Tag: life

Letters To My Mother

Her Story About Voting and Hope

My mom

Dear Mom,

I want to preserve your stories. The stories you told of how you grew up in the poverty of West Virginia during the Great Depression. I want your granddaughter to know them, to absorb the wisdom they contain.

Since it is near a pivotal mid-term election, I am reminded of your story about importance of voting. I heard you tell this story so many times I memorized your words, and so I will let your words tell the story—

“It was early November. Don’t remember the date or day. I was about nine years old when it happened. Back up in the mountains, in the hollers*, people would to cook food for a family where someone was ill or if the woman had just had a baby, and the kids, like around my age then, we’d deliver it.

It was my mother’s turn to make a food bundle for a neighbor family in the holler. The woman had just given birth a little while ago but was suffering with sickness after. So that afternoon, my mother sent me up there with a pot and a bundle of food for the family. I had no trouble going down the road to deliver the food. But it seemed such a long way. It was already twilight by the time I got there to deliver the food.

So, on the way back, I decided going through the woods would be quicker. But I’d never been through the woods. I ended up getting all turned around and couldn’t find my way back to the road. By that time, it was pitch dark. I was so scared. I heard something that sounded like a big animal, a bear or something, so I climbed up a tree where I thought it would be safe. It was damn cold that night too.

I was scared. I was cold. I knew my mother was going to be pissed off. Early in the morning, it must have been just as it was getting light, I heard all these people calling for me. I could hear my father above all of the others. I shimmied down that tree so happy to be found. I yelled out. My father was the first to reach me. He scooped me up. My mother, she was lightening mad. She was rambling on about teaching me a lesson about not running off like that. She took out her little knife she always had in her apron pocket and cut a switch off a tree. She grabbed me from my father and said I needed a good whippin’. Now, my father, he usually let my mother do the disciplinin’ of us kids because he was always working in the mines or traveling to find work in other mines or farms. But not that day. He swept me up and grabbed my mother’s wrist as she started to drawback, and he said, ‘Renie, ain’t nobody gonna whip any of my kids today! Nobody! Even you, their Mama. Franklin Delano Roosevelt was elected our president yesterday, so today we’re gonna celebrate that because we got somethin’ to hope for.’ My mother dropped her switch and kept her head down as my father carried me home. The rest of the people took off to their homes.

And we did. We had hope. Took time but things started to get better little by little.”

Then we would watch the Watergate hearings and you would throw your house slipper at the 13-inch black and white television sitting on the kitchen buffet, ranting about how you couldn’t understand why people would vote for a crook like Nixon especially when Marylanders knew Agnew was a damn crook from the start and birds of a feather and all.

Your rant always ended with “that’s why you vote. Keep the crooks out. Get good people in who care about us. Not these guys who wanna line their pockets.” By then you may have knocked back a six pack, but there is no denying that you were right, Mom. You were absolutely right.

*holler- hollow, I know. But my mother and aunt always said holler so I use her words as this is her story.

Too Few Seeds

Image is my own
I hold
a handful of pomegranate seeds—
I think of you
 all I know and do not know--

A bushel of grapefruits
arrive at the front door.
The next day, a bushel of oranges 
followed by a bushel of pomegranates,
like tribute foretelling the arrival 
of some dignitary or prince.
Every summer, the bushels 
foreshadowed your visits--
The grapefruits and oranges
for my mother,
who loved all citrus,
a luxury she didn’t have
growing up in West Virginia.
The pomegranates for me--
You knew I loved them.
Why did the bushels and the visits stop
after the summer I turned six?

These seeds I hold,
ready to throw into today’s salad,
are too few—

I remember you—
showing me how to open a pomegranate;
teaching me to count in Greek;
moving a stepstool to the counter
so I could climb and see 
how to make Greek yogurt from scratch,
when you saw my nose wrinkle at the smell,
telling me, “You will like it because you Greek,”
your accent as thick and heavy as the clabbered milk 
in the yogurt glasses.

