Mother

She always said you had to push a man
and that’s why Dad was so good -
from all she expected of him.
She took credit where
credit was due, I guess.
He did so much for her,
for all of us...

He didn’t seem to mind,
didn’t go off with his friends
to drink or carouse.
He took her fishing instead.
I remember when
he had a good job
at a nuclear research lab
way out in the country.
He could fix anything
from broken TVs
to broken hearts.
He would tell us funny stories
about his time in the Marines
as a radio operator in the
Philippines.

Mother was bipolar.
Often she would sit brooding,
buried in a novel or lying in bed.
Detached from her existence.
We would all creep around then,
fearful of the lassitude
slumped about the house.
How many times I earned her ire,
for being out of earshot too long.
Down in the woods, playing.

Or she would be bright and full of songs;
- sewing until dawn so
I’d have something splendid to wear
to church on Easter Sunday.
Shaping icing flowers for a birthday cake -
canning, or making jam,
shoveling in the garden - tending
rows upon rows of vegetables,
flowers, and fruit trees.

Her life was a disheveled garden,
chaotic and intense -
covered in morning glories
and the stings of pack-saddles.
The moments she loved best
were stints by lake or stream,
casting lines into the depth.
Rapt in her own season,
she knotted herself
to the triumph of the catch.

Dreams she had for her children,
to be more than she was -
so she could hold us as trophies, too.
None of us lived up to her expectancies.
It has taken years to forgive ourselves for that.
Each of us had to learn to stand up to her.
Me, more than the rest.
I could never stay angry with her.
I had to learn not to love her so much.
It was a good day when I finally
untied the strings of guilt.

Now, she sits by the window,
watching the birds at the feeder
and longing to go fishing.
My father abed in his last gasp -
patiently hovering; waiting
for her permission to move on.

She considers her harvest -
the sweet fruits of the fruit she sowed;
forbearing the weeds she didn't pull.
As she strains to grasp for that
which abides just beyond her reach;
she understands, finally,
the sumptuous garden
she grew.

© 2001, 2007 Melissa Songer