reality hits:
plumber, groceries, shoe shopping,
clean car, room, laundry
not a moment’s rest
to really run a household
two incomes looms big
will it be worth it?
one week i’ll be back at work
he’ll have long hours
what i did today?
dispersed between homework, school,
kids’ activities
never the down time
he’s given us all these years
(but… we can buy shoes!)
truth
Stolen
she mentioned poem theft
when i went to Toronto
and i laughed and laughed
would someone steal poems
so specific to my life
day after day… kids??
would they steal this pic
formulated by daughters’
view of this bright world?
would they steal these plates
drying when hot water broke
no plumber can come?
would they steal our ride
our dip in the river, creek?
and claim it’s their poem?
would they fix plumbing?
be my man–wire phone lines?
they couldn’t be me
my poems, words, are mine
trapped here for worldwide view
no one would steal them
Nino’s Antiques
home: car cleaning bribe
so i can get my work done
and they earn their game
insurance battle
because i won’t be bullied
by corporations
i wash out bottles
and my new/old egg beater
from Nino’s Antiques
(the shop in Gorham
i went to as a child
with just two pennies
and Nino emerged
with his wax-curled mustache
and sold me his goods
and this egg beater
will remind me: he’s still there
in my timeless town
his mustache now gray
asking my girls about school
his PBS on
selling his antiques
for much too little money
and chatting with kids
he’s no CEO
no insurance scam artist
my hometown hero)
Day Thirteen, Road Trip 2015
a moment of risk
on this never ending trip
is what makes this pic
kids brimming with grins
now i sit in silent car
grateful for this time
i watch my uncle
hands in tremors–sixty-five
granddaughter in tow
age recycles us
into all we wanted here–
just a yes, a yes
Because Riona Would.
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.
Full Circle
this news sent so quickly in the midst
of my latest sacrifice (summer school)
brings it all together–
the twelve plus years of parenthood
where each of us stepped out of our careers
to stay home
to be there, wholly be there,
for every waking moment of their childhood
(it was mostly him,
a remorse i will carry
long after they have left the house)
and three years back,
when i made that choice
to carry this family to Spain,
and all the weight of it
that i have carried since
(was it the right choice?
was it worth the debt?
will we lose our house?
are the girls’ schools good enough?
have they lost every speck of Spanish?)
all of it comes full circle with his text:
I got the job.
The REAL job.
The DREAM job.
the job he’s been waiting for
since he stepped out of the barracks
and into The Real World,
where he was offered contract after contract
(no benefits, no real hope)
and was better than most of the company employees
(and better than any man you will ever meet)
and here we are.
seventeen years into the marriage.
twelve and a half into parenthood.
a stay-at-home chef, hairstylist,
chauffeur, housekeeper, computer technician,
financial analyst, tax adviser, veteran,
TELECOM TECH.
here we are, dream-of-dreams,
full circle, lifetime opportunity later.
and it was so worth it.
so, so, so worth it.
The Same Zip Code
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.
Carte du Jour
what’s the difference? simple, really.
with you, everything is vague and humorous.
with them, direct and consequential.
for me, I would rather take my chances
with a small taste of brutal honesty than
with a whole menu of unknowns.
it amazes me how they, having never
been that close to me, seem to understand
that better than you, who have
opened (and closed) the menus on the food
we share so many times that you’ve
forgotten that I have been here all along.
perhaps you will notice my absence
(perhaps not). either way, I will be taking
delectable nibbles from the dishes they share,
throwing in my hot spices, my sweet vanilla,
and together we will create a carte du jour
that you might admire, but will never taste.
Admission
calling me out in front of them all
isn’t the way to get to the truth
because it’s more polite for me
(as my mother always said)
to admit nothing at all
than to lie to your face
your reaction is as ironic as if
you’d admitted me into your classroom
to run it one day (my way)
only for you to pat me on the back
and thank me for the gift
(the gift that in three years
you wouldn’t allow me to give you)
but I will seal my lips this one time
(though I admit you know me well)
and use the scapegoat I have stood by
all these months, tucking it in my
pocket in case of further inquisitions,
though you and I both know why
I’ll (you’ll) never admit the truth.
Sunrise
I have seen you before
you are the one who has hidden
in the darkness before the dawn
the black so thick it blocks
you out of my wide-open eyes
my yearning for your explicit expression of truth
overcome by a sun that won’t shine
the bitterness sits
on my tongue like a cat on a fence
unable to determine
which way to pounce
because I am hungry for the truth
that you are too afraid to give me.
Instead you creep
as stealthily as the prey you think you are
hiding behind the curtain of obscurity
because you can’t bring your face to the face of
what’s real, what’s right here,
what we can all see
with the first streaks of a sunrise
that shines the same on all of us.
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