The last summer you came to visit—
A train ride to Florida 
to stay the whole summer
with you and Aunt Mae.  
I wanted the top bunk in the train car.		
You tucked me into the lower one saying,
“You fall here. No hurt. You fall from up there, you hurt,”
before hefting yourself into the top bunk. 
You said you’d teach me to swim.
“Everybody in Greece swim.  I teach you. You learn easy
because—” you paused, waiting-- 
for my six-year-old excitement to finish, “I’m Greek!”
You tousled my hair then loaded our things in the car.

Everything to be tried, to be learned, to be shown
required our liturgical call and response:
you would start, “You will like because—"
and I would finish, “I’m Greek.”

Teaching me to swim didn’t work out too well—
You told me to move my arms and legs fast,
then threw me into the ocean.
Each time I flailed and sank.
Each time you pulled me up,
“You okay. You learn.”
The third or fourth throw,
You pulled me up
And said, “Enough today.
But you learn because—”
And despite my fearful sobbing,
I finished, “I’m Greek,”
as I wrapped my arms around your neck.
We did not have time.
I never learned.

Sirens, red lights,
dark outside,
Aunt Mae crying.
The hospital cold, noisy.
Mae on the phone.
Mommy coming on the train.

You lived.
Came home.
Peeled me a pomegranate.

Mom and I left on the train.
The last time I saw you, Uncle Pete,
though you did not die until three months
after my high school graduation,
an obituary found on the internet tells me so.
But the bushels, the visits, the phone calls 
stopped the summer I turned six.
I never knew why.
I will never know now.


Fifty-nine years after that summer with you,
I stand holding a handful of pomegranate seeds,
shining their ruby glow.
Decades since last I split open a pomegranate.
Too easy to buy in plastic tubs now.
I need to finish this salad.

But I am stilled in the moment—
The truth I now know—
sleuthing through scraps of internet information
after a DNA test--
What neither of us may have known that one summer,
We were/ are father and daughter.

And these seeds I hold---
They are not enough.

Accidental (Anastasia Part I)

(I originally wrote this several years ago, and it was published in my book, “The Gift of Mercy.” I’m drafting a second part to this piece and decided to reblog this as a starter.)

I entered life, an accidental tourist.

My mother’s body served an eviction notice,

but I ignored it and burrowed deeper

into placental warmth.

My twin, however, weaker,

entered the world a clotted, bloody,

gelatinous mess on the white tile

of a bathroom floor.

The doctor told the man,

who wasn’t really my father

but thought himself to be,

there was still a heartbeat,

still a baby left.

I felt the absence of my twin,

the lack of another’s heart

beating a rhythm to match my own,

racing toward emergence, light, life, breath.

A ghost like memory I carried with me

always— even when I, who survived

by claiming squatter’s right

to my mother’s uterus

as it tried to evict me

and who had never been told

of my twin’s existence, would

turn in childhood play and talk

to my twin sister.

My mother asking to whom I talked

and I answering in innocence—my twin sister.

Now, I recognize my mother’s twisting face

of guilt as she turned from my childhood answer:

the long walk from the restaurant’s apartment

to the stores on Broadway to buy school

supplies; the washing down of the restaurant

walls over and over again; the bed rest the doctor

said she needed when she was spotting, her body

threatening to throw out the babies she carried, ignored—

my twin and I, the children of another man,

we had to go.

But I clung, held on—born

the accidental tourist in life,

observing for my twin,

the twin I still feel.

sixty-one years later,

still listening for a heartbeat

in the same rhythm as my own.

What Emily Said….

“Hope” is the thing with feathers -
That perches in the soul -
And sings the tune without the words -
And never stops - at all -
 
And sweetest - in the Gale - is heard -
And sore must be the storm -
That could abash the little Bird
That kept so many warm -
 
I’ve heard it in the chillest land -
And on the strangest Sea -
Yet - never - in Extremity,
It asked a crumb - of me.
		Emily Dickinson
Yep, that’s what Emily said.
I beg to differ.
If it perched in my soul,
The cat ate that damn canary
Before it finished its tune.
 
