Super-Sized Series

Remembering Mother

 

Alan Walowitz and his mother, Esther

Esther Walking by Alan Walowitz

My mother clatters down the tiled hallway,
the handles of her walker clutched hard in her fists
so the wobbly wheels won’t get ahead of her will
and leave the rest of her behind.

The PT says she’ll learn to walk again,
though I can tell she hasn’t forgotten much:
those legs move rapidly enough
like a duck paddling beneath the surface.  
Still, there’s no easy gliding here
above the waterline. Just an old lady
stuck in the swamp of herself
and getting nowhere pretty fast.
It could make me laugh--
this a woman I once couldn’t keep up with:
She would head out in the autumn dusk toward Sunrise,
ducking through Mrs. Becker’s hedge,
the shopping cart idling quietly behind
as if it were propelling her through the night.
I claimed I was coming along to help
but really couldn’t bear to let her out of my sight,
and was happy, after all the clatter and want of home,
to have her to myself at last.
 

 

 

Mary Ellen Talley, right, and her mother Ethel

 

One History of Women’s Lib by Mary Ellen Talley

Ethel left the Montana homestead for Spokane,
rode commuter trains to Cheney Normal,
then, to keep her one-room school teaching job
hid the wedding ring and girdled her pregnancy.
       More likely, husband didn’t want her working.

She delivered Spokesman-Reviews with children daily,
four routes with her young son. They split money saved,
he for Gonzaga Prep to be a gridiron hero, and she—
to Gonzaga University to update her teaching methods.
       Unlikely, but Ethel ran away to summer school.

After years at home, she bussed ‘cross town on weekdays,
transferred to teach her 5th grade class at Cooper School.
Fred moved out that December, their much younger
daughter in 1st grade at the parish school.
       Likely the pastor cautioned against divorce.

Fred had his story: Quit Prep at sixteen, and set to work
when his dad died in the mines. Caddied. Drank. But found
Depression era work. Wouldn’t pay for colleges or wedding
for his daughters. Ethel paid off those loans - installment plan.
       Unlikely, but these parents reunited after eight years.

Fred and Ethel raised their son and the youngest daughter
in the house. Split costs. Fred paid his share of youngest
daughter’s college—half of tuition, books, housing - 1968.
They read the news. Did Gloria Steinem make an impression?
       More likely, it was Ethel’s doing.
 

 

The Day My Mother Takes on Terrorists by Sharon Waller Knutson

My mother, an eighty-year-old widow,
calls me on the phone on a Sunday
evening and she is so hysterical
I can’t understand her. All I can make
out is the thugs that had been
terrorizing the neighborhood
peopled with senior citizens
for months had stolen something
and were dismembering it.
I cringe thinking it is the stray
cat I’d been feeding behind
the building. Call 911, I say,
I’m on my way. I drive across town
and arrive in time to see two
teenagers in handcuffs and a tow
truck lifting a Harley Davidson
out of the stairwell at the apartment
house next door to the bookstore.
The detective is taking my mother’s
statement. She says she had looked out
her bedroom window above
the bookstore and saw two boys
stealing the motorcycle owned
by her neighbor who was on vacation.
She hurried down the stairs
and told them to put it back,
It doesn’t belong to you, she says
she told them and points at the teenagers
in handcuffs. She adds, but they didn’t
mind me and wheeled it right past me.
The detective calls my mother
a hero and the thieves call
her a liar and snitch and the B word
and tell her to watch her back.
My mother tells the felons
she will bring them cookies in jail.
Even bad boys need to eat, she says
as she walks upstairs to watch Dallas
while they ride off in the police car. 

My Mother on Fire by Judith Waller Carroll

Housework or yard work,
my mother tackled it with the fervor
of the evangelists that knocked on our door
while she hid in the kitchen.
She had no time for showy religion,
but let a weed show up among her beloved roses
and she showed it no mercy.
She shoveled snow in the winter,
raked leaves in the fall, never called a plumber
when she could do it herself.
When it was time to burn the trash,
she covered her arms with Daddy’s old jacket
and stood in the alley with the hose,
smoke billowing, sparks flying from the bin,
the sun catching her auburn hair
and setting it aflame.

