Mother’s Day weekend is one that for many is bittersweet… but this poem struck me as motherhood perfection. I first heard it on the Poetry For All podcast yesterday and after hearing it I immediately purchased the Kindle copy of Dorianne Laux’s Life On Earth: Poems. Dorianne Laux is a new-to-me poet, but this poem resonated deeply with me… and I thought it might with you too.
Singer
by Dorianne Laux
If I could go back to the living room window
of my childhood house, look again
through the pane, it would be a telescope lens
through which I might see the first woman
I ever met, my mother at her sewing machine,
rewinding the bobbin, little spool with holes
like an old movie reel our tiny lives
spun inside of. I might see
her long piano fingers touch the balance wheel,
the throat plate, the presser bar, one bare foot
working the treadle, her heel revealing
only the first three letters in black latticed metal:
SIN. My mother was what some called
a sinful woman: divorced, pregnant
without a husband, a baby boy given up
for adoption, remarried, another baby
born of another man, a one night stand,
while her husband was away at war.
She drank too much, thought too much,
laughed with her head thrown back, danced
with anyone. Too pretty, too brainy,
too tall, her black hair a snare
that hooked men in. But right now
she’s fully visible, stretching the fabric
for a kitchen curtain, a child’s dress,
swatches she salvaged from the deep
sale bins, using the selvedge for a hem
thereby cutting her handwork by half,
the black oiled mechanism banging out
dress after dress, tablecloths and runners,
nothing she couldn’t cobble together
from the waste of others. She was
a very particular, peculiar mother
and by now you can see why
we loved her. She was a lit fuse
in the rain. She turned from her work
and set those same fingers
on the piano keys and pulled
music through the air. Making something
from nothing was what she was good at:
love, children, pants and skirts
to dress them in, a table covered
with cherries on which the beautiful food
appeared, roses from her front yard garden
in an old cracked vase, her long arms
around our shoulders saying Sit still. Eat. Try not to spill anything.
Like many of you, I am more than a bit overwhelmed by the Tsunami of Chaos and Doom that daily causes alarms to go off in my brain. Overwhelmed seems a bit of an understatement… but I am so overwhelmed (and this is with me avoiding all the news, any “breaking” news updates, and selectively choosing which news to consume…) I cannot even imagine how I would feel if I was ingesting all of the things I am avoiding!
But being overwhelmed is not the only thing… I have this weighty doom that keeps feeling more and more weighty and more doom-y as the days go by.
I realize these are not fun things to open a blog post with… but this is my reality right now. (I remind myself of this as I struggle with bladder issues… there is lots of stress in our lives right now!) Finding calm has been a priority and a challenge.
Log Cabin, on the right, and Log Cabin In The Woods, on the left. (Or it will be after I have added the tree today!)
I am so grateful for the 100 Day Stitch Book right now… It is The Thing that occupies my brain most days and it is the thing that brings the most calm! I am just finishing up page 10 so I have reached the halfway point of my 100 days… 10 more pages to go! My next 2-page “layout” is going to be highlighting crazy quilting… which, btw, I have never done. But I have long been fascinated by the technique and while I don’t have any velvets or silks to add, I am very much looking forward to having two pages that the spotlight will be on the stitches! I plan on learning some new stitches over the next 10 days as well. All good things to keep my mind focused away from the chaos.
And thanks to some random Doom Scrolling I have a couple of things to share with you all today!
The first one, Derrick Downey Jr and his squirrels… the most fun on the Instagrams right now. Really… (And Franklin loves Derrick and his Squirrels as well!)
My other new favorite is from an old favorite.. JM Hirsch (who I have loved for his Freezer Door Cocktails) who I know love even more for the F’d Up Sh*t I Found at the Liquor Store. (And he finds some of the most F’d Up Sh*t! LOL)
I know I said I would not likely be back this week… but here I am with what I hope will provide something’s calming… something’s perfectly distracting… something’s maybe to get you over the hump of angst that is flowing through the air.
I listened to these podcasts this week and they were all amazing… and they have a common theme: poetry.
First up, a conversation between Emanuel Vaughn-Lee and Jane Hirshfield. It is wonderful… Jane wrote a poem for the Time edition (and it is brilliant, of course!) and listening to her made me love her even more than I already did. She is the perfect calming factor!
It has been a good week… I got my “fall jabs” at Rite Aid on Wednesday and yesterday I was feeling it. I reminded myself that my feeling “icky” meant that my body was working hard on building new fighter t-cells and this morning I was feeling back to normal (outside my “jabbed” arm but that too shall pass soon!)
This week I have just a couple things to share (sorry, I really haven’t been paying much attention to the internet much these days.)
Steve was all excited about sharing something on Netflix with me yesterday. This is a real rarity… he does not like to watch television much at all. But as I watched the trailer yesterday with him, I felt a bit of hope flickering inside me. Perhaps Will Farrell and Harper Steele are just the people we need…
And, while I have mentioned Makers for Kamala before, I want to share it again. I follow many of the makers involved on social media and I know they are hoping to hit the 10k mark… I don’t know how far they are from it. But if ever there was a moment to get involved in an election… this is it. You will find the link here to sign up… you have nothing to lose and we have everything to gain! (And where you find a gathering of makers… you know we are not going back!!)
That is it from me this week! See you all back here on Monday!
In case you missed it, the race is on! In 95 short days, November 5th will be upon us! Yes, we have reached the All Hands On Deck portion of the election cycle! (which I think should NEVER be more than 90 days, but that is just me…)
Every election is determined by the people who show up.
― Larry J. Sabato , Pendulum Swing
This year there is something you should do ASAP to make sure you are ready to show up and vote!!
