my memoir dress

Well, I started my full-time job yesterday—thank you for all your good wishes—and I think I’ll really like the job. My co-workers are lovely and interesting, and the work is important. But wow, I haven’t had a 40-hour week desk job for over ten years, and it’s an adjustment. By 3:30 I was missing my girls, wondering how their days had gone, desperate to fold them in my arms. By 9:30 I had to put down the final Hunger Games novel (just 20 pages from the end of the book) because I couldn’t keep my eyes open. But I’ll get used to it, no?

Today the office is closed, so I’m working from home (or rather the coffee shop), and I thought I’d take a break to post some wonderful poems by my friend and fellow writer, Marge Barrett. Marge has a new chapbook called My Memoir Dress, which is just out from Finishing Line Press. Marge is such a talented writer of both prose and poetry, and these poems in particular speak to me as a mother. Marge is able to capture the beauty in the moments in life that many of us overlook. Her poetry is full of lyricism and grace—it’s the kind of poetry that makes me want to stop and savor each word. Marge has given me permission to post two of her poems here, so without further ado:

Wild Flowers

Bloodroot blossoms when my daughter is born.

Along the rushing river banks, shoots push

through hard winter earth. Pulled by spring sun,

the blue-green lobed leaves open wide, breathe.

In a steamy old hospital room, the midwife listens,

counts loudly, heartbeat’s dropping, dropping.

I push, push, push my beautiful bloody baby out.

Hush. Dim the lights. Her eyes, huge blue, study us.

Bloodroot blossoms when my second daughter is born.

Basal leaves again uncurl in the woods

under the web of stick-branched trees.

In the birthing room of a new hospital,

the doctor counters, no stirrups, deep vein thrombosis;

don’t want her throwing a clot to the heart.

This baby comes fast, looks out, alert.

Bloodroot blossoms when my girls are born.

Pure white stars, golden orange centers.

© 2011 Marge Barrett, reprinted with permission of the poet

Magician-At-Large

Leaving London’s Gatwick airport,

I tell them to spend the last change,

buy something sweet, maybe artsy,

why not touristy.

My son disappears,

re-appears

with a calling card

designed by a machine:

his name, our address, and

Magician-At-Large.

He’s fascinated by tricks,

sleight of hand, coins, cards.

He saves money for supplies

at the magic and costume store.

This, after building go-carts,

balsa boats and airplanes,

yoyos (rocking the baby, around the world),

chemistry sets, rockets,

rags on the piano, drums and guitar,

the computer.

My freckled-faced, red-haired son

wands the card over my head,

draws it out of his sleeve,

once again taking me away.

© 2011 Marge Barrett, reprinted with permission of the poet

Thank you, Marge, for letting me share your wonderful words here. People, check out Marge’s writing. And have a wonderful weekend. 

and the winner is....

Thank you all so much for your wonderful haiku! It has been such a relief to be able to step out of my book-induced stress haze and read your poetry! Thank you for your words!


Now I'm turning it over to the talented and fabulous Caroline Grant, Editor-in-Chief of Literary Mama, co-editor of Mama PhD and the judge of this year's Mother Words' Haiku Contest. Welcome, Caroline!! 


***

Mother Words Haiku contest: surprise!

When I was in third or fourth grade, my schoolteacher introduced us to Matsuo Basho's haiku. We were all asked to choose one to illustrate, so I picked one about daffodils and copied it out in fancy script, surrounding the letters with flowers and a purplish Mt. Fuji looming in the background. I thought then, and thought for years afterward, that haiku had to be serious, had to be about the natural world, and -- if I'd been honest with you -- had to be dull.

I love that Kate hosts an annual Mother Words haiku contest because I can appreciate haiku now in a way I wasn't able to when I was ten. It's the perfect form for mothers, really. We spend so much time with our children, playing with and observing them, but in some profound ways we're also left quite alone with our own thoughts (because after the first ten dozen games of Candyland, who's really paying attention anymore?) We could let our minds wander to grocery lists and the movies we want to see -- and of course often we do -- but with this nudge from Kate, we can let our minds wander in a more creative way, distilling our days down to their essence, finding a way to make these moments funny or poignant, finding a way to translate these solitary moments into something universal. So I applaud all of the writers who entered the contest; you made it so hard for me, I wrote a haiku about it:

This morning's challenge:

Judging a haiku contest

Hard to pick just one.

I'm drawn first to the funny ones, which happened to fall into two categories: toilet-related and not. For instance, Ironmom's, which made me laugh out loud:

OK, diapers, sure.

But this is ridiculous.

There's poop everywhere!

Or Suze's haiku, called Sammy's Take on Toilet Training, which took me right back to those days when my son would lurk behind the couch:

Oh! I'm not hiding.

I DON'T need to poop right now,

Just...don't...look...at...meee

Stace-c and I share the same reaction to a diaper haz-mat situation:

Treasured baby wear,

After blowout, your new home

Is in garbage can.

Then in the funny but non-toilet related category we have Mary, who cracks me up with a title longer than the haiku:

"When Your 18 Year Old Shares the Blessed News at His High School Lunch Table"

A new baby now

So you and Dad still do it

My lunch crowd's grossed out

Or Andrea's:

Total silence from

Ultrasound technician, then,

"Did they suspect twins?"

