Sharon Olds on releasing her daughter . . .
Relinquishment
by: Sharon Olds
On a black night in early March,
the fire hot, my daughter says
Wrap me up in something. I get the old
gray quilt, gleaming like a sloughed
insect casing, and wrap it around and
around her narrow nine-year-old body,
hollow and flexible. Cover my face,
she hisses in excitement. I cover her face
and fall back from the narrow, silver
shape on the carpet.
How finally
she is getting away--an Egyptian child
bound in gauze, set in a boat
on a black night in early March
and pushed out on the water, given
over to the gods of the next world
who will find her
or not find her.
This need to let children go is not easy, as Olds poem hints at. It's full of uncertainty. Maybe the gods will find the children, look after them. Maybe they won't. They'll end up, bound in gauze, floating forever in the water of a black night.
My daughter will be heading out into the black night in August, headed off to medical school. My son, 16 years old and invincible, is already talking about moving out, getting an apartment with a friend. I've tried to give them both tools and wisdom to cope with an increasingly unkind, divided world. My wife and I have done our best, raising them to be loving and empathetic citizens of the universe.
Will our son and daughter succeed in life? I can't predict that, as much as I wish I could. I performed in a show tonight at the library where I work. It's a variety show featuring music, poems, storytelling, and special guests. Think clearance A Prairie Home Companion. The theme of the evening was "Crossroads"--those times in life when you're faced with tough decisions. Kindergarten. High school graduation. Marriage. Children. Jobs. Mortality.
So, necessarily, I thought a lot about choices all day long. I hope I've made good choices for my kids, gone down the right paths these past 25 or so years. I guess I'll never know for sure. I do know, however, that my daughter and son are loving, caring individuals. They want to make the world a better place. Even if I've fucked up every once in a while (which I have), my kids remind me that perhaps I didn't fuck up too badly.
Saint Marty wrote a poem for tonight about a birthday present he received from his daughter. The poem was based on the following prompt from The Daily Poet:
On this date in 1878, Thomas Edison received a patent for the phonograph. Write a poem about a once-common household item that is now obsolete. Examples: transistor radio, cassette recorder, 8-track player, modem, oscilloscope, typewriter, Polaroid instant camera, Walkman.
Remingt n
by: Martin Achatz
My daughter b ught it f r me
f r Father's Day when she was
nly 15, this typewriter lder
than my dad. I imagined
Hemingway p unding ut The Sun
Als Rises in Paris n it, each w rd
a bullet fr m his fingers. The letter
" " d esn't w rk, leaves h les
in the lines I type, as if the paper was
used as target practice f r
a BB gun. I remember h w pr ud
my daughter was when she unveiled
her present, h w I cried when
her face unfurled like a m rning
gl ry. She typed a message t me:
"I l ve y u, Daddy."
"I l ve y u, 2!" I typed back,
all the missing 's lining up
like a w lf m aning at
a beaver m n.
❤️
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