daughters

Dear Mother

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Dear Mother,

I know you think
that being a Girl Scout
troop leader means
I can be nothing less
than a perfect role model.

But underneath every
perfectly polite
member of society
lie the cusses,
frustration,
and brutal honesty
that you hate
for me to share.

Can I have a place
to fully expose
myself
without worrying about
what you think

considering

you never could take
the time away from your
(true love) work to be
MY
Girl Scout troop leader,
but rather,
were a cussing, raging,
violent mother
behind closed doors?

Love,
Daughter

P.S.: Thank you
for taking the time
to see me for who
I really am
and, alas,
relentlessly criticizing me.

February Daughters

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Riona

You were getting into bed last night
still waiting for us to cover you up
when you told me a story,
your three-and-a-half-year-old
version of a story

“I had to get my piwow
and then I saw that Snoopy wasn’t
he-ah, so I got Snoopy and
put him down they-ah,
and it’s my Snoopy not Isabewa’s
she thought he was hers
but that one’s mine.”

And I realize as I write this
that I have a poet
for my youngest daughter,
and if not a poet,
a poem.

Mythili

Holding your stomach all
through the crowded mall
you let me know
it was time to go
you rushed to the van
holding out your hand
“I need my blankey
I need my blankey”
the door opened wide
and you dashed inside
five minutes couldn’t pass
with your eyes turning glass
your fingers curled silk
like it was mother’s milk
your lids relaxed
sleep came fast
and all was calm in Mythili land
because of the blankey in your hand.

Isabella

Turning seven to you
means a tea party
filled with pink cupcakes
and a houseful of girls
daintily sipping from china cups
only to abandon the table
for screaming pursuits
of chopped-up white snowflakes
foam doilies and spilled glitter glue,
cat chasings and scavenger hunts
whose competition almost drew blood
a smile on your face
as you hand out goodie bags
blow out your candles
and remark more than once,
“Three hours is not long enough.”

Happy birthday my love,
my first child
whose energy fills our lives
for every waking moment.

Consumerism on Presidents’ Day

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We went to the mall today. Packed with shoppers. We almost never buy anything there other than a shake that we all share from Chik-Fil-A. We take the girls to play on the little play area and peruse the puppies in Pet City and to kill an afternoon without spending more than $5. Isabella had to go to the bathroom and suddenly we were in the back of Macy’s when we started looking at all the nice leather sectionals that were $2000. “When we get our tax return,” Bruce joked. Who has $2000 to spend on one piece of furniture? And that was the sale price, the Presidents’ Day sale.

We started walking out and the girls examined the plate sets, the men’s shirts, the towels and sheets. “Hey, this isn’t the mall, this is like a regular store!” Isabella announced, having never really been inside one there before. Everything was on sale, we could have got some real deals, $20 dress shirts instead of $40, a $15 lingerie Valentine set, already marked down the day after. All because… because why?

Why do we have the day off today? Have we all forgotten? Here we are stuffing ourselves with fast food concoctions and filling our shopping bags with sale items and doing anything but taking a moment to realize why this is a federal holiday. This is the typical American interpretation of a holiday: consumerism.

I’m sure Lincoln and Washington are turning over in their graves right now. What were they fighting for anyway? What have we forgotten in the course of 230 years? Is this really what freedom and equal rights and human sacrifice have all amounted to? A winter clearance of coats and boots in every store countrywide?

Sometimes I ask myself, what has this country come to? How is it that the things that sustain us—the buying and selling of goods—are the same things that destroy us? How can we simultaneously prevent and prepare for a recession, just as Einstein once asked the same question about war?

When I buy anything, I am wrought with guilt. I think about the person in China who made my product and a hundred others like it for a dollar a day. Instantaneously, I think of the store-owners and employees who will be out of work if I don’t buy more. I think of the destruction of natural resources from the production of each item. And I think of how spoiled we all are, how we think we need more than what we need, and how my children’s future will be impacted by this.

But today, as I witnessed sale after sale in honor of Presidents’ Day, all I could think about were arguably the two most influential presidents of all time and their idea of the American Dream. Did Washington read the Declaration of Independence to his suffering troops during the winter at Valley Forge, did Lincoln sign the Emancipation Proclamation and take the first step towards equality, for us to save a few bucks and add to the debt and environmental nightmare that we’ve been swimming in for years? And if this is how we honor our presidents, the leaders of this great nation, where is our country headed?

I can’t answer that question. I can only reach out and take my girls’ hands and lead them out of the mall. Perhaps this is the first and most important step to guiding the next generation in the direction of the real American Dream: the dream our presidents had, once. The one about freedom. Not consumerism.

On Valentine’s Day

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here we are
in our pajamas
munching on
leftover tea sandwiches
(mozzarella tomato,
tuna salad,
strawberry cream cheese)
before six o’clock
on Valentine’s Day

just hours beyond
a house filled with girls
in dress-up clothes
(dresses with puffy sleeves
and hems at the ankles)
who sipped from
white china cups
and licked pink
cream cheese frosting
off heart-shaped
red velvet cupcakes.

there are five of us now,
poor Daddy outnumbered
(even the dog is a girl)
and we share a box
of chocolates for dessert
given to our oldest daughter
(who celebrated seven years today)
by her boyfriend,
each girl picking out
a different fruity flavor.

and I think, as my youngest
takes a bite she doesn’t like and
brings her chocolate to my lips,
how unromantic this is,
yet
so very filled with love
on Valentine’s Day.