Speaking of twins, Stace-c offers another:

Safety gates be damned!

Twins can open anything

Teamwork starts at birth.

Moving away from humor, I loved the haiku that made me nod (or wince) in recognition, like Patty's:

Words snap from my mouth:

"Because I said so, that's why!"

who have I become?

And Claire's:

Who would have thought it?

Grocery shopping alone.

This old chore's a gift.

And kqchristopherson's:

Just one more minute

Please can I have attention?

Yes, my trying love

A couple writers contributed bittersweet haiku, like "Sluiter Nation," who wrote:

depression sneaks in

warm and soft my baby boy

i don't deserve him

And Pia:

My deep fear, Autism.

Isn't as bad as I dreamed

My little man glows

And Merle targets childhood's powerful emotions:

Daily five-year-old's rage

leaves dead and wounded feelings.

Remorseful kisses.

As the editor of Mama, PhD (one of the prizes in this contest) of course I have to give props to Lara, whose haiku is titled Motherhood Surprise:

Redefine passion!

Ambassador skills advance

my new PhD

Some of my favorites capture a moment of family life, like this beautiful one, vivid as a photograph, from Francesca, titled "Lemonade Stand":

Lunchtime, balmy day
Lemonade, rice krispy treats
Fifty cents a pop

Carrie submitted a set of four haiku that moves chronologically through her family's transformation, and I particularly loved the second for its evocation of a time now passed in my family:

Attempt at homeschool

Toddlers, naked, too much fun

Roll in olive oil

But ultimately, my favorite is one that's neither funny nor poignant but simply gets at the heart of what has been one surprise in motherhood for me: setting aside (sometimes far aside) a clean house and tidy spaces to join my children where they are, creatively, and finding such happiness there:

Give me board books strewn

and dripping, bright paint projects—

mess!—a sign of joy.

I love the spirited language, the alliteration, and the vivid details in this haiku, and most of all the deep pleasure it conveys. If Emily Dickinson wrote motherhood haiku, I think she would have written like this. So congratulations to Sarah, and thank you for inspiring me to get out the art supplies with my kids today.

 ***

Congratulations to all of you! Sarah, I'll e-mail your Amazon gift card and send your address to Caroline for the book!!

it's time, again

(I posted this yesterday, but it vanished. I’ve no idea why.)

Spring has been slow in coming to Minnesota this year, but finally, it's here. The plants in the garden have begun to fill out, the grass is green, and even our spindly Maple in the front yard has sprouted leaves. All of this means that it is time, yet again, for the annual Mother Words haiku contest.

For those of you who are new to Mother Words, I launched the annual contest in 2008, when Zoë was just a couple of months old and I developed a raging case of mastitis. D was traveling, so I was on my own, juggling an infant and a four-year-old. It wasn’t pretty, people. You can read more about that here.

But from my experience with mastitis, the annual Mother Words haiku contest was born.

This year, the subject of the haiku contest will be (drumroll please): surprise. What has surprised you most about motherhood? What surprises you about parenting your specific child? (Take this any direction you like.)

I’m very excited to announce that Caroline Grant, editor-in-chief of Literary Mama and co-editor of the wonderful anthology Mama PhD, has agreed to be the judge this year. And in addition to the $10 amazon gift card that I’ll send to the winner, Caroline will send a copy of Mama PhD!

I love funny haiku, but anything goes. Just remember 5 - 7 - 5. Put your haiku in the comments section below. The deadline is Monday, May 23^rd!

Come on and haiku today!

it's time

Spring has been slow in coming to Minnesota this year, but finally, it's here. The plants in the garden have begun to fill out, the grass is green, and even our spindly Maple in the front yard has sprouted leaves.

All of this means that it is time, yet again, for the annual Mother Words haiku contest. Whoop! Whoop!


For those of you who are new to Mother Words, I launched the annual contest in 2008 when Zoë was just a couple of months old and I developed a raging case of mastitis. D was traveling, so I was on my own, juggling an infant and a four-year-old. It wasn’t pretty, people. You can read more about that here.

But from my experience with mastitis, the annual Mother Words haiku contest was born. And now, I'd like to introduce the topic of the 4th Annual Mother Mother Words haiku contest. (Drum roll please.)

Topic: Surprise. What is the thing that has surprised you most about motherhood? About being a parent? About parenting your specific child/children? (Anything along these lines...)

I am happy to announce that Caroline Grant, editor-in-chief of Literary Mama and co-editor of the wonderful anthology Mama, PhD, will be the judge this year. And in addition to the $10 Amazon gift card that I provide to the winner, Caroline has offered to donate a copy of Mama PhD. So get your haiku pants on and start writing.

I love funny haiku, but anything goes. Just remember, it has to be 5 - 7 - 5. Post your haiku as a comment below by Monday, May 23rd. 

Haiku! Haiku! Haiku! Come on and haiku today! (Clearly I've been spending a little too much time alone in my office...) 

and the winner is...

