Sharon Olds raises her daughter . . .
Eggs
by: Sharon Olds
My daughter has turned against eggs. Age six
to nine, she cooked them herself, getting up
at six to crack the shells, slide the
three yolks into the bowl,
slit them with the whisk, beat them till they hissed
and watch the pan like an incubator as they
firmed, gold. Lately she's gone from
three to two to one and now she
cries she want to quit eggs.
It gets on her hands, it's slimy, and it's hard
to get all the little things out:
puddles of gluten glisten on the counter
with small, curled shapes floating in their
sexual smear. She moans. It is getting
too close. Next birthday she's ten and then
it's open season, no telling when
the bright, crimson dot appears
like the sign on a fertilized yolk. She has carried
all her eggs in the two baskets
woven into her fine side,
but soon they'll be slipping down gently,
sliding. She grips the counter where the raw
whites jump, and the spiral shapes
signal from the glittering gelatine, and she
wails for her life.
It's hard to see your kids grow up, grow away from you. Olds recognizes that her daughter is becoming her own person, and pretty soon, she will no longer be able to shelter her from the cruelties of the world. Kids just don't stay kids forever, and, while you're a parent for life, kids become adults become lovers become parents become spouses become (fill in the blank with any adult-sized occupation/avocation/role).
I would love to be able to protect my daughter and son from every boogeyman that rears its ugly head, real or imagined. (NOTE: I'm trying to remain non-political, but you can put whatever orange face you want on the boogeyman.) Obviously, I can't be Batman keeping the streets of Gotham safe for the rest of their lives. So, like Olds, I stand back and watch as they mature and find out they don't like eggs but are sentenced to a lifetime of them.
Of course, kids push boundaries all the time. It's in the job description. They want to do things that are dangerous or, frankly, really stupid. I see that as an adult. They can't connect those dots yet. What do they do in these circumstances? They bend the truth, exaggerate, or outright lie. (I did it myself, so I speak from experience.) Maybe they'll get away with it, and maybe it will bite them in the ass.
Saint Marty wrote a poem for tonight about this very topic, based on the following prompt from The Daily Poet:
Write a poem in which not a single word is true. The poem may consist of lies about yourself, or it could focus on fabricated historical events, laws of physics, or geographic wonders. Let your imagination run toward the false!
A Whopper
by: Martin Achatz
My 16-year-old son wants
to spend the night at a friend's
house because it's the friend's
birthday and they want to make
chocolate chip cookies together then
collaborate on a physics project
(something about bodies in motion,
dropping feathers and water balloons
from the roof of a building) then
watch a Ken Burns documentary
about the American groundhog then
go for a hike in the woods
to take pictures of a flock
of endangered scarlet bloomers
(I've never heard of these before)
that have nested in a pine grove
near the friend's backyard then
go door-to-door collecting cans
to help pay for a classmate's
treatments for a terminal disease
named cocktus erectus (again I've never
heard of this condition before) then
they want to stay up all night
to see the Labia Majora meteor
showers that are only visible
from Earth one night every 157,000
years. How could I say "no" to him?
❤️
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