childhood

Day Ten, Road Trip 2015

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drive starts with best store
 candy store within the store
 (we all need fill ups)
 
 green mountain state calls
 with back roads and endless views
 we make our way home:
 
 where we stand in rain
 and talk like it’s been three days
 (never mind three years)
 
 while the kids recite
 the spinning songs of preschool
 that spun us this time
 
 reunion’s beauty
 claws at my throat, my heart.
 rain can’t renew it
 
 this trip from my dreams:
 three years, three thousand miles–
 six hearts in one
 
 

Day Eight, Road Trip 2015

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hanging out at home

girls play, sleep, we do yoga

easy transition
 
 tomorrow? the drive
 hubby’s new job starts at home
 (i’ll make my way home)
 
 upstate New York home
 in the arms of my best friend
 childhood relived
 
 driving my mind home
 we leave Kentucky for now
 (could have been home)
 
 the road takes us home
 on all our travels, faces
 where we find our hearts
 
 

Day Seven, Road Trip 2015

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walk across downtown
 with my urban planning mom
 walking rating: zilch
 
 veggies are heavy
 when carrying Kentucky
 weight on both shoulders
 
 redemptive moment
 on green lake with blue kayaks
 (words he’ll never read)
 
 a campfire end
 to a summer daydream trip
 (only innocence)
 
 full circle i’ve turned
 since five years back, her birth year
 (my first niece. cousins)
 
 but he won’t see that.
 only weakness bearing down
 on our bright union
 
 love like this? just once.
 with dark swings on late porches
 he can’t even touch
 
 but for her bright eyes
 the firelit sunset eve
 forgiveness follows.
 

Day Five, Road Trip 2015

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one last garden stop
 hard to say if we’ll be back
 beaches, lakes… await
 
 

Day Four, Road Trip 2015

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a secret rope swing
 hidden behind leafy steps
 splash into heaven
 
 picture with Pappy
 grandchildren nearly grown up
 only photos last
 
 the force of magic
 light from cousin to cousin
 summer bright as night
 

  

By Heart

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a freshwater lake
 found from memory; a hike
 better baptism
 
 childhood relived
 through my daughters’ newfound strokes
 saltlessly sweet taste
 
 coves around corners
 wind-whipped waves licking the shore
 new memories made
 

Day Two, Road Trip 2015

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sunrise wake up call
 to start farmland forest view
 save me from the drive
 
 kids sleep, eat, play, grin
 laugh with their pit-stop cousins
 sunset goodnight view
 
 all America
 lies between the road and sun
 the love for travel
 

Because Riona Would.

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All three of my children were born in the evening. If you are a mother, you can acknowledge the significance of this. They were twenty-one months apart, so when I had my third, my oldest was just three and a half.

The first two spent their first night in and out of my arms, crying because of a reaction to the pain medication I’d taken during labor or because she was THAT starving.

But Riona?

I barely heard a sound from her… for EVER.

She lay next to me in the bed for all of that first night. She murmured a little, nursed a little, and settled back into sleep, happy to be near me.

And so it began. The ending of my motherhood with the child who came into the world as peaceful as a lamb.

And that is why I am crying now. Because you didn’t take a moment to see her. To listen to her soft calls, to her murmurs in the night. Because you thought an eight-almost-nine-year-old’s protests meant nothing.

What you. DON’T UNDERSTAND. Is that SHE never protests. She gives in. She listens to her older sisters’ whims and plays along, whether she really wants to or not. She fits into the jealous eye of her eldest sister, who often teases her because “no one can ever be as nice as Riona.” She is just like her father, same birth sign and all: born with a pure heart, giving, generous, willing to sacrifice all for the love of those around her.

Riona is the one who, back in March, cried herself to sleep because I told her we couldn’t afford camp this year. Riona is the reason I have sacrificed four weeks of my summer for summer school and home visits and Spanish class, all in the futile hope that I could pay for that one week of camp for all three girls.

So. NO. I do NOT want to hear that you “lost” her paperwork, sent in the SAME envelope as my other two daughters. I don’t want to come back from 50 hours of class in 5 days to hear that my youngest daughter was told she was leaving on Tuesday, was not allowed to participate in any camp activities because of this even though she ADAMANTLY TOLD YOU SHE WAS LEAVING ON FRIDAY AND YOU NEVER CALLED US TO CHECK, was told her camp store account was EMPTY WHEN SHE HAD $16 DOLLARS LEFT AND COULD HAVE BOUGH CHAPSTICK FOR HER DRIED LIPS, or that she was just… some other eight-year-old.

