Early Years

My mother struggled
during the early years,
she told me. She wasn’t married
to my father when I was born.
I remember her holding out
a fading black and white photo
when she finally decided
to tell me.
In the picture
I’m propped up in a baby carriage,
bundled up for winter.
My little baby eyes nestled behind
soft mounds of doughy baby cheeks,
I hardly recognized myself
glowing with trust and all alone
under my soft yarn hat.
It’s as if I’m on my own in that big
city, like I am now, the blur
of tall buildings climbing to the sky
in the background.
Who took this picture of me,
I ask her.
She stops to think
but then claims says she can’t remember,
it was a struggle back then
she only knows.

Driving Lessons

I feared for my life everytime she got behind the wheel.
The first time my mother drove she was 57.
I had just turned 22
that first time she drove through the cemetery.
No one died that day but it was only dumb luck.
If she could cook,
if she could raise children,
if she could sing,
she could drive she said,
“Let’s go, how hard could it be?”

She passed the written permit test with a haughty air,
and made her road test appointment nonchalantly.
Riding next to her I was paralyzed with doubt
and disbelief.
It was at my expense she’d taught herself to drive.
And she drove like she cooked,
one degree away from total ruin.
And she drove like she sang, making up the words as she went.

And, yes, she also drove like she raised her children,
as if they owed her a debt she expected to be repaid.
Somehow she passed the road test, and
when she got her license there was no stopping her.
She left my father,
speeding away in his Dodge Dart,
and it was left to me to explain how she got away.

Begrudgingly

She was only in the hospital for 6 days.
I held her hand, little like a child’s
and wanting to be held.

But it was my brother who gave her
permission to go.
His words coming softly, calmly
as if releasing a frightened bird
back into the wild.
She never opened her eyes again,
as if she could not bear to see
what she was leaving behind.
Away she flew.

This was not the first time
I heard my brother cry.
Sobs bursting from his dry lips.
It turned out he didn’t know
what hospice meant and believed
she would recover.

She left me her rock collection
–⁠oddly all resembling shoes.
begrudgingly, I marched
them back in pairs down to the beach
and left them where the tide
could reclaim them.