parenting

Cheeks

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just as my students pull
like a dead weight
at the back of my brain
she looks up
her four-year-old cheeks
as smooth as innocence
and whispers,
“Mama, I wish
you didn’t have to work.”

i can’t hold them back
but she studies my family tree necklace
as the salt drips down
my thirty-two-year-old cheeks
as rough as pain
and whispers,
“I love you so much, Mama.”

and it is about all i can do
it is about all i can do
it is about all i can do
holding her
without words
her cheek against my cheek
is about all i can do.

Through My Eyes

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i need for you to see it
through my eyes
though i know
you’ll never understand.

it doesn’t help me to know
just how horrible it is
for someone else.
no matter how hard i try.

i crave what i have lost
what i dreamt most about
what is gone
and cannot be replaced.

this is a poem
filled with words
none of which can describe
what i see through my eyes.

Forever Season

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they are small still
but not small enough.
i look at the magnet
of the fat-cheeked, bald baby
holding up the picture
of our young niece.

there she sits now,
her cheeks hollow, thin,
running her fingers across
the iPad and reading aloud
to the small sisters
who sit on either side of her.

how can this be?
how can i remember so well
the clearest moment of my life,
when i first became her mother,
their mother,
and it was just a moment ago,
i wish it were just a moment ago.

i want to take my Mason jars
and instead of canning tomatoes
trap beneath the lids
seal tight for a forever season
the years that have slipped
out of the bubbling steam of my kitchen,
out into the yard, the cul-de-sac, the school,
trap them there and stack
my three beauties in their youth,
displayed in sparkling rows
of love along my pantry shelf.

The Devil’s Show

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they’re all decked out for
the devil’s birthday
(Hallelujah!)
in Princess Mulan,
clown, cheerleader,
lion, samurai, and pirate.

no hallelujah party for us tonight,
but steps down dark streets
ringing doorbells
and saying hello to neighbors
whose blown-up pumpkin balloons
hover like glowing monsters
over the kids’ trail of treats.

we’re devilish, aren’t we?
letting them plan out this night
for months, pulling seeds from pumpkins,
creating costumes to die for,
seeing them work up a sweat
in their mad dash for candy?

yes, we’ve missed the hallelujah party,
given in
to the American dream of Halloween,
but for one night a year,
when we all pretend to be
something other than ourselves,
when we all remember
the thrilled excitement of the candy rush,
i think this steals the devil’s show.

Emperor Penguin

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I am the empress
you the emperor
as you sit for over a month,
our young tucked
beneath your flaps of skin, fur
protected from windy storms
harsher than hell
while I waddle my way
across Antarctica,
weak from giving birth,
starved from lack of fish,
the iciness engulfing me
until I feel I can move no more.

But it is you,
it is them,
huddled together in fatherly love,
that push me forward,
reaching the sea
with its wealth of life,
bringing it back
for you, for them,
for all of us to taste
as we form a new season.

Reminder

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thanks for the quick
and painful reminder
of why i never ask you for anything.
i’ll just tuck it under my sleeve
with all the others
that are crammed somewhere
in my layers of clothing
and try to use your reminder
(and its inability to keep me warm)
as a reminder
of how much more
i need to
reach out to them,
strip them free
of useless, painful notes
and wrap them in
the warmth of love
that your reminder
has tried to take from my heart.

October Daughters

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Isabella

you still want to hold my hand
at the skate rink
though i know it won’t be long
before i’ll be remembering this day,
just as i now remember our first time here
when you stood in size eights
under the lights,
sashaying without moving your legs,
a two-year-old on a dancing mission,
and here you are now,
seven almost eight years old,
begging to skate with me
while we still have a moment
left of this afternoon,
this evening,
this moment of your life.

Mythili

the words of your imaginary worlds
have developed
into a complex combination
of English, Spanish,
and your own invented language.
you will still take
two toothpicks,
a doll head and a rubber band,
or, like today,
folded up pieces of cardboard,
and create stories
as intricate and imaginative as you.
but you are not the same
with your kindergarten knowledge,
your wealth of new friends,
your step out into
the world i know i can’t keep you from.
i will let you go,
but still listen
to your stories,
hoping that one day
you and I will both remember
who you were then,
who you are now.

Riona

it is year two
of you handing me apples to core,
of dumping in enough cinnamon
to fill the house with,
of squeezing lemons,
of tasting remnants of fruit.
i tell you,
Next year you’ll be in school
when I make applesauce,
and you answer,
I hope I go to my sisters’ school,
completely unaware of
the aching sadness in my voice,
of how much I will miss you here.
And I know that’s the way it
ought to be, I know it.
But knowing your innocence,
your focus on now,
is why I can’t control my ache
that grows and grows
just as I can’t control
how you grow and grow.

Room of Punishment

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i heard what happened
in a roundabout way
as all families today,
over Internet connections
and telephone lines,
communicating the news
of those who can’t communicate.

i cringed in my mixture of pain, guilt,
of love, sorrow, my emotions
breeding from those moments
in my childhood when i sat,
holed up under my blankets
in a dark room of punishment,
wishing i could be instead
in your arms, your wet kisses
rough on my cheek, your
planned-out dinners and desserts
waiting for approval,
your I love yous ending every sentence.

instead, you have been moved
from one dark room of punishment
to another, shuffled around
like a naughty child,
no parent (child or grandchild)
able to solve the dilemma of your age.

i am one of them,
two generations down,
with young children of my own
who will never sit in a room
wishing for your warmth.

all i can do with
the electronically-presented words
still ringing in my ears,
is hole up in my room of punishment
and wish that i had called you
before they took your phone away,
wish that i had visited
before He took your mind away.

Pie

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how strange it is to hear them
in the back seat of our car,
though they belong to us.
wasn’t it only a moment ago
that he and i drove down this road
and stopped at Village Inn for pie,
a Friday night with nowhere to go,
nothing to do, no responsibilities?

they chirp their wonderings like baby birds,
but they are no longer babies
as they sing in Spanish the
possibilities of what color
Doctor Dino, the preschool
take-home toy, will be next year, as he
has changed from blue to red to green
in the hands of oldest, middle, youngest.

Denver, too, has changed since i first,
at age eleven, took a bus across town
with my friend, eating lunch in
the Tabor Center and pretending to shop.
now the light rail has taken us here,
to a Convention Center that didn’t exist
amongst fancy four-star hotels built up
like mocking gods in the face of recession.

he and i, we are not the same either.
there will be no stop at Village Inn,
no pie. instead we listen:
“Va ser… ¡rojo! ¡rosario! ¡amarillo! ¡azul!”
and i think, we’ll never know the color.
our baby will be out of preschool, Doctor Dino
will be in some other little girl’s home,
and these streets? they’ll never stay the same.

Three Little Bears

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Calling down the stairs
as if reciting their favorite tale,
our three little bears shout out,
their words falling one step after another,

“I have no pajamas in my drawer!”
“The pajamas in my drawer are too hot!”
“My pajama drawer is broken!”

And despite the crying over silly bands,
the arguing over vegetables,
the quarreling over favorite plates,
we have a good laugh
and remember, remember
why we are parents.