Thank you, again, to everyone for submitting their wonderful haiku. I'm turning it over to Judge Laura to announce the winner:

Wow! As a past contestant in and fan of the previous two Mother Words Haiku contests, I was awed by this year’s entries. They were funny, touching, puzzling (let’s be honest, the genre DOES make everything a little extra pithy but cryptic), sincere... in a word, art! The readers of this blog can certainly turn a phrase. Here were my top 5, in no particular order:


Stace-C:

my good old aunt flo
turned into a raging flood
no pad can contain


Emily:

Meet Anxiety
Here to stay. And your chest? Like
deflated balloons.


Elizabeth:

What no one told me?
I would become my mother.
But that is o.k.


Kaethe:

The dream where she is
suffocating beside me
never lasts all night.


But the grand winner is Pia, because her haiku made me smile and also cry a little, and because I thought it encompassed the theme (What No One Told Me) the very best of all:

My heart left my chest
In tiny jeans and t-shirt
Walks around, exposed

Congratulations to all who entered the contest—it was a tough race this year!

Laura

Thanks again to all contestants! And thank you, Laura, for being the judge! Pia, look for your $10 amazon gift card as an e-mail link.

marie howe

Back in 2007, when I was pregnant with Zoë and deathly afraid of losing the pregnancy, I spent weeks on the couch with my feet up, willing my uterus to hold tight to that little bean. I lay there, wishing I could read, wishing I could focus, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t follow any kind of sustained narrative. Then a friend recommended Marie Howe’s What the Living Do. I ordered it, and as soon as it arrived, I devoured it, poem after fantastic poem, letting myself slip out of my life and into Howe’s words. I hated coming to the last poem in the collection.

I meant to revisit Howe’s work and buy her latest collection, The Kingdom of Ordinary Time, but well, I got busy with my little Zoë, with making sure that Stella knew we still loved her. I got busy with teaching and writing and—everything. But then last week, one of my lovely students—hi, Carrie!—sent me one of Howe’s poems, and I remembered, instantly, why I love her work.

In honor of National Poetry Month, and because I love Marie Howe’s poetry, here is “Hurry,” reprinted with permission of author:

Hurry

We stop at the dry cleaners and the grocery store
and the gas station and the green market and
Hurry up honey, I say, hurry hurry,
as she runs along two or three steps behind me
her blue jacket unzipped and her socks rolled down.

where do I want her to hurry to? To her grave?
To mine? Where one day she might stand all grown?

Today, when all the errands are finally done, I say to her,
Honey I'm sorry I keep saying Hurry--you walk ahead of me.
You be the mother.

And, Hurry up, she says, over her shoulder, looking
back at me, laughing. Hurry up now darling, she says,
hurry, hurry, taking the house keys from my hands.


Please check out her work if you’re not familiar with it. Revisit it if you are. And then raise your glass in honor of all the poets whose words save us just when we need to be saved.

porous

Last week I was reading Elizabeth Alexander’s The Antebellum Dream Book, a stunning collection of poems about race and gender and identity and motherhood. Alexander is really brilliant—she’s brilliant in her poetry, but she’s also clearly brilliant in person, in interviews. (You can visit her website if you’re interested in reading some of them.)

On Friday afternoon, after my book group’s discussion of Alexander’s collection, my mind was buzzing, and in my head I wrote a companion post to my post last week about seeing. If you read Alexander, you’ll know why I wanted to post about her ability to see, about the necessity of seeing clearly.

So I had this post in my head, but I never sat down to type it up because everything—the weekend and the weather and my continued cold—got in the way. And now it’s no use; the post already feels worn, old, and it doesn’t fit in with the thoughts and worries that have been churning in brain for the last few days. I suppose that’s the problem with blogs; in order to provide a true reading of my state of mind, my ponderings, I would have to post every day. Of course, that’s never going happen, which is probably a good thing; you’d get really sick of me.)

But today—after a hard couple of days, the kind of days when tears are near the surface, when it feels as if any moment I’ll crack open, when it seems impossible to put a thought down on paper, impossible to string together words to make a sentence—I went back to the Alexander interview I read on Friday afternoon, and the quote that most interested me then isn’t what caught my attention today. (A good reminder of how much we bring to what we read.)

I didn’t even notice these words on Friday, but today they made me nod my head, and think yes, yes. Alexander says:

I wasn’t able to write prose for several years, right when my children were being born. I found that that took a space that was just too wide, and I couldn’t find it, and it also distracted me for too long. I’m interested in how poets like Lucille Clifton, who had six children, talk about having a room of one’s own. She says, “For me, the ideal circumstances for writing a poem are at the kitchen table. The kids have the measles, and everything is going around.” What I love about that, and what I think is really useful and important is that idea of being porous. How can you stay porous at the same time that you have your bubble, in which things can exist or stay safe?

Maybe I’ve been too porous of late. Maybe I’ve forgotten about the bubble.

the top seven

Thank you to everyone who submitted a toddler haiku for the annual Mother Words Haiku Contest. You can read all the entries here and here. This year, my dear friend Jess agreed to judge the contest, so I’m turning it over to Jess, who says:

I’m a little troubled by the prevalence of excretion in the haiku, and even more so by how funny I find them - not sure if that’s a testament to the general poopiness of kiddos or an indication that my sense of humor hasn’t matured much since 5th grade. Anyways, the poems were FAB! Here are my top seven:

Toddler on my lap
Can’t let me out of her sight.
Tinkle, tinkle, plop.

by Amber S.


