Happy Birthday, Soph!

On the Wing Greetings

The hornet wishes you happy birthday, sends flakes of pinched skin in an envelope. He just doesn’t understand the customs. Do not be afraid of bugs, child. The bees, the honey. The mosquitoes, the bats. Honestly, the world would be a better place without invisible flying pain, small black avengers. I know. But it is my place to distract you from that which you should not be afraid of. My mother taught me. Do not fear. Do not cry over cancer, no-see-um. Say why not me? Say I will take the fish hook in the arm. Just untie the fly, would you, please. Read your fortune in the raised welts scrawling your tender arm. Pink salve will heal the bite. It’s pink, after all. Daddy Longlegs is just mommy’s wayward spouse. Bumble bees are cute. Roly-poly. Someone coined the phrase just for them. Clever, college educated folks designed spectacular beetles, bumbles bees, and lady bugs for your brother’s nursery. Flowers were good enough for you. And here is where I went wrong. Ay. There’s the rub. Flesh-colored roses for the boy. Sensitive. Sultry smiling bugs for the girl. Toughen her up. Sugar and spice. That’s what the bees suck, anyway. The next child will be called Ava. Winged beauty eating bugs. Best wishes without sting.

Things My Mother Taught Me, or: Self-Portrait Not My Own

Ironing is good for wrinkled curtains.
Wrinkled curtains are a sign
of a bad woman.
A bad woman
throws butcher knives,
not at a carnival,
but at her blondest daughter.
Go blond for most of your life.
Go back to your roots
at fifty.
At fifty
get your ears pierced.
If your husband says no
to piercing your child’s ears,
wait until he says yes.
Do not wait until he says yes
to go out and get a job.
Go out and get a job if you want
your own money.
Give your own money
to whomever you please.
The door-to-door
Catholic school kids,
the hitchhiker on the mountain,
the single mother stranded
in her attic by a hurricane.
Pray for hurricane victims.
Pray for your grandparents.
Pray every night.
Now I lay me down to sleep.
Never wait at the window
for your mother to come home.
If the neighbors sent her away
because she was loose
go out and find her.
Do not cry.
Put on an apron,
tighten the strings.

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I haven't written much about my mother. She is awesome. Maybe that's why. No pain, no angst. I'm a lucky girl.

We are alot alike. Maybe I've written about her the whole time. Hmmm...

We spent a lot of time together while my dad was in the hospital. She told me many, many stories. I hope I get them all into poems.

Maybe I'll move on to the Mother Diaries.

My dad is on the mend. Hooray! Thank you everyone, for all of your prayers and good thoughts!

I feel kind of at a loss now for poetry fodder. I had never written about my dad, save maybe once or twice, before this. He sure did provide inspiration. Who knew? Too bad he'll never read any of these. Nope. He just wouldn't get it. And that is fine by me.

The Mother

I stumbled on the coolest writing site tonight. Writing Time. I would paste the permalink, but I haven't figured out how to paste into my text yet. Anyway, there was a prompt which suggested using beginnings of lines from the last stanza of Mark Haddon’s poem, The Trees. It struck a chord, so I went ahead and did some writing on Sunday. Not Monday or Thursday, but Sunday. Hooray for breaking a pattern! No routine for me.

I was stumped by the first line. Your kindness… Who do I know is kind? Very kind. So kind as to inspire poetry? And not sappy poetry. I do not like sappy poetry. Then, I stumbled on the part where the narrator mentions dressing and a boy. And not salad dressing. But, I persevered. And, at the risk of breaking my own anti-sappy rule, I had to Thank God, out loud, that my mom survived a car wreck. Saturday. My mom. OK. So here’s the poem. It seems to have taken the form of a prose poem. And, sorry, anti-sap groupies, but I have to add… I love you, Mom!

The Mother (inspired by The Trees, by Mark Haddon)

Your kindness to a young mother, just washed in from Louisiana, paddled in
on a hurricane wave with a baby on her hip, water following, chasing
up her attic steps. You gave a hundred. One hundred dollars.
Always so much, too much. Where is she now?
That girl with the husband back in low country, building the house.
I wrap gently used baby shoes in pink felt, pass them on to a couple with a fifth baby.

Your skill at sewing, baking, cooking, cleaning, removing set-in stains.
You never wore pearls. I have a silver bracelet I’ve never taken off. Seventeen years
in the same sterling bangle and I have never sewn a dress, taken in a seam,
baked a soufflé, have not made peace with Tide, still have to ask the butcher
what meat to use for a pot roast.

We lost so many hours fighting over how fast I could get dressed.
Never faster than when a boy was involved, just past midnight.
So slow when the big yellow bus was plodding down the street, idling at the corner.
What was lost has now been found. I now know there is nothing slower
than a kindergartner with a metal lemon snake breathing down his neck.

Look at you. You’re the only woman on the little town board. Big board. Little town.
Dale Evans whipping five burly cowboys into shape.

Big, bold bright woman. Little, tiny, shallow men. You and your ideas bigger
than life. You frighten the men. This makes me proud. I put on a hideous mask,
walk up and down my suburban streets. Scaring men has become my life’s passion.

Outside the spring air is far, far away. A hint of green in the brown, brown breeze
of this snowless winter. On the first day the snow finally fell, you hopped in your car.
I scraped the ice and snow from the back window and off you drove, headed north.
Alone on the loneliest stretch of Adirondack Route 9. Car wreck? Didn’t stop you.
I will thank God on every star for your life. Will drive three times over the same patch
of snarling black ice to prove I am your daughter.