Happy Birthday, Mom!
My mother will be 82 years old tomorrow; I’m going to visit overnight, and three of her sisters and a niece will be meeting me and my sister in Allyn, at Mom’s new home, to have lunch–and cake!
Here is a picture of Beverly with some of her sisters, a sister-in-law, and a niece, and five of their young children. My mom is the young woman in the middle, looking right at the camera. In this picture, she is pregnant with me.
With my mother now in care, I’ve been thinking about my grandmother’s illness toward the end of her life, when she was still being cared for at home, and of this poem (originally published in Calyx, a Journal of Art and Literature for Women).
*
To Carry On
My grandmother’s name was Arada–
In another language, “fertile field.”
I am the second child of her eleventh
And grew up next door
On the old creek road. When Granma
Was old, she took six pills a day,
Thought she saw babies
On the chair, on the pillow, on the floor
Beside her bed. “Careful,” she said,
“Don’t sit on the baby.”
Her daughters cared
By turns, departing after
Like moons into the dark of planets.
From the threshold once
I heard her call, “Don’t forget me,”
But I had already turned into the hall,
To a time before names were spoken.
My aunts moved aside invisible bundles,
Clucked their tongues
And counted pills. “She’s never been sick
Except to have babies.” They smoothed
A blue blanket under her chin,
Smoothed back her black hair.
When I dream of my grandmother, my dream
Is a word from a wordless deep,
A shaft of light. She is tiny
And wrinkled. I wrap her in my arms.
I bear her up the stair.
I have been reading two books that “talk” to each other. Each of the authors is learned in his or her field, witty and charming, a good storyteller. Sometimes, when I’m quiet and listen carefully enough, they break through the walls of the resistance I’ve been feeling lately (about my own writing, about my mother’s journey) and I learn something that I can’t quite pin on either author. It’s something that emerges from the conversation.
One of the things the books are saying has to do with how our passions define us. Nouwen’s fascination with the soul and the soul’s journey drew him into caring for the sick and dying.Pike begins her narrative with this revelation: “I’ve loved horses my entire life. I think it must be something that you’re born with. I remember very clearly sitting in an ice cream shop when I was 6 years old and for some reason a very strong thought popped into my head—you love horses. Ever since that time, my life has revolved around them.”
One of the features I loved about THE POWER OF DREAMS are the chapter epigraphs, which Pike draws from Temple Grandin, Robert Greene, basketball coach John Wooden, and Star Trek. Again, I found numerous intersections to Nouwen’s insights. “It is possible to commit no errors and still lose. That is not a weakness. That is life” (Captain Picard to Data, Star Trek: The Next Generation, “Peak Performance”). As Nouwen might put it: “The mystery of life is that we discover this human togetherness not when we are powerful and strong, but when we are vulnerable and weak.”
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