mother writes
by peggy millin and friends

Did you know you can start with any concrete noun or active verb, drop it in your unconscious, and let creativity flow out the end of your pen? These pieces were written in 5-10 minutes of speed-writing (don’t stop, don’t edit!) by students responding to a word or image in a poem. If you don’t have a book of poems handy, look around the room or out the window: table, vase, socks, expresso, sip, pour, rain, skate. And...start writing. Your hand will go faster than your brain can control, so what comes out may well surprise you. Do it over and over, make it a practice like meditation or running and you will find yourself revealed—all your foibles and all your gifts displayed in the space between the letters. Then you can gather them all up and bring them into your heart.

Although written to different prompts, these writes all have some aspect of mothering in common.

 

Cheryl Dietrich
Prompt: “When the Shoe fits” by Chuang Tzu
Carrie Bradshaw. Sex and the City. Manolo Blahniks. My mind taken over by pop culture, picturing shoes in neon colors. Little strappy things worth $100 per inch of leather. Uncomfortable, wobbly, but oh so appealing. I drool over them in the shop window. I stand there in my rubber-soled, sensible brown walking shoes and drool over ridiculous little pink and green polka-dotted sandals and rich red stilettos. Comfort wins out. I’m happy to drool, happy to wish, most of all happy NOT to wear them, happy in my sensible Naturalizers walking down the cracked pavement outside TOPS.

I have one pair of shoes that are wild—for me, not for Carrie or her friends certainly. They are sensible flats but with pointy toes and a bright fabric design of green and rust and orange. I saw them years ago in Florida while shopping with my mother. I admired them. They would go so nicely with this one outfit I had. Still, I put them back on the shelf. My mother had taught me well. I could only wear them with the one outfit, so they’d be wasteful. How much wear could I get out of them?

I turned to my mother for approval. She, staunch, old-fashioned Republican matron that she was, said to me, “Cheryl, don’t be so damned conservative. Buy the shoes!”

I bought the shoes. I think of them as the last gift she gave me.
Maisiebuds@cs.com

 

Peggy Tabor Millin
Prompt: “I Stop Writing the Poem” by Tess Gallagher
I’ll get back to being a woman when I can stop being a mother, that giant shirt I put on 32 years ago, have worn all these decades, dragging the cuffs through the mud until they are dirty and frayed. The tail of the shirt also is torn from too many hands hanging onto it.

The collar is worn out with expectations.

Only the yoke across the shoulders stays strong, won’t give, holds it all together.

Still, nothing can stop my tenderness, my ability to feel each small hand, to peer into each upturned face.

I’ll get back to being a woman the moment I’m sure they are okay, I say, recognizing it will never be so.

Their lives as fraught as mine with peril, as graced by blessings.
“I have so much wisdom to give you,” I want to shout. “Here! Look at my shirt.”

But they turn away, wanting to wear out their own clothes.
pmillin@clarityworksonline.com

Deane Giordano
Prompt: “And if you get out of your own way, something beautiful is born.”
Ninety-nine years and nine months on the planet. My grandmother, Mary Ethna Wilson, died last month. She passed the matriarchal torch to my Aunt Nancy, who hadn’t had time, as of the funeral, to mature into her role. But she will manage quickly enough. The wake was grand at Nancy’s home, a cozy gathering place teeming with squealing kids and storytelling adults, a warm kitchen with a comforting spread on the island—potato salad, brisket that everyone agreed is better with gravy, frozen pink salad, rolls, cheese grits, gooey chess pie, chocolate pie, lemon pie, coconut pie. All of it rich and designed to comfort in sad times.

My grandmother, Muna, died in December. She finally gave up and, according to my uncle, went to heaven and joined her friends who asked her what took so long and dealt her into the great bridge game in the sky. Just three weeks before she passed, she sat at the head of the mahogany table at Aunt Nancy’s house and demanded to know how Nancy was going to top her 99th birthday party. Aunt Nancy had outdone herself on that one. One hundred guests had made an appearance at the Country Club of Fulton, a squat building with a checkerboard floor, decorated for the occasion with balloons and crepe paper streamers and paper tablecloths printed with roses, Muna’s favorite.

There was cheap wine to drink, and Natural light beer, and seven different birthday cakes homemade by one of Muna’s devotees. This was a 99th birthday party, a celebration of the matriarch, and Ralph and I joined my father and Uncle Bill in the parking lot where someone thought to bring a bottle of Wild Turkey, someone who knew in advance about the cheap wine and cheap beer inside.

Muna, meanwhile, held court in grand style, beaming in particular when her young, handsome doctor made his entrance.

Dr. Greg gave the eulogy at Muna’s funeral. He told stories about his unofficial favorite patient, my grandmother, who swore that she was single handedly financing his new pool. She kept him guessing, and laughing, till the end. She told him once that she didn’t know what a longneck was, but that she thought she might like to try one some day. He brought her a longneck, much to community dismay. At 92 years old, he’d asked her if she had two children. Without hesitation, Muna responded, “So far.”
nadeane@bellsouth.net

 

Maggie Wynne
Prompt: “I Stop Writing the Poem” by Tess Gallagher
I know from watching my mother die that there is a sad lie in the lines of this poem—“I’m still a woman. /I’ll always have plenty to do.” I will not always have plenty to do.  Even being a woman cannot rescue me from aloneness and emptiness.  Mother’s busy hands, her stack of mending, her needlepoint, the buttons to be sewn on, the pot of soup on the stove—all blew away from her like a pile of dry leaves, dead brush.  She tried her best to keep her shaking hands moving in meaningfulness.  She made tiny tucks and invisible stitches in the edges of her housecoat.  She stuffed her empty purse with stolen packets of sugar, napkins, utensils from the dining room at the nursing home.  Pieces of bread.  She held on to the strap of the old navy blue purse, believing she could still play her part in life if she carried a full pocketbook—full of something, anything.   Cataracts and macular degeneration came between her eyes and her beloved books, notes from her sisters, cards from her church circle.  Just as well—she couldn’t read without her mind.  There was only one thing left for her to do.  She could receive our love.  That had always been so hard.  But with nothing else to do, the walls came down.
[ MBWynne@aol.com ]