Posted tagged ‘mother’

« ManicDDaily home page

Lost Friend

July 23, 2010

A dear friend died today.  She was 58.  Like me, she was a Gemini, however, she was not “manicddaily”, but “steady-steady-daily”.  She was a wonderful person, invariably, profoundly, kind, while also persistently dogged, someone who saw things through; who sustained others through setbacks, who nurtured family and friends with a sweetness, and a sense of calm and security, even through terrible crises.

One of these was 9/11.  She lived right across the street from the World Trade Towers; she kept her family life and hopeful life and just plain daily life going through the torturous months of smoke and crowds and police lines, fear and sadness.

She was certainly her own person—her brand of kindness made many lifelong friends, maintained a devoted marriage—but she was also very strongly, markedly, a mother.  This made her youthful death especially difficult—it was terrible for her to leave her children;  terrible to cause them the pain of losing a mother.

But what could she do?  There are some things that mothers who could lift a car off their child’s legs simply aren’t strong enough to fight.   Still, I feel sure, I have to feel sure, that that strength and sweetness is still there somehow, somewhere close to home.

Categories: Vicissitudes of Life
Tags: , , , ,

Comments: 2 Comments

First Sestina (Posted as Encouragement) – “Vacuum”

October 13, 2009

In this morning’s post, I explained the rules of writing a sestina, a fairly complicated 39-line poem, which involves six repeating “end words” in a rotating/interlocking stanza form.   I also posted what I consider to be my best sestina.  (See, post re “Changing Gears – a Sestina – “Pink” both for the better sestina and an explanation of the intricacies of the form. )

As encouragement to beginning sestina writers, I’m now posting the first sestina I ever wrote (and definitely not my “best” one.)     Although the poem follows the form, you can see the compromises I made – choosing generic words  – “talked, over, up, mother, vacuum, when” as my “end words” so that I’d be able to easily repeat them in accordance with sestina rules.   (The two posted sestinas are on different subject matters, but I wrote them one after the other, so there is a kind of relationship.)

A tip here:  if you are ever doing a writing or poetic exercise, and need to choose a prompt, and you’re feeling dried out, burned up, and  stumped for inspiration, try something like “mother” or “father”.   Believe me, the words will flow.

As always, pause only where punctuated.

Vacuum

When my aunt came to visit, they talked
of old times, my aunt hunching over
her cigarette, her heavy breasts held up
by an arm across her middle, my mother
smoking as well, her cheeks like a vacuum
cleaner, puffing out.  She only smoked when

her sister came, then she became like a teenager when
folks are away; her gestures sullen, she talked
with a thoughtless sneer, the kind that filled the vacuum
of her youth, a time she thought she’d never get over
all the obstacles they’d set up, her own mother
not understanding, no wonder she got fed up.

She loved them, yes, but everything was up
from there.  Farm life.  Especially then, when
owning land was something but not, like her mother
thought, everything.  You were still talked
about, looked down on, passed over,
a farm not bringing cash to fill the vacuum,

nor nice clothes, nice furniture, nice rugs to vacuum.
Though the time they remembered that night when they stayed up
was when the government took their land, building over
their farm, a munitions plant for the war, and when
their father went north to rawer land; and they talked
of joining him, but only when their grandmother, my mother’s mother,

was stronger.   She was a favorite of my mother,
and favored her in turn, filling a vacuum
in the heart of the middle child, the one who talked
in such maddening ways, sticking her nose up
the others thought, the grandma protecting her when
they mocked, but sick now, her life nearly over.

They worked shifts at the plant, then each took over
the grandma’s care, my aunt, my own grandmother, my mother.
‘But who was with her,” my aunt asked suddenly, “when
she died?”  My mother thinking, “I had out the vacuum,
I remember that.  I pulled it out after ringing up
the doctor,” my mother, smoking hard as she talked.

“So it was you,” my aunt said, “when—” “I tried to vacuum
fast.”  But slowly my mother spoke, the smoke rising up
like traces of what could not be done over, slowly she talked.

(All rights reserved.  Karin Gustafson)

Categories: poetry
Tags: , , , , , , , ,

Comments: Be the first to comment

Mother’s Tea

September 15, 2009

Distance from the manic environs of New York City leaves me so enervated I’m not sure that I can be “daily” any more.

Still the New Yorker in me persists.  (After all, I only left Saturday morning—the New Yorker in me has got to be stronger than half a week!)

Still, it’s amazing to me how quick routine/structure/discipline gives way.  (Though I’m not sure I can really call blogging a discipline!)

What fades I guess are the constructs you have built up as parts of yourself.  I don’t think it is Florida that rubs them away so much as entry into the parental home.

Your parents genuinely don’t notice these constructs.  (My parents, for example, persist on offering me chicken salad, even though I’ve been vegetarian for thirty-five years.  I mention that to them, they say, yes, but that it’s really low-calorie.)

When I used to come home from college, the first thing I would do would be to go to our kitchen counter, pour out a bowl of cereal and stand there eating it.  It seems to me that it was usually Special K, possibly Grapenuts. (Although we did have cereal at college back then, it was always cornflakes, stale, and served in large glass jars.)

Eating the Special K, or possibly Grapenuts, was a way of transitioning back to childhood.  I’d usually have at least a bowl and a half.

I don’t do that now.  But then, the main cereal my parents have here are laden with fiber and artificial sugar.

Also, when I come to my parents’ house now, it is important that I remain an adult.  There are things to be done, helped with, organized.  (No counter bowls of cereal for you!)

They are certainly still as caring, still as parental.  As I type this blog, my mom ghosts out in nightdress, to ask me whether I wouldn’t like some decaf tea.

I don’t particularly want any decaf tea.  ( I actually kind of dislike decaf tea;  it usually tastes just one remove from dishwater to me.)  So, I say, well, thanks, but you don’t need to bother, but she says she already has the bag—she is of the generation that reuses tea bags.   I say well, fine then.

She gently brings over the cup of tea in a nice cup, nice saucer, holding a small carton of milk from their Meals on Wheels delivery earlier in the day.  She does not use milk, but she remembers that  I usually do.

“Would you like milk?”

“Sure.”

She pours it in.

And then, feeling truly sad that I am leaving, I think, she says I can just put it down on the freshly varnished coffee table next to me.

Whoa, I think to myself, knowing how she feels about freshly varnished tables.  So, despite what she says,  I  look for something I could put the saucer on, something to serve as coaster.  Unfortunately all the books on the coffee table seem to be photo albums.

“Oh here’s something,” she says suddenly, picking up a placemat from another table.  “They did just redo that table,” she goes on, as she puts the placemat down on my coffee table, “so I guess it’s just as well to take care of it.”

She steps gently back to the kitchen where I hear her moving about.  Then, after a moment, there is a sudden beep, which I realize is the microwave announcing the water she has heated for her own cup, the cup she is making after mine, the cup which in fact will be the second use of the tea bag.

I take a quick sip of the tea which for decaf really tastes quite good, the microwaved water almost scaldingly hot.   I do not use a microwave at all, and certainly not for heating water;   still, that hot hot tea tastes really very good just now.

But I remember how, as a child, anything from my mother’s hands tasted good.

Categories: parenting, Uncategorized
Tags: , , , , ,

Comments: Be the first to comment