Meanderings on Motherhood

There was that time, long ago,
(but when I picture the photo in my mind,
I can recall it as if it just happened),
Your voice urged, “Go! There’s dad!”
and these feet (much smaller)
carried this body (tiny then) upright,
for the first time in recorded mystory.

Since then, to now, such a stretch
of rolling and running and walking long trails,
working on words,
how they are formed
on the lips and in the mind,
naps and daydreaming,
watching motes of dust
float through the air,
the sacred holding of ladybugs
in small hands and large,
skipping beside you,
my hand in yours,
later walking on my own.

Of the countless adventures:
The tiny kid on the painter’s ladder,
“But I can do it, mom!
I can go all the way to the top!”
I clearly remember saying,
and when I got there, I looked down,
to realize that up and down are
two wholly different skills,
and your fear-of-heights coaxing
“But it’s time for lunch,
I have your favorite, all ready,”
literally willed my safe descent
from the edge of the rooftop.

Only a superhero can do that,
I hope you know.

Cups of sweet, milky coffee,
in the time-honored tiny tea set,
with fresh from the oven cookies,
punctuated long days of discovery;
who knew that spiders, large enough
for Tiffany the standard poodle to bark at,
could emerge from under an old house,
or that summer swim lessons would
require you to wear your winter coat,
while blue and shivering kids paddled,
as you observed from the stands?

Rescues, both small and great:
the bus-missing preschool finger-paint project,
that found me walking wrong-way home;
the playground knee-roll over broken glass,
requiring a taxi ride to Emergency,
where an old man walked through the plate glass door,
as if to continue a theme of shatteredness;
your calm voice calling to me from up the block
while a stranger tried to lure me with a lie,
through his car window.

Further opening windows of consciousness,
the daily theme, from the portholes
of your piercing brown eyes to my own,
everything an exercise in expansion,
from cultivation of flowers
to the care of small creatures,
from the march against war
to the long bus ride to help
in the marina after the bay oil spill,
for we must save the sea birds.

Over time, these portholes on the world
have upgraded themselves from transoms
to casements and skylights, even bays
clear or color-stained like gems,
to picture and double-opening French windows;
Windows on the world within and without,
these aforesaid windows of consciousness,
this is extraordinary vision,
mapped as the starry heavens,
and the young must first be led
on all the well-trodden paths
before they can forge any path on their own.

The painstaking after-school reading lessons,
for this late bloomer, a first opening
to the greater world beyond our time and place,
leading to the sharing of books and music,
endless school art shows and concerts to endure;
How you and every pet in the house
stood the squawks and squeaks
of an inexperienced bow across the strings,
I’ll never know, even though
every pet in the house slept at the epicenter,
and you sat proudly through every concert,
from violin to voice. 

And I know now,
         I now know,
through my open window,
         what it was all for,
what it meant to you,
         what it means to me,
having relived it all,
         in a different time,
and with a different voice.

And I want you to know that,
         though you are far away,
the little hand of your child
         still reaches through open windows
of consciousness and vision,
         finds your warm hand,
ever-curious mind and open heart,
         and feels your mommally hug.

Love,

         Elisabeth

© 2019 BY Elisabeth T. Eliassen

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Top photo: Mom has given me little kirigami to throw into a bowl of water, where we watched them open into flowers, circa 1962.
Bottom photo: Me with my twins when they were very young, circa 2000