One day
your daughter’s
cooing, gurgling, wordless.
The next, you’re asking her how old she is
and she’s holding up two pudgy fingers,
crying out, “Awmos twoooo!”
Not long after that,
she’s blowing your mind
with her ability to count to ten.
And soon she can count
all the way up to a hundred.
And then to a thousand.
Then one day,
when you sit down to help her
with her math homework
you realize that you have no idea
what equals.
You must have forgotten.
Or maybe
you never knew.
But your daughter does.
“That’s easy,” she says. “It’s x.”
“Of course it is!” you bluff.
“Of course…”
I’M CLEANING OUT SAMANTHA’S CLOSET
Anything to avoid writing.
I clear away
the forest of forgotten T-shirts
sighing on the floor.
I wrestle
with the maddening mess
of fallen hangers.
I toss out
the moldy pairs
of lonely outgrown sneakers.
Then,
way in the back,
I find a box.
Here’s Samantha’s mobile—
the one that hung above her crib
when she was a baby.
I run my fingers over it,
then wind it up and listen to its melody
one more time…
Sam used to love this mobile.
She’d lie on her back gazing up at it,
mesmerized by its spinning pastel birds,
listening so intently to its song,
her plump lips parted as if she wanted
to drink in its sugared notes,
her hands
clasping Monkey
to her chest,
her legs moving
through a memory of water
as though she was still womb-swimming…
I CLOSE THE LID ON THE BOX
Then,
I shove it back into
the dusty depths of the closet,
wipe the tears from my eyes,
and hoist up
the overflowing wastebasket
to carry it outside
and empty it into the trash bin.
But on my way there
I hear Pinkie yapping.
I glance into the neighbor’s yard
and see Madison playing hide-and-seek.
She’s scrunched down on her haunches,
hiding from her mother
behind the thin stem
of their mailbox,
her face tucked into the crook
of her chubby little elbow,
apparently convinced
that this makes her invisible.
Jane taps her foot,
checks her watch, shades her eyes.
She sees her daughter (obviously)
but feels obliged to pretend she doesn’t.
In a voice tighter than the jeans she’s wearing,
she calls her daughter’s name—
“Madison…Madison…
Where are you Madison?”
Jane stares at the sky, heaves a leaden sigh,
as if she longs for the company of adults;
for life as it was before the invasion
of this tangle-haired energy-zapper…
Poor woman.
She doesn’t know
that someday she’ll long
for this late August afternoon
when she could have held
each instant
like a jewel
in the palm of her still smooth hand.
A NO-BRAINER
Yesterday, Roxie called to tell me
that if I don’t finish my book by October,
I’ll lose my spot on next fall’s list.
So, today, I was planning
writing dozens of brilliant poems.
I was going to pop in some ear plugs,
put on my Bose headset,
and make some real progress—
in spite of Madison’s screaming,
Pinkie’s yapping, