Encore Presentation

 Peggy Trojan  

 

Peggy Trojan

 

Like Mother, Like Daughter

Peggy Trojan has authored eight chapbooks and two full collections of poetry in the fifteen years since she began writing at age seventy-seven. She is still writing and publishing poetry at the age of ninety-two.  Her recent release, Ma, recounts her mother’s long and busy life, beginning as a pioneer child on her parents’ Minnesota homestead to becoming a talented artist and writer, as well as a devoted wife and mother for sixty-nine years. 

Her mother, Alma Lundeen lived a quiet yet full life for ninety-three years. Born the youngest of eight children in 1906, she grew up in a pioneer log cabin in the boreal forest. She was an independent child in that era, trapping muskrat and beaver to earn money as a preteen, smoking a corncob pipe as she traversed the forest and bogs in winter on handmade wooden skis with Ojibwe moccasins for boots, with her pet cat, Toby, often on her shoulder. She went on to study art at the Minneapolis School of Art, then became a teacher along with her future husband, in order for them to afford to marry at the beginning of the Great Depression. Alma kept a daily diary from the age of twelve on, and published her autobiography in her seventies. Her book, Corduroy Roads, has been venerated as a wonderful recounting of early Minnesota pioneer life.

Alma found everyone she met to be interesting and loved hearing their stories. Her favorite expression was: “Isn’t that interesting?!” She marveled that she had been born in a primitive log cabin in the woods and lived long enough to see a man walk on the moon. Having set aside her early art career in order to raise her family, she went back to college at age seventy, studying oil painting, creative writing and philosophy. When Alma passed away after a brief illness in her nineties, one of her neighbors remembered her fondly: “She was always a lady.” She never spoke ill of anyone if she could avoid it and opened her heart and home to countless relatives and strangers in need. Hers was a life well lived. 

 

 

Alma Lundeen

 

November 5, 1915

Cooling herself after baking bread
on the wood stove late at night,
my grandmother was found dead on the stoop.
Mother was nine.

Days before,
walking together on the short cut.
Grandmother stopped
to make a cairn of rocks.
“A memorial,” she said.

Children on the homestead
were expected to be strong,
to understand death
is a necessary part of living.

I asked Mother once
if she had been very sad,
lost and lonely.
She said, “No,”
she was cared for,
being the last of eight.
Life on the farm went on.

All her long life,
she felt for little beings,
helpless people, hurt animals.
And she collected rocks,
which, easily found, last forever.

Harness Bells

Four silver bells
on the ten inch piece
of cracked old leather
Mother saved
from the homestead
can whisk me back in time
more than a hundred years
Shake in sync
with the trot of horses
and I become my mother
tucked between her parents
in the sleigh
Frankie and Dickie
know the way home
nostrils blowing steam
in the cold night full of stars
Bundled in quilts and happiness
believing the whole world
is at peace.

 

Inheritance

Two photos. One, Maria standing.
Her hat, large, beribboned,
black like her dress. One hand
on her sitting husband’s shoulder.
Looking past the camera lens to end of ribboned hats,
beginning of childbirths, long homestead days.

The second, with three children, five more coming.
Husband seated, holding the newest baby.
No hat, hair pulled tight. Not smiling.
Wearing black, buttoned to the neck.

Her little domed trunk
lined in pale flowers with removable tray,
with the round bar of French soap kept in the dark.
In the wrapper these hundred years,
still smelling like lavender.

A short piece of crochet,
dark wine, made from leftover wool
used to knit mittens or scarf.
A note, “From Mother’s petticoat.”

Sixteen assorted buttons in a tiny glass jar.
Another note. “From Mother’s dresses.”

A small remnant of pine,
Nov. 5, 1915, written in ink.
Salvage rescued by my mother, nine,
as she watched Mr. Bottila and Father make the coffin.
These few, and Finnish Grit in my blood.

Lunch Guest, 1939

Mom, who’s that man on the steps?
     Just somebody passing through.
Why is he here?
     Because he was hungry.
What is he eating?
     A fried egg sandwich.
And coffee?
     Yes, and coffee.
Why is he eating out there?
     He said he liked it outdoors.
How did he know where we lived?
     I guess they tell each other.
Where is he going?
     Back to the train, I think.
Is he ever coming back?
     Probably not.
Why did he call you “Ma’am”?
     I think he was just being polite.

Pen Pal

The Evening Telegram printed
names of soldiers wanting mail.
Mother chose Robert Smith.
Wrote, in teacher’s Palmer script,
of ordinary happenings
in our little Wisconsin town.
What birds were at the feeder,
the fox or deer she saw,
how much snow fell,
hoping he was doing well.
Nothing sad or troublesome.
She wrote often, all during the war.

Sometimes, a letter thanking her
would come from a distant battle place,
Italy, or France maybe,
with the military post mark.
A.P.O. 45, New York,
censored by army examiner.

War ended in August, ‘45.
The following Christmas,
a card arrived
showing a black man
sitting by the decorated tree.
He was afraid, if she knew,
letters “from home” would stop.

It made no difference, she confided.
He was fighting for us all,
and she was his pal.
For more than fifty years,
his greeting was saved in her shoebox
with anniversary cards from Pa,
and fancy old Valentines.

They didn’t write much longer.
He was back home then,
and that war was over.

Chores

Mother picked up after my father
for sixty-nine years.
I questioned her diligence once.

“Well,” she smiled. “It’s easier
to pick up after a good man
than it is to find a good man
in the first place.”

All That Matters

In her nineties
my mother’s memory
got stuck on the present.
“Where did Pa go?”
she would ask sweetly.
I could tell her
but minutes later
she asked again.

Once I tried to get her
to recall Paris when Jerry
was doing graduate work.
She couldn’t remember.
Finally, she asked,
“Did I have a good time?”
“Yes! You and Dad
had a wonderful trip!”
“Well,” she said,
looking me in the eye,
“that’s all that matters.”

 

My Mother’s Ring

Had orange blossoms
carved in the white gold band
when it was new.
Her finger grew around it
like a tree around a string of wire.
Her knuckle aged bigger than the ring,
The orange blossoms all worn off.

The funeral director handed me
her boxed ashes
and a plain white envelope
with her ring.

They should have asked me.
I would have said, “No.
Leave it,”
so, wherever she went,
they would know she belonged
with Pa.

ORCHARD

Ma and Pa’s ashes
rest under the wide spruce
on the way to the orchard,
shielded by a common field stone,
names on a small brass plaque.
I greet them as I hurry by.

Though my father did not believe
in life after death,
he materializes quickly.
Today, when invited,
they join me
as easy as sunlight.

“Oh,” I hear my mother sigh,
white hair blending with blossoms.
My father slows by the plum,
saying, “You could prune this branch.”

We linger,
marveling at cherry flower,
high bush cranberries,
exploding clouds of pale bloom.

I leave them circled in Spring.
She, snapping a small sprig to smell,
he, watching her, smiling.  

Mirrored

In youth, I vowed
never to become my mother.
Cutting notepaper from backs
of envelopes, feeding the dog
what she was eating, always
saying things were going to better
in the morning, baking
round loaves so Pa got four heels,
eating the burnt parts, standing
by the stove for hours,
hardly finding time to do art.

One day, when I looked in the mirror,
there she was, looking back.
On my desk, notepaper cut from scraps,
her whole wheat bread in the oven,
poems half done,
and me thinking things will be okay
tomorrow.

All these poems are from the book, Ma.

https://www.amazon.com/Ma-Peggy-Trojan/dp/1886895643

More about Peggy:

https://stortellerpoetryreview.blogspot.com/2023/10/storyteller-of-week.html