Don’t drink that water
Your poopy butt sits in it
A shriek of delight

by Laura


You pooped in pantry
Spread and raked it with your hoe
Looky! Garden grow!

by Marilyn


thought I had a girl
but look--on top of table
it’s a mountain goat

and

book was his first word
but the treatment he gives them,
no book could survive

both by Stace-c


and last but certainly not least,

Oh sleep, where are you?
“I get out! Running around!”
Escapes from crib. Damn.

and

Little voice, so sweet
"Don’t fucks with me" says my son
All laughs and giggles

both by the illustrious Ms. R. Hopper.

So...though I was tempted by mountain goat, book abuse, tinkle tinkle little plop, and had to pass on bathwater shrieks because I know the poopy butt that sits in it, and since I’m pretty sure there is a 2nd annual haiku contest prohibition on allowing a Hopper sister to win (nepotism, yes, but also because it would be patently unfair – they’re all so damned witty), THE WINNER IS...

Marilyn! I’m sorry about your pantry, but PLEASE say that you took a photo, because that is fantastic. I mean, it’s practically the same thing as fertilizer, right?

Thanks, guys. As a grad school sufferer, I sorely needed the comic relief. Bravo!

Jess


Thanks, Jess! Congratulations, Marilyn! I look forward to more wonderful and witty haiku next year.

one small place

Do you know those evenings, those very long evenings when you look at the clock at 5 p.m. and can’t believe there are still two whole hours before you can realistically put the kids to bed? Tonight, both girls were overtired—whiny and tantrum-prone. And there is nothing like a wailing, possibly-coming-down-with-something baby and a huffy, desperately tired, smarty-pants five-year-old to distort the passage of time. To almost stall the passage of time. I glanced at the clock a dozen times, wondered if it was possible for the second hand to rotate any more slowly.

But now both my darlings are asleep and I have poured myself a glass of wine. The Oscars are on, but the television is muted, and I was just re-reading my friend Francine’s new chapbook, Like Saul. This quiet and this poem (and okay, and this glass of wine) are enough to bolster my good humor:

One Small Place
by Francine Marie Tolf

My mother believed Eden was the whole earth.
Then we sinned, and “our intellect darkened.”
That phrase seduced me as a child:
I pictured tracts of water and land
suddenly dimmed, like sky before storm.

Tonight, I sit on a bench
watching a couple push their children on swings:
the mother, their toddler,
the father, their baby,
who is whooping and gurgling,
his hair bright as duckling’s down.

A boy of fourteen
is swinging too, as high as he can,
no friends around to witness this lapse of cool.

I hear we’re due for a storm.
I think it will be a terrible one.
You would never guess it from the gold
lingering in this park,
wind combing cottonwoods
until they swell like distant surf.

what we can count on

I’m embarrassed to say that I had never read anything by Ellen Bass until last week, when one of my lovely students (thank you, Ann!) e-mailed me this poem after it had been featured on Writer’s Almanac. (I’m reprinting it here with the author’s permission.)

After Our Daughter’s Wedding

While the remnants of cake
and half-empty champagne glasses
lay on the lawn like sunbathers lingering
in the slanting light, we left the house guests
and drove to Antonelli's pond.
On a log by the bank I sat in my flowered dress and cried.
A lone fisherman drifted by, casting his ribbon of light.
"Do you feel like you've given her away?" you asked.
But no, it was that she made it
to here, that she didn't
drown in a well or die
of pneumonia or take the pills.
She wasn't crushed
under the mammoth wheels of a semi
on highway 17, wasn't found
lying in the alley
that night after rehearsal
when I got the time wrong.
It's animal. The egg
not eaten by a weasel. Turtles
crossing the beach, exposed
in the moonlight. And we
have so few to start with.
And that long gestation—
like carrying your soul out in front of you.
All those years of feeding
and watching. The vulnerable hollow
at the back of the neck. Never knowing
what could pick them off—a seagull
swooping down for a clam.
Our most basic imperative:
for them to survive.
And there's never been a moment
we could count on it.


Whoa. I love this: “The vulnerable hollow/ at the back of the neck. Never knowing/ what could pick them off—a seagull/ swooping down for a clam.”

This poem is from Mules of Love, but her newest collection, The Human Line, looks wonderful, as well. I plan on getting both of them.

I love when something falls into my lap (or inbox) that speaks to something else I’m reading and thinking about. When I read this last week, I had just finished talking about Julie Schumacher’s essay “A Support Group is My Higher Power” with my advanced Mother Words class. (I will review Julie’s first novel, The Body is Water, here at some point in the future. She has also written four wonderful young adult novels and a collection of short stories.)

“A Support Group is My Higher Power” is about faith and acknowledging how little we can do to protect our children. The essay describes where/how Schumacher found strength during her daughter’s struggle with serious depression. She writes:

Most of us, taking measure of that world, make a series of promises to our children when they’re very young: I will protect you. I will help you to make sense of your experience. You will not be alone.

