in your absence
there is nothing but silence
i wait for your return
but the dead air is thick
choking back the guilt
that bubbles up
with work done
nothing left to do but wait
you will pour in
a waterfall cacophony of sound
take every waking moment
to be your exuberant selves
and i will feel a Saturday
that belongs to us
not me
i don’t want to think
of your new pink backpack,
your hand-me-down uniform,
or your first steps into kindergarten.
wasn’t it just yesterday
that we swung you in the car seat
into the hospital elevator,
calling you Mythili by mistake?
how can we move from birthday
to first day of school in one week?
it’s too much for this old mom,
this worked-through-baby-years mom.
but it will have to be.
tomorrow’s the big day,
the beginning of the endless
letting goes that you and i must face.
Riona
Five. FIVE. five…
you wear the pink taffeta dress
(pattern handed down
for fifty years)
a gathered waste,
scalloped pockets and sleeves,
plastic pearls to complete the couture.
you jump in and out of fountains,
climb plastic playground steps,
pretend with perfect attitude
(that encompasses all you are)
to blow the absent candles from your cake
we move from playing with new gifts
on hardwood (you offer me a pillow)
to party number two, where
you surround yourself with
breaking-down children and ask
only that i roast you a marshmallow
in the lightning-flash sky
and circle of warmth
you are five.
you dash to the car in the
pitch-black, too-far-from-city night,
your row of new lip balms in palm,
and before you will sleep,
you divide them evenly amongst sisters,
your generous heart more beautiful
than your perfect pink taffeta dress.
Mythili
it’s been a year, and
baby teeth are gone,
replaced by no-finger-sucking
straight white incisors
that have sent Blankey
to a closeted grave
with their grown-up appearance.
you have school friends now
who you won’t let go.
you know the way down the corridors,
will soon show baby sister,
and, as always,
you speak quite frankly
about the condition of your classroom,
the behavior of other students,
and your ability to stay on task.
how could these two adult teeth
bring deeper wisdom
to the little girl
who, from birth,
could already see the world
in a light
the rest of us can’t see?
Isabella
i find pictures of you
at five, six,
(pudgy cheeks and tiny teeth)
and look into your pale hazels,
your over-freckled cheeks,
hold you against me,
your head now at my shoulder,
and i know
i know
(though i’m afraid to write it now)
you are no longer a little girl.
you are my oldest,
will always be first,
will always move from one stage
to another before them,
will be the one to induce the most fear,
the most intense kind of love,
a kind i cannot describe here
(or to them)
one that is shared from those
moments in our babymoon
to those moments now when
you understand what they don’t,
when you give me the look
a reflection of my expression,
you, a shadow of me
who stands at my shoulder,
ready to grow.
girls pose like little models,
even the baby smiles
underneath the bright flashes
(she’s not a baby anymore–
why must i be reminded
that five years
have slipped into oblivion?)
the clouds move in
on a Sunday afternoon,
a semi-quiet house
where they pretend to pick up
while we lie on the couch
reminiscing the twin bed
we shared so many years ago.
(with money clenched
like fists in pockets,
we borrowed furniture,
walked across ant-biting carpet,
washed dishes by hand,
roasted like oily chicken
in the absence of central air)
is it so different now,
our money spilling out
into the screens of tomorrow,
the cool air tickling our skin
as their tweeting songs
remind us of all we have seen,
all we have yet to see?
it could be the Spanish-English mix
from the nanny’s mouth as we sat in the zoo,
my thoughts of the last day of summer
slipping from my hands
quicker than the tears
my baby cried to sleep with,
or the anger inside
that someone would pay another
for everything i love the most.
it could be the defriending,
his cold absence of words in my presence,
or her emphatic insistence
that eight months is enough
time with her baby
when a thousand years
would not satiate me.
it could be the story i love
coming to a bittersweet end,
or the small voices
absent from my home
on the one day when
i need them most.
but i will never be quite able
to define what haunts me.
i hand her wings
as i read about Icarus
to the two young buds
we open up Google
and relish in Breugel
as she calls to check in
she returns triumphant
waxed wings unmelted
no pledge to Apollo needed.
trees are like humans
she says
they take forever to grow
they start small
when they’re grownups
they don’t grow anymore
they stay in one place
i want to tell her
they’re trapped by roots
taunted by wind
pelted with precipitation
they never stop growing
you’re right
i say instead
knowing that
how she sees the world
could change by morning
and i should cherish
how she sees it today.
first it’s the wind–
a constant haunt
this time as cold as father winter
then it’s the sun–
at ten thousand feet
quite the mean magician
next it’s the rain–
slinking into the camp
on tails of snow
but it’s the circle i’ll remember–
the women’s voices
calling out ideas
like flashes of starlight
overwhelming me as always
reminding me
again and again and again
that just like that
constant haunt of wind
my love for my girls
all of my girls
is embedded here today.
Isabella
how could i see only darkness
when all you’ve been trying to do
is show me your shine?
in our depths we see the light
emanating in those early moments
when first you came into the world.
their voices at your imaginative nature
and stolid toddler independence
still ring true as you toddle through school.
i will try to let loose this light,
this new view of you, if you will forgive me.
perhaps i must forgive myself first.
