Hello, friends!
First, let me say that the image above was taken for two reasons: to continue with my overarching “hand” theme, and to talk to the garden motif that is in this particular piece (okay, if I’m honest, a third reason is to celebrate a fresh henna stain, even though it has NO relevance to this bit of writing). I must say it was NOT meant to suggest that I have in any way (other than consumption) been involved in cultivating the tomatoes OR the flowers. That’s all John, and for the beauty and yumminess he brings into my life and house, I will be forever grateful.
I invite you to listen to this particular piece in audio rather than (or in addition to) just reading the words here. This would affirm my learning all the ins and outs of how to record/upload/embed audio, and I know you’d like to support me in that way! Kidding. But I do think this piece, more poetry than prose, is best heard.
One note: I refer to “Norma” in the poem…that’s Norma McCorvey, also known as Jane Roe in the Roe v. Wade decision… not Marilyn Monroe, or any other Norma, including your mom’s friend from church.
Here’s the 12+minute audio, which includes a short intro and end comment that are not included in the text of the poem below it. Thanks for listening:
Life of the Mother
It was Mother’s Day on the cusp of the death
of Roe v. Wade & we’re looking down the barrel
of a future where our collective daughter won’t have
the trust to do what’s just for her, regardless of how
and why... I feel it building in my body, a fear for her
bundled with an unwanted rage rising…and then my birth
day, and the gun goes off, the ringing so loud in my ears
I can’t take it, June 24th when my stomach drops, Dobbs
on the docket and I think, how will we make it safe
for the babies, not the nice little blobs in the wanted
sonograms, but my nieces in Texas in their 20’s
in the 2020’s, how can they be and live and breathe
and be okay? How can they love if their bodies
are bound by this bullshit? How will this work?
I think I’m beginning to get it, all my life watching
my mother’s marriage and straining to hear her
voice in mine, and I’m starting to hear it,
everything heavy with double doses of meaning.
It was ‘69 when I bounced onto the scene;
was my mom ready? One month to the men
on the moon, two months to Woodstock,
the whole world busting with progress and freedom
but not for Norma, you know her, she wasn’t dancing
in the love mud, she was reeling from the system
already, out of the school for girls, a ward of the state,
married by sixteen, a pawn for every angle known to man,
she was Roe, as in every woman, as in a mass of eggs
in the female belly, a delicacy depending, a delight.
Was she helped at all or just used by the lawyers
looking to do what was right, forced to open carry
fetus number three before it got decided, destined
to give it up, depressed and drinking, confused, a kid herself,
third birth & divorced by 21 in Texas. 1969.
She was 69 when she died, so many facets and faces
and TV features it’s impossible to follow. But I think
I’m beginning to see my own face in her story, we are
each the exceptions, we are all the lives of the mother
we’re saving, the virgin, the whore, the wise old crone
is me, is my mom if she would let it be.
And the witches are us, every one of our glorious girls,
every mother is my mother in her garden
turning the dirt of disappointment into something
gorgeous or nutritious, my badass grandma Stella
on her stove-stool, always stirring the pot.
If I didn’t pluck the chin hairs so fast you could see it,
I’m the witch with the white hair, bleached by the sun
of survival; every witch they ever burned was just one of us,
a woman who trusts other women and checks in with the plants
for a chance of relief. Every woman who ever got herself up
after being shot down is a phoenix. It’s hard to get up
for the umpteenth time (ask a man) and I’m tired,
but I’m trying, and I’m starting to see it.
I met a woman once on the street, three seconds in she said
she could see I'd have a baby and I thought, some nerve.
She didn’t know what future I wanted to serve. But she did,
she could see, & she became a mother to me. She'd been sick
in ‘68 and weak, in love but smart enough to know not to light
fire to a little spark that started. Wise one, even then
she knew what she didn't know and didn't need to be.
Nineteen in June of '69, and she thinks that little celestial being
was me, that I'm somehow her baby that wasn't ready to be.
That witchy woman's a bosom bud now, and the daughter
she had later is now a daughter to me. So who draws the line?
Who holds the power; who says who's fine?
Only took me 53 years to know what's mine.
I’m a quick study, always have been bright,
took a mean test when I was young and I aced it,
brought home the sticker scores and got the praise
of my praise-crazed father.
Twenty years in that family fortress with the guns
and the ammo, the voice of dear dad ruling the roost
and blending with Limbaugh, the targeted talking,
the gutted deer out the window hanging from a branch
in my tree-fort tree, where I’d go to get alone with my books
and to sort it, try to think straight, though that would never be,
where I’d climb so far up my mother’s voice quaked
when she yelled from my brother’s second floor window
& I could see her, small and quivering beneath me.