As our children grow up and away from us, inheriting the world’s complications, we discover how poignant and futile those promises are. We begin to suspect that our love for our children, although essential, is also inadequate, because no matter how fervently we love them, we can’t keep them from harm.

Back to Bass: "Our most basic imperative:/ for them to survive./ And there’s never been a moment/ we could count on it."

Back to Schumacher: “In banding together to tell the truth about our own and our children’s suffering, we have found resilience; and we have kept the terrible vacant loneliness at bay. Our belief in ourselves as parents has been compromised, but that’s probably all right. Most of us aren’t looking for certainty anymore so much as a complicated acknowledgment of what is.”

I think all parents have that realization at some point: we cannot protect our children forever; we cannot count on their survival. What we can do: hope and pray (if you are a person who prays) and do our best.

My family is not a family that prays. We say grace before dinner only if my dad has joined us, and only then because my dad is an ordained minister. But recently, I’ve felt the need to mark dinner, mark coming together at the end of a hectic day, with something, so before we eat, we now go around the table and name one thing for which we are thankful. The other night Stella said, sounding so grown up, “I am thankful for Zoë and our home and our family.” My heart nearly broke with love.

Today I am thankful for Ellen Bass and Julie Schumacher, for all the writers who write the difficult and beautiful and heartbreaking truth about motherhood.

I know that many of you who read this blog have had a very difficult year, have experienced intense losses: a child, a sister, an aunt, a mother. I know that some of you have lost your good health, that you have been in and out of the hospital, missing your children as you sleep in cold white rooms. I count you among the things and people for which I am thankful this year, and for you I hope for relief, for some kind of quiet.

mea culpa

I haven’t been much of a blogger recently (as you very well know), and I’m not only sorry, I’m embarrassed. I’ve never let myself go this long without at least one skimpy post. And it’s not that I haven’t thought about blogging; I’ve thought about it every day for the past two weeks.

I thought about it after I attended a wonderful poetry breakfast at a friend’s house a week and a half ago. One of the editors from Graywolf Press was there, and he offered a short poetry tutorial and described what made him say yes to a collection of poems. I nodded and laughed, my brain beginning to sparkle and snap with coffee and words. I wanted to post excerpts of a few poems he read: Tony Hoagland’s “America” and William Stafford’s “Traveling through the Dark.” I wanted to post about how the morning was bright and crisp, and when I left the breakfast, I stopped and bought a book—Jhumpa Lahiri’s new collection of stories—and how I drove home slowly, along the river, holding the rhythm and words of the morning for as long as possible.

I wanted to post about my ninth anniversary, about the lovely dinner D and I shared, the delicious bottle of wine we drank, the molten chocolate cake we devoured. I wanted to post about the first bottle (of milk) that Zoë drank. She finally—at almost 8 months old—took a bottle! Hallelujahs went up all around our house.

Over the last week I kept thinking oh, I’d like to blog about that, but then three days would go by, and it would feel too late. I’m afraid I can’t keep up with anything right now. It’s as if time is evaporating, disappearing faster than I can move, faster than I can think. November should be better though—post election, post my sister’s wedding—and then I’ll be back here regularly. I promise.

a discovery

I just made it through another five-day stint as a single mom, which I hope explains my recent silence. Stella is also on a reduced pre-school schedule this month, so I have even less time to sneak away to my computer. When to blog? When to blog?

When D is gone, it’s the extra sleep that I miss the most (other than just missing him, of course). Stella is an early riser—she always has been—and when I’ve been up with Zoe in the night, it’s utterly painful to be dragged downstairs before 6 a.m. Strong decaf just doesn’t cut it anymore. I’m a morning person, so it’s a serious problem when I’m dragging and it’s not yet 7 a.m. It can only go downhill from there.

But now D is back, and though I don’t feel rested, exactly, I do feel calmer. He’s always had this affect on me. Just after he and I began dating, one of my closest friends was in town for a visit. We were out at a bar and I had my undies in a bunch about something or other. But when D arrived, my friend later told me, I instantly relaxed. (She actually said, "It was remarkable.") So even though he’s super busy right now and working crazy hours, just having him home makes me feel more settled.

On Sunday, after we got home from the airport, he went outside to start the grill and play with Stella—she likes to be pulled around the yard in her sled, which they were jumping off a soccer ball. (You’d have to see it to understand what I mean.) Zoe was sleeping in her car seat, so I settled myself on the porch with Best American Essays of 2004. I’ve been slowly making my way through the volumes, looking for a little inspiration to help me with an essay that’s in my head but not so much down on paper.

Well, I got to the very end of the volume and began reading Cynthia Zarin’s “An Enlarged Heart.” I didn’t remember this essay, and in fact, after a few paragraphs it was clear I had never read it. How could this be? I’m religious about this series; I read the latest volume every year during the days after Christmas when we are up at my mom’s cabin. But in 2004, Stella was just one (and very busy) and I was finishing up my MFA and under deadline to get thesis pages to one of my readers. That’s my excuse. It’s all I got.

