A gift for my mother and grandmother… Tracing the story of three generations.

called you sunday past
hallmark said it was time
for some contrived day
invented to sell cards and FTD bouquets
and add to radio morning show trivia
give you lip service between station identification
and the phrase that pays
but I refuse to equate your status
to that of national egg month and secretaries’ week
because before it was the fashion

you took your daughters to work…

I.

all three of them in pigtails
when your young wife went away
your dreams snatched away with a shock
so in the midst of depression
economic and otherwise
you raised three little girls
who would raise little girls
who would raise little girls
who would one day hope to
raise little girls to be just like
the great grandma they never knew
who somehow held your heart despite
seventy years of loneliness
empty beds, empty wallets, empty cupboards
I met you fifty years after the storm
loved to visit your farm and trailer home
find peacock feathers and arrowheads
in fields that you plowed
building on the dreams of ancestors long since passed
now I build on yours
you slipped away with your daughters by your side–
and their daughters
who for some reason never considered it a failure
that you came eight years short of your hundred-year promise
your littlest girl
had a littlest girl
who had a little girl
… so that promise is unbroken

II.

standing in afternoon windowpane shadows
laughing melancholy memories
about how grandpa Arbra used to notice
your every six-month pictures of your five-minus-one
and say “you shore do have a lot of grandbabies”
we never bothered to correct him because
what’s the harm in overestimating your hand in creation
maybe it’s just that he could see the future

so your fingertips trace the photos
like the wings of a butterfly
“look here at Arbra and G.S.
they’re both gone now”
and you choked on a tear
“and this… is my mother…
it’s almost scary how much
your mother looks like her.
you know, Les, I feel so cheated.
I never had a mother.
I never had a grandmother.
I don’t even know what kind of person she was
or what her laugh sounded like.
all I know is my dad never loved another woman
like he loved her”
and all I can tell you is that
despite having no example to follow
you made the best mother
and the best grandmother
and I’m thankful to know the sound of your laughter
and I’m thankful to have known what makes you cry
and to see the pride
and tears in your eyes

III.

we’ve been to hell and back
on many an occasion
told me I was special from day one
tuesday’s child… full of grace
sprang from the heart of a woman-child
with but an eighteen year headstart
on the marathon of the ages
I’ve grown accustomed to hearing
about your beauty and poise and contagious joy
how bubbly your laugh and beautiful your smile
and sparkling your green eyes
but your beauty to me comes not from
how many heads you still turn
at high school football games
you were beautiful singing me to sleep
“I love you Leslie…
oh yes I do…
I don’t love anyone…
as much as you…”
at age three those words made me cry
you were beautiful while trying to hide your pain
while staring it in the face
because I had my father’s eyes
you were beautiful when your second
little girl
slipped through the fingers of your heart
and into eternity
you were beautiful when you held me
in steamy bathrooms wheezing
unable to afford hospital beds but
providing the best medicine
you are beautiful now
when you smile at your baby girl
walking across stages
chasing papers
and cry with your baby girl
picking up the pieces of her heart
you are beautiful when you pray
and beautiful when you speak
you are beautiful when you sleep

and beautiful when you… live

you bear not only an uncanny physical resemblance
to your grandmother
but a spiritualemotional one as well
you have begun the next pattern
in the woven tapestry of life
and as long as words are spoken
and dreams are unbroken…

you are living