 

 

DON'T...

By Rose Mary Boehm

Just don't please ‘do’ Mother’s Day.
I had you because I wanted you. I loved you
because I couldn’t help myself. I hurt because
you had to fight your first safe fight against
the one person who’ll be there for you—
unconditionally. I cooked, cleaned, nursed,
healed you because this is what mothers do.
You didn’t ask to be born. Having you was
very selfish of me. I offered two new souls
on the altar of life and its vicissitudes,
ultimately for you to figure out the choreography,
getting yourselves fit for inheriting the
mess we leave for you. Don’t thank me.
 

 

Giving Her My Heart Gave Me Weight by Angela Hoffman

I tuck away things of various weight
for my Thursday visit with my mother
so we’ll have something to talk about
when I ask her what’s new:

a pair of ducks in my front yard,
my resentment of being frugal,
our dinner out, the slick roads,
worries about retirement,
the daffodils bent under the snow,
how the news is so overwhelming,
how I voted. . .
when I remember she’s gone.

I empty my pockets, stuff my hands inside
the emptiness, and I am adrift. 

 

 

After the Gala by Tamara Madison

I watched my mother undress
after the Women's Club Charity Gala.
First, the hat in dotted Swiss
with its little veil— just for fun, she said,
her black curls springing free. Then
the black and white sheath
which she asked me to unzip,
and the black merry widow
with its rows of things that looked
like bones, her grateful flesh free again.

Next, the stockings, unclipped
from the girdle. I watched her roll them
down her legs, making two donut-like
confections to be washed in the bathroom
sink. Then the girdle, stocking clips
dangling like cow's teats, and the dance
she'd do to wriggle out. This odd, ivory-white
contraption looked as though it could stand
by itself, but she folded it, wedged it
into a drawer between stockings and bras.

Now, she eschews punishing garments
for pull-up pants, and shirts with patch pockets,
(no bra needed). In place of a girdle her new
torture device: the brace on her left foot,
which I help remove and stand behind
the recliner next to her two different-sized
shoes and the pen that has fallen
from her crossword.
 

 

What I Found When I Lost My Earring by Joan Leotta

Settling into my window seat
after running to catch my connection,
I reached up remove my earrings.
Left ear's  shiny metal clip-on daisy
easily slid into my hand.
Reaching for its twin,
my fingers found a bare lobe.
Immediately I realized the
probable moment of loss--
when I hastily slung my bag
hard over my shoulder as
I ran for the connecting gate.
I fretted over the loss on the flight,
upset far in disproportion to that
daisy's dollar cost.
That night a vivid dream roiled
my sleep, bringing up a memory
of how, against advice I had foolishly
worn and lost, my mom's aquamarine ring,
a ring her father had made for
her upon her graduation.
In the dream, she was so sad
repeating, "it’s all right."
On my way home,
I stopped at Lost and Found
The blue uniformed- woman
checked her list, shook her head.
I sighed, "Guess I should know
better than to wear something I like
when traveling."
She reached out, clasped my hand.
"Things are just things. If you like
something wear it; enjoy it.
Don’t blame yourself for
what you can’t control.”
That very night I dreamt again of my mother.
She was smiling. On her right hand
She wore her aquamarine ring.
In her left, she held my lost daisy clip-on.