The problem is that I have insisted that in twenty years of Best American Essays, only one motherhood essay has been featured: Penny Wolfson’s “Moonrise.” But I was wrong. Zarin’s essay is about her daughter contracting Kawaski disease while they are vacationing in Cape Cod. Her prose is tight—perfect—and her voice absolutely engaging. It reminded me a little of Lorrie Moore’s in “People Like That Are the Only People Here.”

I don’t like to be wrong. But in this case, I’m glad I was. I like Zarin’s writing so much that I’m going to order some of her poetry. Here are two poems I found online. She has three collections: The Swordfish Tooth, Fire Lyric, and The Watercourse. Now the only question is which one should I read first?

two sisters, two winners

My dear sisters didn't follow my directions. They were supposed to read the haiku entries, then confer and choose a winner. But they each chose a winner, so now I have two winners of the first Mother Words haiku contest. (Not such a bad thing--I loved all of them!)

The winners are: Emmie and Soon to Be First Time Mom

Emmie wrote:

OK - had two bad bouts of mastitis and several plugged ducts. The "dangle feed" (nursing while leaning over the baby, best done on a bed or on the floor) saved me from more bouts of actual mastitis, as did aggressive self-massage. I always remember my OB saying, as she noticed the angry red line on my breast, "well, this is the kind of thing that used to sometimes kill you before antibiotics". Anyway, here goes - true story, never since discussed, thankfully:

Feed with dangling breast
Good for mastitis, they say
Dad-in-law walks in

Soon to Be First Time Mom wrote:

Expectant Haiku....

Thirty-two weeks now,
Reflux: Used to seem quite bad
Posts arouse New Fears

Here are the comments from my sisters:

Rachel said:

Wow, these haikus were truly funny to read, and I'm a big fan of funny haikus. Nothing funny about mastitis while in its evil throes, but it does tend to make for good stories later - both in giving a lighter slant to the dark hours of breastfeeding, and in highlighting the strength of women in their journey through motherhood. You don't know me, but I'm Kate's younger sister, Rachel. I had some raging mastitis that set in exactly 1 week after I gave birth to my son. My favorite memory is Kate coming over to visit me after I went to the doctor for antibiotics. I've memorialized this visit with a haiku of my own:

Let me see, she says
Almost vomits in her mouth
Does it look that bad????

Anyway, it's difficult for me to be a judge...first, because I'm no expert on haikus; and second, because I have a hard time making decisions. But, if I had to choose just one, my vote goes to: Emmie. The image of your father-in-law walking in on you gave me a hearty laugh!

Sara said:

Hi everyone. I'm Kate's older sister Sara. I'm the sister who has never had mastitis. I am also not a mother and not pregnant, but I'm definitely neurotic, so should I become pregnant at any point in the future I am very, very afraid I might get mastitis (among a long list of other fears). I therefore have to throw my vote to the "expectant haiku." In particular, I would like to applaud the use of capital letters with respect to New Fears. Because my youngest sister Rachel and I have split our votes, I will leave it to Kate to determine an equitable means for awarding the gift certificate. I enjoyed reading all the entries!

Emmie and Soon to Be First Time Mom will each receive a $10 amazon gift card. I have Emmie's address, but Soon to Be First Time Mom, will you please send me your address (to katehopper [at] msn [dot] com)?

Thanks to all of you who posted your haikus.

mastitis haiku contest

In deference to the breastfeeding gods, I am hosting the FIRST EVER mastitis haiku contest right here at Mother Words.

How to enter: Think hard about mastitis. Write a haiku about it. Type your haiku in the comments field of this post.

Note: You need not have experienced mastitis to write a haiku or to win. I am enlisting my two sisters as judges. One has had mastitis, the other has not. Both love a funny haiku. The winner will be chosen Friday, May 30th and will receive a $10 gift card to amazon.com. Only one entry per person.

To get you started, I’ll leave you with this:

kate’s mastitis haiku

Breast and body ache
Plugged ducts, oh how I hate thee
Calgon take me now


I clearly expect to be outdone.

8 weeks old

It's hard to believe that Zoe is already 8 weeks old. I'm not sure exactly how big she is, but it's somewhere around 11 pounds. She seems huge, wearing clothes that Stella wore when she was five months old! As hard as these infants months are for me, I feel myself grasping, trying to hold on to certain moments. How can I want time to move faster and slower all at once? How can I want to hold her forever in my arms at the same time I want her to learn to take a bottle, to give me a little breathing room?

I know these conflicting emotions have something to do with the fact that this is it for us, our last baby. And knowing this makes me want to somehow preserve the moments I love: holding Zoe to my chest as she sleeps, staring into her smiling eyes, pressing my lips to her so-soft temple.

This makes me think of Deborah Garrison's poem "Square and Round" from The Second Child.

It begins:

You moments I court --

Back of the head settled
in arm's crook,
rump in my palm,
the whole half of a body
just the length of my forearm,
small face twitching toward
repose. From the window
lamplight or moonlight slides
on the creamy forehead,
the new-bulb smoothness
at the temples both squared
and rounding, the flickering play
of shapes suggesting, mysteriously,
intelligence within...

It ends:

What was it, just
then, I swore to myself
I'd keep?

As though I could hold
a magnifying glass
to time

and slow its shaping
us."

I love this poem. I love the whole collection.

