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
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
a morning discourse
to get me through the last day.
she gives in. i win.
when one of her five
desires the same gender
will she change her mind?
families surround us:
single, married, divorced, set–
love makes children grow
not biology.
(we’ve been friends forever now.
we have climbed mountains).
valleys take their turn.
she will judge, blame, point fingers.
i will love, love, love.
four weeks: iced mocha
from his teacher’s salary
to my starving morn
one more disruption
to make my students argue
(entitlements rule)
his blue-eyed gesture
almost makes the sacrifice
worth the sinking sun
he knows and i know
that he can’t buy my return;
best or not–i’m gone
no blue eyes at home
(from my man or anyone)
on my girls’ faces
nor a mocha bribe
for the heart-winning teacher.
cynic? true. best? yes.
no film, court judges,
observers, department heads
are worth this money
’cause money can’t buy
another summer soon lost
in a blue-eyed search
camp frustration lost
with weekend full of lizards
imagined lizard lands
only the oldest
was given this camp present
childhood relived
teaching her sisters
how lizards, mermaids are made
best of all: she PLAYS!
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.
in the golden light
i pretend it’s one year back
when she still loved creeks
she smiles for me
for this gilded summer pic
to placate my wish
but after? they play,
she lies back in the shade, bored
of being in creeks
no crawdad searches,
no hiding out in the fort–
grown in just a year
but i’ll take the pic,
make it my background; pretend
just like she used to
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.
how can the same child
who spat those awful words
now bang on my window
with an exuberant grin?
just as i will never be twelve again,
i will never quite remember
the complexities
of the young adult mind.
Miss Mythili
Miss Logical:
Daddy had to take a cold shower
because we took all the water
with our up-to-the-line bath.
Miss Tattle-Tale:
(whiny voice)Grandpa, Daddy has the binoculars
and he won’t let me have them!
Miss Manipulative:
I am not going to brush my teeth
or comb my hair until you give me Blankey.
Miss Dreamer:
Wait, star, I need to change my wish!
I actually don’t want to be
a monkey living in a tree.
Miss Imaginative:
(holding a broken piece of cilantro)
I just don’t understand why your
daughter would think it’s OK
to jump over the water like that.
Miss Mythili,
my ever-changing artistic child.
Riona
if i say no to your sister,
she stomps her feet
and demands justice.
if i say no to you,
you reluctantly leave the room,
rest your little legs on a chair,
and silently allow
the crocodile tears to flow down your cheeks.
how could i ever say no to the child
who can’t go an hour
without an I love you
or a kiss on the cheek
or a snuggle on the couch?
Isabella
in the course of a few months
of second grade,
you have learned the
kissing-marriage-baby-carriage song
and its R-rated 21st century version,
how to access the Internet
and what web sites have the best games,
how to apply lipstick
and pose like a model for pictures,
how to multiply and say
Newton’s laws of motion
in English and Spanish,
and how to grow up
too quickly right before my eyes.