From Feathers on Stone 

 

While You Watch Your Mother Dying by Shoshauna Shy

you see that gangly black poodle
a neighbor sheared when you
were small, his hand passing over
the gleaming purplish body till it sat
bald and exposed. You didn’t know
dogs could look that ugly, and you
had ventured to the far end
of the block to see it get shaven
without letting your mother know.
Next the walking of San Francisco

into a museum featuring Andrew
Wyeth paintings; you were there
with the boyfriend your mother wanted
you to ditch, never knowing you kept
him in your life for years beyond high
school. Then comes the muffin paper

cupping peanut M&M’s at the first
birthday party you got invited to attend,
how they clacked against your teeth
before you crunched the shellacked shell
apart, your tongue’s own secret party.
This was before the birthday girl

bit you, clamped her teeth on your
upper arm and sunk them in, an infraction
her mother begged you to keep from
your own mother, your sleeve long
enough to hide this trespass.

And here you sit as she takes her last
surges of breath, just as she was there for you
when you took your first, the only person–
despite all you kept from her–to know you
like no one else ever will.
                        
first published on Verse-Virtual 

 

 

PEEPS by Barbara Crooker

In those last few months my mother didn’t want to eat, this woman
who made everything from scratch, and who said of her appetite,
I eat like a bricklayer.  Now she listlessly stirred the food
around her plate, sometimes picking up a piece of chicken,
then looking at it as if to say, What is this?  Wouldn’t put
it in her mouth.  But Peeps!  Marshmallow Peeps!  Spun sugar
and air, molded in clever forms:  a row of ghosts, a line
of pumpkins, a bevy of bunnies, a flock of tiny chicks,
sometimes in improbable colors like purple and blue. . . .
One day, she turned over her tray, closed her mouth, looked up
at me like a defiant child, and said, I’m not eating this stuff.  
Where’s my Peeps?

When it was over, the hospice chaplain said some words
in my back yard, under the wisteria arch.  The air was full
of twinkling white butterflies, in love with the wild oregano.
Blue-green fronds of Russian sage waved in front of the Star
Gazer lilies, and a single finch lit on a pink coneflower, and stayed.
When there were no more words or tears, I ripped open
the last packet of Peeps, tore their little marshmallow bodies,
their sugary blood on my hands, and gave a piece to each
of us.  It melted, grainy fluff on our tongues, and it was good.

from Gold  

 

 

If, in October by Marilyn L. Taylor

I should be driving past a row
of brick-and-shingle bungalows
when maple leaves are sticking to the sidewalk
and a rain-glossed school bus starts to swing
its yellow bulk around the corner,

there you are again—framed in a wavy
leaded window, watering a long-fingered
philodendron while the Victrola
clatters out Landowska’s version of
the Little Preludes through the glass

and I am nine years old —and you,
the center of my small universe,
are the love of my life, to whose powdered
presence I come home blissfully,
day after dangerous day

utterly innocent of a distant time
when you will turn from me
and withdraw into my archive of losses.
Even your quaint name, Alice, melts
to nearly nothing on my tongue.

First appeared in Verse-Virtual  

 

 

Salt by Laurie Byro

My mother would play Hank Williams sometimes
and beg the men at the bar to dance the Two Step
or some old-fashioned reel I barely knew.  
 
I was six.  I would think of my father coming
home with his empty thermos and us not there again.  
I had a stomach full of fear, glasses shattering
 
as his hand would clear the table from the night
before.  I’d plead with the bartender through eyes
like globed fruit.  My mother would say

I was shy and they’d poke bony fingers at me.
If one pulled me on his lap while my mother
danced, I’d smell the stale sweat and beer. I thought

of my father hanging damp laundry on the line, stirring
up a black cast iron skillet of potatoes. On the slick
wood there was a small bowl of salt. I’d play with it,
 
write Daddy, or draw a heart and our initials. I promised
when I was older I’d steal away with him to Mexico. 

 

 From Luna           

 

 

She Married For Love by Abha Das Sarma

Women draw welcome songs
at their thresholds as the day breaks
and the roses bloom-
little girls flutter in shiny silks,
their faces lit with lamps.
The incense trails, petals shower
as the bride walks marking her feet
dipped in vermillion and milk
with vows of love.

Her gaze shifts, eyes search beyond that room.