Knopf poetry and Sharon Olds

As you all know, it's National Poetry Month. And I hope you all know that Knopf will e-mail you one poem every day for the whole month! Yesterday, what was sitting in my inbox? The wonderful "Looking At Them Asleep" by Sharon Olds. So perfect for me right now.

It ends:

oh my Lord how I know
these two. When love comes to me and says
What do you know, I say This girl, this boy.

Read it here.

She got me, again.

on empathy

I’m wondering what would happen if we could—and would—regularly imagine the lives of people, real people in our country and in our world, who live lives beyond our own experience. What would happen to our public policy, and foreign policy, if we didn’t seemingly lack the ability to imagine lives?

It’s impossible, it seems, to be empathetic if you cannot imagine a reality beyond your own. I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately, partly because I’m reading Lisel Mueller’s collection of poems, Alive Together, which is filled with empathy, and partly because of the 50th anniversary of the integration of Little Rock Central High School a couple of weeks ago.

Over the week of Little Rock coverage on NPR, I sat in my car, driving to work and driving Stella to pre-school, listening to the speeches from the now-middle-aged Little Rock nine and what they went through half a century ago, and I just felt so sad. Only fifty years ago. That’s nothing. It’s a blink of an eye.

As I listened, and even after I turned off the radio, the image that I couldn’t shake was one that’s in the beginning pages of Melba Pattillo Beals’ memoir Warriors Don’t Cry, which describes her experiences as one of the Little Rock nine. That photo is one that most Americans should recognize: the young Elizabeth Eckford walking down the street, a mob of white women— mothers—directly behind her, screaming and angry.

I understand that hate comes from fear. I understand that difference seems scary to people. But what I cannot wrap my mind around is this: white mothers, who have their own children, being able to hate those kids because they were black. How could they lack such imagination? How could they not have imagined what those kids were going through? How could they not have imagined the nine’s own mothers, sitting at home, wringing their hands, unable to protect their kids from all that hate?

I love my Stella so much that the thought of her having to live through something like that makes me physically sick. But my protectiveness doesn’t end with her. No child should have to experience that kind of hate, ever. No mother should have to know her child is living through that kind of hate, ever.

If we were more empathic, if we weren’t so wrapped up in our own lives, would this kind of thing still happen?

I had never read Lisel Mueller’s poetry. She won the Pulitzer in 1997, and her poetry has been published since the late ‘50s, but she was new to me. (I’m forever catching up, and always feel behind my peers in terms of reading…Alas. I'm working on it.)

She’s very talented—obviously—but the thing that struck me more than anything in her poems was her empathy, her ability to see the real people living real lives beyond her own.

From “Captivity” (about Patty Hearst)

In the beginning we followed her story
as we used to follow
the girl in the fairy tale.
Pity and fear. The decent girl
cast out to be cruelly tested
in the dark forest. Sentimental,
we swore she would never falter.

So when she started turning
into her dark sister,
we felt confused, betrayed.
More and more we heard
Tania’s harder tones
usurping her soft voice.
Patty was driven underground.

She turned into Tania and we turned against her;
sooner or later the victim gets blamed.
Perhaps by then we were bored
with the innocent of the story.


From “An Unanswered Question”

If I had been the lone survivor
of my Tasmanian tribe,
the only person in the world
to speak my language
(as she was),

if I had known and believed that
(for who can believe
in an exhaustible language),
and I had been shipped
to London, to be exhibited
in a cage (as she was)
to entertain the curious
who go to museums and zoos...


I wonder: if we tried to write (and think) beginning with “if I had been…” would we be able to better access our empathy? Could we make a difference?

poetry and concentration

I haven’t been able to focus on much of anything during the last week. I had a good report from my doctor: baby is okay, take it easy, no exercise, nap every day. The good part, of course, is that the baby is fine. The difficult parts, for me, are taking it easy and not exercising.

Exercising is what clears my head, what makes it possible for me to not perseverate on my list of daily worries. Running, which I hadn’t been doing anyway, is the most successful way to clear my head, but walking works, as well, and now that I can’t do that, the tension has settled in my shoulders and neck. All this tension, coupled with the fact that I don’t feel quite right, makes it hard for me to focus.

I can’t focus on a movie (my usual evening indulgence) and I certainly can’t focus on a novel or memoir. I just can’t do sustained narrative right now. The only other time that this happened to me was after Stella was born. For months I couldn’t read or write (or even think clearly). The one thing I found that I could do was read a poem. It’s so different than picking up a novel; I don’t have to commit to 250 pages. I can just read one poem.

This week I inadvertently read two books of poetry, both new to me. One was Beth Ann Fennelly’s Tender Hooks, which Sheri at mamazine recommended. The other was Marie Howe’s What the Living Do, which another friend recommended. I didn’t set out to read either of the collections; I thought I would just skim through them and see if I could find poems for my fall class. But in both cases, I read the whole collection.