My Stunning Flowers

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I carry inside myself the desire to be better,
to always sit with you and help you find every
place where your puzzle pieces go,
to tell you, yes, forty minus three is thirty-seven,
to play family while I hold the piggy and you hold the koala

and not to wash these dishes
not to gather my breakfast ingredients
or set up my morning coffee,
not to look at the computer for just one moment

I think how you will be as women
falling in love
going off to college
calling to tell me about your first real jobs
and I both despise and relish these thoughts

I look forward to that time, to sharing
my life with you in a different way,
to see how you’ve blossomed
from the beauty of your youth into the
three unique flowers that I know you will become.

but now I struggle with my evenings,
my tense moments of tomorrow’s prep work,
my need to have a break when you are sleeping
in the brief time between your bedtime and mine

and I know that what I sacrifice is my vision of your future
and the interminable guilt that will mingle
with the sadness you will carry in your hearts,
the longing all of us will have for these moments,
these precious moments without which
you will never be the stunning flowers I have imagined.

How I Spend My Saturdays

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Once upon a time, Bruce and I used to sleep in until almost ten. We’d enjoy each other for a little while and share a shower, then inevitably head over to the local LePeep, which changed each time we moved—four times in our first four years together. He always got a skillet or a combo of eggs, bacon, peasant potatoes, and pancakes, and I used to order the eighteen-wheeler, which had French toast, the same famous potatoes, eggs, and a side of some type of pork that I would quickly shove over to him. We also loved to order the fancy $3 drinks, hot chocolate for me and a mocha for him. By noon, we were stuffed and ready to enjoy an afternoon of going to a movie, walking around the mall, or picking up a few groceries for our mid-week, mostly “freelance” (make what you want) meals. Then we would go out for dinner—our favorites were Chili’s, Old Chicago, or Noodles and Company. We might rent a movie after dinner, stay up late, and repeat the whole process on Sunday.

How foreign it all seems now. I don’t know if it’s because I’ve had three babies, because I’m old, or because I’m too set in an early-morning routine, but even if my girls sleep past 6:30, there’s no way I ever will again. Now I might drink a glass of water while I cuddle on the couch with Mythili or remind the girls relentlessly to go potty and get dressed while I sip coffee and fix up a breakfast of homemade pancakes. (A restaurant for breakfast? Paying $3 for a cup of Joe? My flaxseed whole wheat w/applesauce pancakes beat anything I’ve ever bought at LePeep, and I make my own “mocha” with a scoop of hot cocoa in my morning coffee). Then we might linger before our first activity, which could include anything from going to Target to buy yet another birthday gift for a party Isabella’s invited to, taking the girls to a swim or skating lesson, or visiting the library to pick up the books we have on order and the movies we’ll need to entertain the girls so we can have ninety minutes of peace. We’ll come home and fix sandwiches with our homemade bread and set out our grass-fed beef for a meal that we chose from a recipe and whose ingredients we put on the grocery list a week ago. The afternoon will be filled with girls playing outside in the cul-de-sac or whining about using the computer or, like today, in a line of cars around a Lowe’s waiting to pick up Girl Scout cookies, and we’ll finally settle everyone down for a pre-dinner bath and movie, a delicious home-cooked meal, and a nice early bed time. Bruce and I will stay up “late” watching our own Netflix movie, hitting the hay around ten.

Just like they always say: having a child changes everything. Having three makes you change your whole routine, your whole attitude towards what’s important, where your money goes, and how you spend your Saturdays.

Trees of Our Childhoods

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It’s all about the trees. The easily climbable red maple in the front yard at the edge of the driveway, the giantess silver maple next to the house that shaded it all summer, whose branches could never in an eight-year-old’s wildest dreams be reached, the one that hung the tire swing for the whole neighborhood to play on. The two white pines along the back of the property that reached up to the heavens, saved me from having to mow under them, and never complained when we bolted plywood along an upper trunk to create a sap-induced tree house. The ginormous fir in the side yard that stood next to our ever-present volleyball/badminton net—yes, the one that swallowed up not only the birdies but then the rackets that we tried to knock them down with, and then even the basketball, until I would be forced to climb halfway up and retrieve our game. The three apple trees at the edge of the vegetable garden that made pies and tarts and applesauce that lasted all winter. Even the stump of the giant oak whose fertile remnants grew into a flower garden. These trees filled my childhood with their variety, their strength, their steadfastness.

Even now, years later, I cannot imagine my life without trees. As I look out my front window, I catch a glimpse of the silver maple shading our yard, peek out the back to see the two ashes that keep the grass from drying up, especially the one that Isabella already loves to climb and that holds the clothesline that we use all summer, and the small crab apple we planted ourselves after Riona’s birth, marking our family with another generation of trees that one day my children will always remember.

January Daughters

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Mythili, 5
she has the same deep-set eyes and heavy brows,
the same rounded nose and thick pink lips as her father,
but as she sits beside him at the table,
shyly peeling every tiny piece of white from the Clementine
and piling them, meticulously as a worker ant,
on the table,
as she raises her eyes and offers me that
quiet smile still filled with baby teeth,
then takes a moment to rediscover what her
older, loud-mouthed sister is up to downstairs,
I know that truly, she is my daughter.

Isabella, almost 7
in an instant she can recite the alphabet in two languages,
always trying to fill in the letters for her sisters;
she lives for her Girl Scout meetings,
hates when the neighbors pick on her
to the point that she will pout and want to cuddle
like a toddler in my lap,
and she always, always, always
has to be the boss, be right, and be defiant,
as if to remind me, day in and day out,
just who I was at age seven.

Riona, 3
don’t mess with the youngest who, upon a recent approach
to a button outside of an elevator,
screamed, “It’s my turn!”
her hands outstretched like miniature wings
in her oversized puffy purple jacket,
rushing in front of two older sisters
her eyes sharp and holding perfectly a glare
that belongs on a much older child,
and proudly pushing the button
before anyone else could go near it.