Super-sized Series

 Mothering Part 1  

 

 Luanne Castle with Korean adopted son, Marc

Two poems by Luanne Castle

After Filling Out the Application

I waited for you, but I didn’t
know it was you, even that day
in August when I turned to
your dad and said, “It’s a boy.”
I didn’t picture you or even
an anonymous baby. The words
burst out of my mouth, bypassing
my brain, but somewhere in
Korea a woman had given birth
to you that day. Somehow I knew.
She and I were bound together
in sadness and hope and love.

Adopting a baby starts with a want,
a balloon reinforced with paper
and paste until what exists
is just papier mache: onesies,
an empty quiet nursery,
a zooful of plush mute stuffies.
I waited for the unknown.
When you were six weeks old,
the agency confirmed a boy
born the nineteenth of August.
I found you were the curious heart
who brought my simple art to life.


 
Meeting at the Airport

Your Grandpa had a heart attack
on a flight from Tupelo to Chicago
where somebody swiped his Burberry
as another stranger compressed his ribs,
his dress shirt buttons flying off to expose
his gray-tufted Jack LaLanne chest.

Ten days later we put in our application
for you, and I bought you a small seal
and waited, my body a kite in the air
vaguely attached by a thin string
but nothing to weigh me down to earth.
Nine months after your Grandpa passed
the agency said to meet you in Detroit
and I thought I am so glad it’s not Chicago.

At the airport, the floor seemed mirrored,
your dad and I separate spheres spinning
like bubbles among the strangers,
the aunt and uncle and three grandparents.
Your Grandpa would have been pacing
across that slippery reflective floor
like he did before he walked your dad
to the huppah before anyone waited for you.

After six hours, a stranger carried
you off the plane, your eyes enormous
as a grasshopper’s over the bundle
of your body which she handed over to me.
Then our bodies relaxed into each other
and I unwrapped you and you unwrapped
your little grasshopper limbs. I no longer
saw the floor or anyone else—only you.

Note: Luanne mothered two adopted children, Marc and Marisha and is now mothering Marc’s son while he and his wife work.

 

Laurie Byro and her father Paul Lampe

 

Any December by Laurie Byro

For Paul Dwight Lampe, 1927 to 2013

After work, at 6 pm, I call my father.

He has forgotten to take his pills,
he has forgotten what they are for,
he has forgotten

to mail a letter. After a half-hour,
we find the stamps--
we lost them twice.
They look like stickers of dogs and cats
a child collects inside a book;

we lost the envelope,
we lost the bill to put inside,
we lost the stamps—
again. I wait

on the phone
while he hurries to the mailbox,
I hear the effort,
I don’t hang up.
He says I call to yell at him.

“Dad it is 6:45, can we hurry,
can we finish?”
He says I sound like my mother
yelling "not good enough,
not right."

I want him to hurry;
I want to be done
with him being the child.

Remember we went to Palisades Park
on your day off?
You held the pocketbooks, watched,
while Mom and I went on the rides.
Again and again, the roller coaster,
as we screamed into the night.

I want his life to be soft
like a velvet sky,
the stars not so far
beyond the grasp of his mind.

He says “Thank you, goodnight,
you are my best girl.”
I say “Dad, I’m sorry.” He says,
“Yes, I know.”
“But remember dad,
when we went to Palisades Park?"

“Yes, I always held the pocketbooks,
I was too afraid.” “Yes, I say.”
“Dad,” I say and he interrupts to say it first,
he wants to get it right
to remind me of who he was.

”Now honey, it’s you.” He says.
“It’s you who holds the pocketbooks
and watches bravely as I go up.”

 
 

Laurie Kuntz and her mother surrounded by family

 

Two poems by Laurie Kuntz

My Mother's Hands on Mother's Day
 
Her hands do little to nothing,
hands that once held four infants,
hemmed skirts, stirred sauces, brushed knots to silk,
hands that slapped against her life less lived,
and pulled a grandchild out of womb,
then held him up in awe—
 
an offering, a touch, to be of use.
 
Now her hands lie
idle, skin stretched and streaked
as a veined pansy petal—
Having nothing to offer,
her hands, from an empty lap,
no longer reach.
 
This Sunday, at the nursing home
whose walls are painted kindergarten blue,
I will hold her hands in mine,
and feel them flutter
like a butterfly caught in the wind.
 