I love the accessibility of Fennelly’s poems, the way they lure me in with an image familiar to me: chasing a toddler who is clutching something stolen from my purse or trying to pin down my daughter and beg her to prefer me over her daddy, for just one day. Fennelly lured me in, and then I stayed, struck by her skill, her passion, and some dark history. You can read some of her poems and an interview with Fennelly at mamazine, but there are some lines from one of my favorite poems:

Favors

People look at my baby and wonder whom she favors. Because
she doesn’t look like me, they decide she looks like her father. I
nod. I nod and nod. But really she favors the great dead one.
My own bad Dad. She favors him, the same brown eyes, the
same scooped out philtrum, that valley leading from nose to
mouth, as if the warm fingers that formed her stroked a perfect
pinkie tip there to sculpt it......See, I love her,
so even from the grave he spites me. Look at him, winning
again, crying in the bassinet. Here I come on quick feet
unbuttoning my blouse.


And Marie Howe absolutely wowed me. I felt the same way reading her poems as I did the first time I read Sharon Olds, just after Stella was born. They are raw and heartbreaking and sometimes so lonely. You can read some of Howe’s poems here and here, but this is one I love:

Yesterday

Just yesterday,
three days after my forty-fifth birthday,
a mild October afternoon,
somewhere around five o’clock,
and maybe the seventh or eighth time
I’d gone to check—

Now that it’s happened, it seems it had to happen.

Still the house had built itself a corridor I’d been hurrying through
towards the sleeping child,

thinking of Sarah’s angel, hearing Sarah’s laugh.

The white curtains billowed slightly in the mild, October wind
—but there was no baby, and hadn’t been.


So, since it seems that reading poetry is all I can do right now, does anyone have recommendations for me?

garrison revisited

A month ago I posted about Deborah Garrison's new book, The Second Child. I had the pleasure of speaking with Deborah on the phone a few weeks ago, and you can read my review of The Second Child and an interview with the author at mamazine. Enjoy!

creative cross training

On Friday night, D. and I went to see Figaro at Teatre de la Jeune Lune. We don’t do this sort of thing very often, and that afternoon I almost wished we weren’t going. I had a gazillion things to do, I was exhausted, and we were babysitting Stella’s cousin. Our house was strewn with toys and bits of half-chewed food (one of my nephew’s special talents).

When my dad came over, I rushed to shower and make myself presentable, and D. and I dashed out the door, leaving my dad with the two kids. (My sister picked up her little guy shortly thereafter. Dad was fine.)

I was actually feeling so tired and anxious that I didn’t think I would enjoy the evening, but as we drove downtown, I could feel myself starting to let go of the week, of all the little (and big) stresses that build up and convince me, usually, that we are too busy to go out.

D. and I picked up our tickets at the theater and walked across the street to Origami for sushi. Years ago, D. and I fell in love eating out, leaning over small tables in darkened restaurants, and I always forget how much this means to us—sitting across from each other eating food that someone else has prepared.

When we walked back to the theater an hour later, I was giddy with excitement. I had never seen a performance at the Jeune Lune (pathetic, I know), and I was excited to see the daughters of one of my Loft students perform (both her daughters are opera singers/actresses).

The show was amazing. They were amazing. Mozart is, of course, amazing. I had goose bumps, my whole body tingling. Their voices. How is it even possible to sound like that? The wonderful surprise—oh you can do that?! Oh, you can go there?! I sat there, in the darkened theater, holding D.’s hand, and thought, if there is a God, he is here, in these voices, in this place. (It sounds so clichéd to have thought that, but I really did.)

A friend recently told me that she hasn’t been writing much lately, but instead has been quilting. I said that sometimes it’s good to step away for a bit, gain perspective, do something different. She nodded, and said it was an interesting break from words, and that it felt like creative cross training.

That’s how I felt at the Jeune Lune, like I was cross training. That tingle, that amazement.

I felt the same way when I read Deborah Garrison’s new book, The Second Child. I didn’t know Garrison’s work until a couple of weeks ago when I received one of those poetry e-mails from Knopf. This kind of marketing doesn’t always work on me, but because my summer class was about to begin and I was still looking for material, I ran out and bought Garrison’s book.

Garrison’s poems are so carefully crafted, so lovely, and she has this wonderful ability to capture a moment, stopping time and suspending a gesture. I could go on and on about almost every poem in this collection, but instead I’ll share this one with you:

Dad, You Returned to Me Again

The transparent clarity
of childhood happiness,
like water.

That colorless sparkling,
tasteless but so fresh.
To drink, or ribboning over
a large stone along the brambled
bank of a river I remember.
Said to be a large wily brown
trout under there.

Two children astride me
in rumpled bed this A.M.,
and when she petted
his baby head, crooning a word
almost his name,
his eyes hooked her face,
his hands discovered applause
in halting pace:

clap (pause) clap clap!
Their mingled laughter,
the nickname,
the merry clap-clap,
the jerking bright giggles

so free I dropped through time
and saw again the iridescence
across the belly of a trout
slipping whole in my hand
in sunlight for just long enough
to see not the usual liverish
speckling of brown but the spray
of pink, pale blue, gold-yellow
you said meant
“Rainbow,”
and I grasped him, wet and muscular,
smuggled in our air
for a wild moment before your
expert hand unhooked
and slipped him back.

Poetry and opera do the same thing for me, a prose writer: I can sit back and let the words, the music rush over me, and I am reminded of what is possible.