Kitchen Calendar
The green marker dries out
while I’m adding his varsity tennis matches
to spring vacation dates written in pink,
blue for music lessons,
purple for soccer league,red for band practice,
bright orange for prom,senior trip, graduation.
Here they are, the last few months
of color-coded life.
When this last child leaves for college,
the decades of multicolor
kitchen calendars will be over. His and hers,
games and concerts, practices, lessons,
rehearsals, field trips,Done.
I try to remember life with a one-color calendar,
and something shifts in me—-
like the way your mind turns
when you try to read about
Parallel Universes and realize these
scientists are serious, are truly asking
you to consider this possibility.
And I can’t say for sure what this feeling is–
Only that it is huge, like another universe
waiting behind the one I’ve walked in all these years.
The Study of Humor
Remember when you were little
and made up jokes?
Knock-knock.
Who’s there?
Potatoes.
Potatoes who?
Potatoes for dinner.
Is that funny?, you’d ask.
If I admitted, no, it wasn’t all that funny,
you’d ask, astonished and aggrieved, Why not?
Tuning yourself
like a dial,
learning to hear
what is worth laughing about,
stubbornly convinced
that you already knew what
was funny: Everything.
Absolutely everything.
Puff Of Smoke Poems 