 

Laurie Kuntz husband, her mother-in-law and son

 

For My Husband on the Aging of His Mother
 
When did you two become friends,
is that what happens eventually
to sons who come to truly know
a mother when the care changes hands
from the first soft pink palm
to the sturdy gripped and chapped one
helping her from bed to breakfast and then back again,
every day, the same rotation of pills and pillows,
then, seeking a moment when joy can enter,
like a stray cat looking for a lap to purr away the day,
as if there were nothing better to do.

 

Joane Leotta and her mother in the 1990s

 

The Conversation by Joan Leotta

"My daughter comes and goes," Mom says.
"I am your daughter," I announce.
I stand by her straight green chair
and take her hand in mine.
Her head turns toward me
but her eyes stare without focus.

Bending toward her, I ask,
"Would you like a drink of water?'
"My daughter comes and goes," she answers.
From her pink plastic pitcher,
I pour water into a cup.
I pour until I am empty.

Then I place the cup in her hand,
closing her fingers around it, one by one.
She raises the water to open lips,
but tilts the cup too soon.
She wants to drink,
but cannot find her mouth.

I mop the spill and get more water.
I raise the fresh cup to her lips.
She smiles, sips, and slips her hand over mine.
"My daughter comes and goes," she says.
"My mother too, " I answer,
hug her hard and kiss her.

From Languid Lusciousness with Lemon     

 

Sharon Knutson’s mother and her cat Bandit

 

 Mothering Mother by Sharon Waller Knutson


All back bones broken
by cancer, my 80 something
mother lies flat on her back
in the middle of her living room
in a hospital bed with bars
like the crib where I once lay
and like her I run back and forth
attending to her every need.
I give her bed baths, brush
her hair, put on her makeup,
feed her three meals a day,
dole out her pain medication
and chemo and when her catheter
leaks I change the sheets and wash
bedclothes and bedding at the 24 hour
laundromat across the street day
and night, feed the cats, clean house
and drop into bed dead tired
in the early morning hours like she
did for me. I don’t mind. It’s my turn.

Shelly Blankman and her mother

The Mother I Once Knew by Shelly Blankman

 There is nothing left now but bits
of bones of the mother I’d known.
Her hair once shiny and nicely styled,
smelling lemony with each morning hug,

now dirty, mousy gray, and scraggly.
hanging down to her knees like
an old curtain. It drapes over one eye.
She reminds me of Veronica Lake,

I tell her. She stares at me blankly, this
woman who once watched movies with me,
shared memories of stars back in the
day when movies were better, she’d say.

You tried to braid my hair, she accuses me,
this stranger’s eyes glaring. I didn’t, Mom.
My voice quivers and I am trapped in thoughts
of a 10-year-old child caught in a lie she

never told. My heart soars back decades, when
she braided my hair so tightly, so perfectly painful.
I would close my eyes, try to swallow tears, hoping
the ordeal would soon end, but dared not complain.

Even then, I knew looking nice was as vital to her as
breathing. She expected the same of me. Still, it was
torture. Seams didn’t match. Pants were too baggy. Or
too tight. And what’s that fleck no one saw but her?

I miss those days now. Her distorted mirror shattered,
her critical eye blinded by Alzheimer’s. I long for
the days of painful braiding, lemony hugs and gushing
over old movie stars, favorite films. I’ll still see her on

holidays she no longer knows and bring her flowers
she demands I take when I leave. Then I’ll go home
and wait to hear when the vultures of Alzheimer’s
have spit out her last bits of bones, now turned to dust.

 previously published in Best Poetry Online  

 

 Jim Lewis’s mother Lorraine

can't hide from mama by j.lewis

unless you get too technical
by nineteen i was gone
and whatever mama wanted me to learn
was done, finished, over

college and family and work -
i left new mexico behind
nothing there to pull me back
no tsk-tsk to irritate me
aggravate me
when i insisted
on spinning the wheel
and taking whatever number
fell beneath my hand

somewhere along the way mama up and died
and i said goodbye out loud
shed at last of her looking over my shoulder
oversized frown at some choice
i felt was mine alone to make

no one warned me 'bout mama's ghost
the one that sneaks
into the middle of a good dream
finger wagging in my face
and i wonder how'd she get there
and how much did she see -

on a cloudy day, sometimes
she slips into a stream of thought
leaving me to wonder
if maybe i wasn't son enough

and then there's times
like just this afternoon
when the lady in the next car
window down, yapping like a chihuahua
wants to school me in the fine art of driving
(and i already knew she never graduated that one)
and the impulse flashes and my hand starts to raise
and the single-digit salute is already forming
but i can't, just can't
'cause i feel mama watching