And let me tell you,
I never heard anything sweet
During a pissed off hurricane.
That dang bird knew!
Away it flew
While the winds whistled
 Away my roof.
 
I sure as heck didn’t hear
Some sweet little bird chirpin’
As I froze my ass off in the northeast.
And all I heard as I sweated buckets
Under a southern sun was some damn
Squawking big ass crow.
In fact, I think hope isn’t a bird at all.
 
It might be a well.  That might be more apt.
Yep, wells aren’t dug or drilled deep enough,
Sometimes.
And I would imagine
Much more can go wrong with a well,
Like a pump runnin’ dry.
Oh, hell!  A well can even be poisoned!
 
But this here well,
It’s so dang dry
There ain’t even any mud
At the bottom.
Looks like some cobwebs too.
Whatever it had,
It done dried right up.
 
So whatever hope is--
A bird, a well,
It isn’t always there.
It doesn’t stick around,
Unless you feed it
Before the feathers
Drift,
Before the water
Dries
Away.
 
 

Elemental Breath

 From the shaking dirge cries of birth
 To the desire for ease in the between, 
 Before the elemental breath rattles at death,
 We are lost in cacophonous sighs of daily life, 
 Choosing to turn away 
 From moments appearing as iridescent sun rays
 As if God's fingers reached 
 Between the clouds 
 To touch the earth.
 Yes, we turn away,
 Notice nothing,
 Pick up kids,
 Fix dinner,
 Do laundry,
 A trip to Wal-Mart,
 And to work,
 The mundane of every day,
 Yes, it must be done,
 To hurry toward the waiting,
 While living holding sand,
 Until expelling 
 the elemental breath before death. 
  

Rest

 

Black white color dreams
Waking in the in-between
Of the heat and chill
Stillness of a soul’s rest
Within the petals of the blessed
As on a windless sun hot day
A softness of grace finally felt

 

Trails

Set out years ago
Dropped breadcrumbs
Some no bigger than dust particles
Of the soul
Along the roads and paths
Thought I’d find my way back,
There’d be time
There’d be years
Be months
Weeks
Days
Seconds
Left before the sand
Absconded with the hourglass
To find the trail of dust and crumbs
Sweep and pour them
Back into the soul
Add a few ingredients
Create once more
From the beginning

 

But birds and squirrels
Feasted on the leavings
And I’ve no desire
To return to where I started.

 

 

History

history image

Spun out from the centrifuge
Twisted in helix meaning
Strands entwined, twisted back
Stretching toward history within heritage
Search through the montage of time
Sift through pounds of truth and lies
For a few ounces of purity
Measured out within the mess
The now was the past
Where to walk
We travel back
On twisted helix roads
To the selves we were
So very long ago
And learn
The future braided
In the past
With the now
And made us whole

Trash at the Curb

Trash by the curb
Cardboard boxes nested
One within the other
Standing upright, resting
Against the edge of the smallest,
An old collage Walmart picture frame,
Matting included,
Old photos still within the frame,
A wedding, a first baby then a second,
Graduations and first cars,
Pictures telling a story of a family,
Colors faded by the sun
Having spent years by a window

After Eruption

Rend the earth again
Tear, rip through miles of rock and soil
Till the swollen, rounded,
core lies exposed
Bubbling, glowing,
Sputtering out
Reaching tendrils of itself.
Note the flow,
Time the pulses of heat,
Beating with undulating life seen and unseen.
Then watch the viscous liquid cool,
Solidifying against the pain
Of each cold breath you expel
Stilling the beat of life.

The transformation to cold, hard stone
Within the earth’s crust
As thus,
A mother’s heart,
Torn open once too often,
Stops.