Mythili
as usual
you seem unaware of your surroundings.
the spring wind
that tore a bite from our kite
tries to bear down on us
as we pedal home.
you pedal away behind me
spouting out your array
of fairy-tale, Barbie-doll stories,
not even noticing
the slow and heavy pace
up the never-ending hill,
the long breaths stolen from my lungs,
your world stronger than all weaknesses.
Riona
you fit perfectly
into the shirt Isabella wore at two
and into the crevice of my lap
for our daily cuddle time.
yes, you’re the baby
and though i shouldn’t baby you
it is so hard to resist
your chunky soft cheeks
your peace talking ways
your innocence fully masked
as i hold your tiny body in mine
just as i did when you really were
my little baby.
I should be at school. I shouldn’t have selfishly taken the bike out at 5:15 to ride thirty-four miles because I already missed a day due to weather. Instead I should have slept in a bit, gotten the girls up, taken them to school myself. But in truth, I just couldn’t face that and everything else. I needed the ride to listen to a book, to think about someone else’s problems, fake or not, worse off than me.
Instead of meandering the middle school hallways, I sign her out of the class she can’t sit still in and drive across town. We sign in and wait. I have ample time to stare at the walls: mismatched pictures in plastic, falling-apart frames, a fairy scene in one, a child’s teary face in another. A bulletin board with peeling paper posters. Walls that are scuffed and chipped. Chairs that are so worn down and bally they appear to have been donated to this office by some up-and-coming doctor twenty years ago. Behind the receptionists’ desk, four-drawer filing cabinets so overflowing they are stacked on top with excess folders. An overweight man and his two chunky children check out and discuss Medicaid co-pays for labs with the over-the-counter-hair-dyed receptionist who wears a faded set of Broncos scrubs in the middle of April.
I can’t fit this day, or the last two weeks, the last eight years, into a poem.
I could be in seventh grade social studies right now, telling students the important information they need to add to their Chinese time lines. I watch Isabella swing her legs back and forth, jump from chair to chair as frequently as the plump toddler who just walked in with her seven-year-old sister and not-more-than-twenty-two-year-old mom, and I think, Wow, I bet no one I work with would ever be caught dead in this office. And I think, I bet no one I work with has anything less than perfect children (I’ve heard all their stories of reading-by-four, good-citizenship awards, best-ever on the basketball team).
Fifteen minutes tick by. We pay our five dollar co-pay. I hand her a battered bill that looks like the mental hell I’ve put myself through over the past two weeks. When we are finally called into the office, the nurse assistant writes down in ten words all I can say at this time about my daughter. It is not enough. Nothing will ever be enough.
The PA comes in, tall and thin as a stalk of beans, questioning my motivation. “Anyone else in the family have this problem? This tends to run in the family–to be hereditary.” Of course it does. I think back to my fearful days in the classroom, my head on the desk, my nose in a book, my lips sealed for fear of punitive action from the adults surrounding me. I weakly mention that my husband got held back in second grade, that his parents never took him to a doctor.
Were they wrong, or am I?
She tells me about the forms I already knew she would give me. I get the process, I want to say. I’m a teacher. I deal with kids like this every day. But I don’t. She’s got a screaming two-month-old, a snot-faced toddler, and fifty other patients on her list. I know. I get it. I take the papers and nod, shuffle Isabella into the hall, into the car, back to school.
She asks, “If there’s something going on in my brain, are they going to take it out?” Rephrasing my explanation of why we came in here today. “No, Isabella, of course not. If they took out your brain, you would die. It controls your whole body. They might give you medicine that you have to take every day.”
“Oh, OK, I was wondering about that,” and she finishes her lunch, silent for once.
We step in her school, tiptoe to her class. She hovers in the hallway, hesitant as a kindergartner on the first day of school. But she’s in second grade, I think. She shouldn’t hesitate, she should be fine. And that’s when I realize that everything about her, every twisted way I see her in my eyes, cannot be explained from my perspective.
My perspective is that she’s been in trouble twice within five days of school. That she had a note on her report card first quarter about excessive talking. That we took away her favorite things for twelve days and she had no visceral reaction to punishment. That when she was two and a half and sitting in time out, she couldn’t sit still for two minutes. For thirty seconds. For ten. That when she was three, she couldn’t either. Or four, or five. That she has to be told ten times to do any task we ask her to do. That she won’t read a book, not because she’s incapable, but because she can’t stop moving long enough to focus. That I think she has ADHD. That I feel like a failure as a parent because my child won’t listen to me. That I have considered spanking her because nothing. Else. Works.
I clutch the forms in my hand, place them in the passenger’s seat. I could leave them there, a scapegoat that I don’t have to follow through on. Or, I could go down to the basement and unravel the trash bags full of every special item that I’ve taken that belongs to her, blaming her “illness” for her behavior. What will it be? The truth? Or the scapegoat?
I drive to my school, unable to answer.
