Happy Mother’s Day to everyone!
Now that the craziness of the beginning of 2025 has subsided a little, I’m going to try to post at least once a day. If you can’t tell, I’m experiencing a little guilt for being such a slacker blogger saint. I have no legitimate excuse aside from the fact that I was busy and tired and overwhelmed (by life, teaching, politics, you-name-it).
I live with a lot of guilt. I grew up Catholic—it sort of comes with the territory. The smallest mistake or oversight can send me into a tailspin of penance and apology. My mother never really exploited my natural tendency to self-flagellate, except when it would teach me a lesson of some sort. Punishment from Mom came in the form of disappointment—I never wanted to hear her say, “I’m disappointed in you.”
Sharon Olds writes about punishment and mercy . . .
The Food-Thief
by: Sharon Olds
They drive him along the road in the steady
conscious way they drove their cattle
when they had cattle, when they had homes and
living children. They drive him with pliant
peeled sticks, snapped from trees
whose bark cannot be eaten—snapped,
not cut, no one has a knife, and the trees that can be
eaten have been eaten leaf and trunk and the
roots pulled from the ground and eaten.
They drive him and beat him, a loose circle of
thin men with sapling sticks,
driving him along slowly, slowly
beating him to death. He turns to them
with all the eloquence of the body, the
wrist turned out and the vein up his forearm
running like a root just under the surface, the
wounds on his head ripe and wet as a
loam furrow cut back and cut back at
plough-time to farrow a trench for the seed, his
eye pleading, the white a dark
occluded white like cloud-cover on the
morning of a day of heavy rain.
His lips are open to his brothers as the body of a
woman might be open, as the earth itself was
split and folded back and wet and
seedy to them once, the lines on his lips
fine as the thousand tributaries of a
root-hair, a river, he is asking them for life
with his whole body, and they are driving his body
all the way down the road because
they know the life he is asking for—
it is their life.
It’s a horrible little narrative that Olds relates—a man being tortured to death because he was hungry and stole food. A Victor Hugo kind of tale. Most of us, if we were starving, would probably steal a loaf of bread or a chicken nugget. And most of us, if one of our loved ones was starving, would probably kill for a loaf of bread or chicken nugget, especially if the loved one is a child. I know I would, and I can safely say that my mother would have, too.
Most mothers I know are pretty altruistic. They would do anything to protect their babies from harm, whether physical, emotional, or spiritual. It’s written in the fine print when you sign up to be a parent. Sacrifice simply comes with the job description.
My mom would do anything for us kids. She raised nine of us to the best of her abilities, and those abilities were pretty badass. She made sure my sister, Rose, who was born with Down Syndrome, was never left behind when it came to anything, including education. When doctors and principals told my mom that Rose would never walk or talk on her own, let alone learn to read and do math, Mom’s response was pretty much, “Oh, yeah?” Rose not only learned to walk and talk, but also how to play basketball and write long, handwritten letters to family and friends.
I miss my mother daily. I know that’s something everyone who’s lost their mothers says, but it’s not a cliché for me. When I encounter a problem, it’s my mom’s no-nonsense, common sense voice that I hear in my head, guiding my actions. Her bullshit detector never failed. Did she make mistakes? Sure. Nobody’s perfect. However, she never hurt anyone intentionally, and that’s an example I try to emulate every day of my life.
If you spoke with any of my siblings, they would all tell you that I was a typical spoiled, youngest child, and that would be an accurate statement. I got away with a lot of shit, BECAUSE I was the youngest, Curfews were loosely enforced, and, as long as I keep my grades up, I could pretty much do what I wanted. (I graduated as salutatorian of my class, so grades were never an issue.). I never had to beg for my mother’s mercy
My mother would have hated this post. She never liked being the center of attention. (Is that a mother thing, too?) I couldn’t buy her mushy Mother’s Day cards emblazoned with roses or hearts or rainbows. She liked to laugh, and making her laugh was something I loved to do.
So, for my mother: Motherhood is like a fairy tale, but in reverse. You start out in a beautiful ball gown and end up in stained rags cleaning up after little people.
Saint Marty wrote a poem for today, based on the following prompt from The Daily Poet:
Write a poem where you pretend you can see into the future. It can be serious, funny, dark, or light in tone. Who’s the president in 2032? What does communicating look like? Where are people wearing? What color is the sky? What does the ocean taste like? Allow yourself to play with your future scenario and be specific and detailed. Do you need a crystal ball to see the future? Tea leaves?
Fortune Telling
by: Martin Achatz
If she still had lips, would she
tell my daughter to go to church
more or my son to get his hair cut?
If she still had eyes, would she
notice I’ve gained weight or
the atlas of lines around my mouth?
If she still had a nose, would she
smell the carnations and daisies
my kids place on her headstone,
the way she buried her face in
her coffee cup every morning?
If she still had breasts, would she
feel them hard and full of milk
to feed my brothers and sisters and me
who could never get enough of her?
If she still had hands, would she
have a rosary threaded between
her fingers, shelling prayers
like peanuts all day long?
If she still had a body, would she
sit in her recliner, rock it gently
with her toes as she listens
for her husband’s boots
stomping off snow on the front step?
You see, all I have left are these
pieces, like an old photograph
torn up because someone blinked
or wasn’t looking at the camera.
I puzzle them together now
like tea leaves at the cup’s bottom,
settled into a fingerprint of all the lies
I told her as a kid, all my little betrayals
she forgave before I was even born.
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