Phone Calls with My Mom

When I got older and we lived on opposite coasts, phone calls with my mom were fun.
We giggled like girls, and clung to the receiver.

Until the day she put the phone down and got lost.
I heard her in the background searching for me,
searching for me 2000 miles away,
praying she would find the receiver
and pick it up.

Love

Lying in a hospital bed a world away from reality,
I whisper my mother’s life into her ear.
I fold like a child against her frail body
and silently inhale her love back into me.
I comb her white hair with my fingers,
memorizing her delicate features.
She moans.

Her voice, my cocoon.

Hope

Born with a lily white thumb,
I wasn’t drawn organically to the garden.
Housewarming plants have been given to me
with sideward glances and strained expressions,
as if sacrificing something to the altar.

Yet, as I've aged and grown into my own home,
I've filled the yard with new ambition.
I held my breath all season, turning corners
in hopes of finding a bright white bloom
on my sweet gardenia bush.
But it's not bloomed a single flower.

"Why would it?" I thought.
I know nothing more about calling a blossom forth
than I know about raising children.
And there—as they say—is the rub.

I raised my fist, my voice, my lily white womb
and sank back into the couch staring restlessly at my hands,
grief rising in my throat, and looked out the window for an exit.

And out there
on my gardenia bush
was its first
white
blossom,
shining at me

like hope.

The Growth

You couldn’t see it from across the street
where she waved you over from the porch.
Inside was lunch and everything delicious.
We all laughed at the sounds our sticky summer skin made
moving on her plastic covered furniture

It was when she leaned in to kiss you that you saw it,
coming for you like a radish upon her rumpled
red
mouth.

Middle-aged and Bountiful

I can see how radiant their skin is,
how smooth the bodies they call fat.
I watch as they wriggle themselves into a pretzel,
without a single moan.

And I, middle-aged and bountiful—
can’t squat at the Crisper anymore, digging for veggies,
without great pains to rise, and sometimes softly falling back
onto the kitchen floor, cats sniffing at me.

I used to be a pretzel, wriggled,
salty and crisp,
but now I sit twisted
and a little doughy.

All the Pretty Kisses

When my husband and I were falling in love,
I would see images whenever he kissed me. He kissed my cheek at a wedding and I saw pink clouds of cotton candy.

Lying on a blanket at the park, my head in his lap, I saw a whole forest of wildflowers. In a coffeehouse where we stared at each other forever—honeysuckle bears; blue ribbon floating in candlelight; stars twinkling in a dark blue sea over the earth. I loved it. I miss it.

He's still amazing to me,
but I miss that magical swoon that comes with fresh love.

(right now,
I can hear him snoring in the other room
through two
closed doors)

thunderclaps on pretty, rainy nights.

Surrender

"Childhood scenes rushed back at me out of the night, strangely close and urgent. Today, I know that such memories are the key not to the past, but to the future. I know that the experiences of our lives, when we let God use them, become the mysterious and perfect preparation for the work He will give us to do." - Corrie Ten Boom

After returning home from a family wedding and reunion, I broke down. I cried endlessly one night into the next morning and all the way to work. I'd just spent wonderful quality time with my great-nephews, all of whom are charming, loving and well-behaved. I absorbed them and loved each and every minute of it. I met my new great-niece, Iley, who is and will become a great beauty, inside and out, because of her parents, grandparents, and family. So what was this breakdown? Why the grief? (And it was that deep, penetrating, pulsating-through-and-down-into-the-toes sort of grief.)

I was mourning again for the children I don't have.

(But I thought I had gotten to "the other side" of that. I thought I had "come to terms.")

Ha.

As if it's something you ever get past. Despite that knowledge I am surprised at this involuntary emotional meltdown. I'm rethinking adoption. Foster adoption. I go back and forth. How does one ever really know?

And then, while amidst all the brothers, again, always feeling alone and separate, I know that they are men, plain and simple. They're not ignoring me. It, in fact, has nothing to do with me. Yet as I look around and find myself in the company of males, continually being the only girl, I am baffled by God's plan; the timing, the dynamics, the choices. And while sitting there amongst my siblings...

"Childhood scenes rushed back at me out of the night, strangely close and urgent."

And my life back home seemed far away and chaotic. Though I'd recently come to terms about my future and had been elated with my new decisions, my enthusiasm fell flat here, where I grew up. Because I know God, I know that He has a plan, and every time I think I've figured it out, I find myself in a cocktail of my past and my future, shaken—as well as stirred.

"Today I know that such memories are the key not to the past, but to the future."

So I surrender again, give it all to Him and realize for the umpteenth time that I need to stop running around doing all the things that keep me stressed and tired and which, ironically, keep me from spending my time in His presence and just breathing in His spirit. I find my excuses in dustbunnies under the table and in computer software that keeps breaking down. Lunches, exercise, classes, meetings, shopping, repairs, decisions.

"I know that the experiences of our lives, when we let God use them, become the mysterious and perfect preparation for the work He will give us to do."

He keeps pushing me toward the white flag.