I was shaking too, but excited to be so high
and forty years later I start to get why,
where the lines are, what's mine, reminding me
all the times my father burst right into my room
What could you possibly be doing that I couldn't see?
his good-humor snapping if we pushed too far, or cried,
or tried to walk away from a talk we didn’t want to have
or just wasn’t his business. Forty-five years since an uncle
unstuck my solid sense that my body was mine
and shot all my trust. Thirty years of learning it back,
letting go, loving and loving one good man who listens
and writes his pain into beauty, who trusts me,
& who can bear blame that’s his. Who weeds
his own garden. Who planted, twenty years ago,
a big promise I wanted, and our girl just busted
right out of my core, already chanting her mantra
omnia mea mecum porto and me teaching her what
to pack and how to be and lovingly telling her
she is me and her singing and crying, I am my own,
I have what I need from blissful to fearful,
from grappling to dancing, she taught me what’s true.
Poor kid straight puked when Trump got elected,
her wee teenage body rejected what could not be but was,
‘cause how could that possibly be?
Four long hard years of dick-driven egos in charge
and more years of fear that such a stupid cartoon
was the news, not just stupid but deadly, most of us daily
getting thumped by the dangerous silence of others,
by dumb lucky whiteness fucking up cousins and brothers,
all of us afraid of the friction at the table, the stressed out
aunts and mothers making meals and cleaning up messes,
the truth worse than fiction, big men less able than ever
to show weakness and women starving themselves
into meekness and smiling, smiling, sexy but modest,
be the hottest thing going, but pure; be a goddess.
And I’m finally seeing how IN me it is, the ugly weeds
of these toxic gardens we’ve planted, how sick it all is,
the spoiled meat of the patriarchy, the tangled greens
on the table, fertilized by the shit of our cultural trauma
and we’re just eating it up. Every one of us.
I just needed two years of a plague to really feel it, a plague
that took the mothers and brothers of my loved ones
and slammed me into my own bed for a year, sick
as the proverb’s dog, exhausted first thing in the morning,
cells pulsing with an ache deeper than the first ache
& ears ringing so loud the sweet music of my own family
makes me ill. My own mother
thinks I don’t love her
because I no longer bow to the father
and that’s the sad bit, isn’t it?
She’s on her knees, so no wonder
she can’t see me standing right there.
It’s no wonder. She can’t hear me
over the sharp cracks of thunder
at the thought of rising up and after sixty
years of a man’s hand on your head
it maybe feels like a comfort to just stay there.
But when she was still standing, she stood
at the bookcase, a last vestige of justice
in her, and gave me Maya Angelou. Before my
father took it back for the swearing, she gave me
Steinbeck, gave me Morrison and time, and
benign neglect so I could read them and think
and listen. Once the seed of a little fist is sown
there’s no stopping it, even if it needs
decades to grow. I would know.
So. It only took me all of these years to know.
This poem was born a trimester ago, but it started when
I was an egg in a million-egg mess in my mama,
and she was a fourth-month fetus in hers...
can you find me in there? I can just about see it.
It’s ourselves we raise as mothers. It’s us we learn to love.
We can finally let go of the rest. Your parents did their best.
Your kids are giving it all they’ve got, even if it’s not a lot.
To grow myself, I gotta give everyone else the biggest break.
I don't need to know if you're pro-choice or life.
What's at stake is whether you love yourself, or not.
And if you’re still hurt by your mother’s obsession
with weight or your father’s preference for your brother
or booze, if you’re still mad that the kids didn’t choose
your line of work or keep going to church, well, yeah.
You might think every small seed that lands near
a garden’s gotta get saved (you're the seed). You might think
every thing that can be any thing, should (you could relax),
or that every wee bud must grow up to bloom, no matter
the feelings, much less the facts. But that's your own aching
heart-seed reaching for the sun. That's your own soul
teaching you what you need.
Don't you ever get tired, hoeing and weeding?
Don't you ever drop the shovel, plop your butt to the dirt,
earth under your nails, filth on your face, and cry?
Ever start a project and lose the life line, and not know why?
Ever charge off in a clear direction, only to suddenly know,
No? Can you forgive yourself? Can you ever let it go?
How many years till we sort out our power,
how many earnest efforts aborted?
Can our breathing ever be settled?
Will our nervous systems ever get sorted?
The only moment we get is this one. This we know.
The only healing ever to happen is ours, and within.
In our bodies, where we grow, where we tend,
where we crave what we crave.
Our own life is the life of the mother we save.
I just found you, your words, your voice, here in this place, today. Thank you. Beautifully written and read. Keep nourishing your soul with whatever your garden man is feeding you! I'm 65, writing a memoir, and I'm a poet--so maybe some of my pieces are meant to be in this form--thank you for showing the way.
so much yes!