Her mother too had married for love-
a man met by chance, against her family.
Alas, in love left her pursuit,
stayed in regret until death.
She led us high, taught us to be us,
never cry when children left,
when it was our turn. In bitterness
She had held, needed to be held.

First appeared in the Ekphrastic Review  

 

 

Mama Kept Her Secret by Alarie Tennille

As a child, Mama’s chicken and dumplings
reminded me of “Diddle, diddle, dumpling,
my son John.” That made me smile,
even though I resented the chicken
for not being fried.

When I got married, dumplings became
her peace-offering to my new husband.
On Sunday afternoons, we’d go over to do
laundry. Any reason to drop by Mama’s
included dinner.

Chris cooed over the best dumplings
ever, then proved his praise
by polishing off the pan.

No one expected Mama’s heart attack
at age 59. I didn’t get her recipe before
our next Sundays stopped. Neither did
my brother.

A few years later, I hoped Maya Angelou’s
cookbook would save me. Angelou added
carrots, celery, and onions, making her broth
even better. The chicken matched Mama’s.

But those dumplings? More like heavy
clods of Arkansas clay than Mama’s sea-breeze
dumplings from Georgia. We still miss
Mama’s poetry on a plate.

from Three A.M. at the Museum   

 

 

Talkers by Tina Hacker

In the late ‘40s when crying babies
took precedence over Glenn Miller
or Benny Goodman on the radio,
new moms sat on fences
in front of apartment buildings
rocking infants in buggies
as evening shaded the day.
My mother rarely joined them.
She was convinced they gossiped
about her, malicious rumors that rolled
from woman to woman like the L train
nearby. But she occasionally sat
down for a few minutes,
the time it took for an indifferent facial
expression or greeting to confirm
her suspicions.
“Rose thinks she’s better than me,”
she’d grumble as she left.
The name didn’t matter,
Fanny, Jean, Connie.

Originally published in Red Eft Review    

 

 

PINK BERRIES by Lori Levy

You are the queen of detail, Ma,
the queen of lists and dates and things to do;
deadlines, errors, insect bites.  Accidental
scratches catch your eye.  Suspicious moles.
Once I thought I saw you drowning in a sea
of remembering and reminding,
no breath left for life.

Is it you who’ve changed
or I?
Now I want to thank you, Ma—
you who knows how to look
at dry brown grass, thorny bushes,
who walks with delight through chaparral,
pointing to the tiny pink berries
on a dull green shrub beside the trail.

You who laughs with me later
when we choose to wait for Dad—
not in the lobby of the Hilton La Jolla
where he listens to a lecture
on allergies to roaches—
but in a half-deserted parking lot
across from a cold, gray sea:
Torrey Pines State Preserve,
where warm and together in my Montero
we read poetry.

You, Ma, who knows the value of a pause—
an hour’s nap in the early afternoon,
a cup of coffee savored while the mind floats
cloud-like somewhere else;
a moment of inertia when eyes soak in
the way a gull blends
into a rock above the cove;

who takes the time to linger
over garlic, basil, olive oil;
over mustache, wrinkles, glass of wine
in a painting of a man on A Night Out.
It's you who reads the tilt
of his head.  You
who sees the fervor in his eyes.

First appeared in Surprised by Joy (a Wising Up Anthology).  

 

 

Nothing Fancy by Mary McCarthy

Mama’s kitchen magic
was with simple things
butter and parsley
on new potatoes
vegetable soups full
of summer’s bounty
plain stews rich
with careful browning
and a long simmer.
But her best was almost
alchemical—the dross
of bacon fat and vinegar
mixed with white sugar
the sour, smoky and sweet
concoction that took
fresh green beans
to a savory sublime.
Learnt from her
German grandmother,
an old formula,
a warm dressing
we loved best
with ordinary beans
that also served
to lift red cabbage,
curly endive, even lettuce
out of the everyday
and into the realm
of favorites remembered
long after Mama
and her kitchen days
were gone.

First appeared in Silver Birch