Because she’s not. If you could see her, really see her, for the gentle soul that she is, you would understand why I can’t stop crying. You would understand why I have given up half of my summer for my daughters to have the experience that you have now stripped from her. You would understand that a protest from a small voice should be THE LOUDEST PROTEST YOU HAVE EVER HEARD.

But you are not a mother. You are eighteen years old and have yet to learn the reality of this kind of pain.

And that is why I forgive you. Because Riona would.

The Same Zip Code

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we make home visits to welcome freshmen
who haven’t set foot in our school.
on the drive we discuss gentrification,
how these kids are coming across town
to our school because they think it’s better
(but it’s so much better than the remnants
of gangs that linger in their northwest ‘hood,
in the high school that hasn’t caught up
with the white money-chasers)

inside the first house, a blond bombshell
(shy as a country field mouse) lets us into
her gutted bungalow, replete with
granite counters all around, tells us she chooses us
because the people at our school were nicer
than the pompous competitor next to City Park

we make our way back to the south side
and step into a mansion built
on top of one of Denver’s many scrapes,
with oriental rugs leading from
hallway to music room to never-ending kitchen,
with a nice mother and a moody teenage boy
who grunts responses to questions
(because manners can’t be bought)

and then, within the same zip code of
block after block of mansions that
have all but stomped out the middle class,
we pull up to our last stop:
The Red Pine Motel,
settled along Broadway
between a bar and a pot shop.

in a tiny apartment without a table,
a man stands eating a bowl of soup,
his hand half broken and bandaged,
his pony tail tied at the nape of his neck,
his high-heeled wife potty training
her three-year-old in the adjacent room.

“you can come and look, do your check,
do what you need to do.”
we exchange glances.
do they they think we’re the cops?
are they used to this?
my colleague reassures him that this is a friendly visit,
that we have papers and t-shirts
and hope for a better tomorrow
(God save us all)

we sit on the bench-like singular piece of furniture
in the kitchen/living/dining room,
(no more than 100 square feet)
with a miniature gas stove and not a single
speck of a counter, granite or otherwise

the boy is running late
and both parents engage in disgruntled talk
when he arrives,
and they plain as day tell us what he’s like
and he plain as day answers.
they use words like imaginative.
engaging.
photographic memory.
and the little girl sports her
oversized South Future Rebel t-shirt,
and the uncle waits outside and begs
to have a t-shirt too,
so proud are they of sending their boy
on the one mile
(the one million mile)
walk between their dwelling and
the grandiose Italian architecture
that will be his high school,
where he will walk past
block after block of mansions
in the same zip code
through the disappearing middle class
into the institution
that will grant him a future
or place him right back
into the thin line of poverty
that hovers over our city.

and this is what it’s like to be a teacher
in today’s world.

January Daughters

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Isabella

is it an act of defiance
once again, or a child
wanting to be a child,
dashing into the night,
rolling down the hill
until bits of dried grass
stick in your Brownie vest
like petulant pieces of glue,
causing me to shake your shoulders,
my flustered fingers unable to remove
from your almost-eight tangles
the frustration your actions bring?

or is it me, your end-of-day tired mother,
unable to remember those hills
i rolled down as a child,
petulant pieces of green grass
imprinting triangular shapes on my skin,
as i hand over your punishment
on display for your peers to mock,
only to later see the stack of cards
on my nightstand, the supplicant sticky,
“these are the thank-you cards i rote,”
your grammatically correct misspelling
tugging at the mother, the daughter,
we were both meant to be?

Mythili

with two top teeth missing,
you blend into the crowd
of second grade girls
for a weekend of camp.
you are the youngest
of twenty, demurely asking
for help with your pajamas,
with the needle you can’t quite thread,
but singing along with the songs,
joining in on the games,
snowshoeing into the woods
as if your teeth had already sprouted,
as if you had already skipped
over kinder and first grade,
my little one wanting
to be all grown up.

Riona

from the moment of birth
after twenty-four hours
of fighting to emerge,
when you made less than two peeps
and settled in next to my skin
for a peaceful night of nursing,
to the quiet child who follows
Daddy to a job and speaks not a word,
who cuddles silently on the couch
with a fever that you’ll tell no one about,
i truly believe,
my youngest, angelic child,
that you were born
without a single complaint in your soul.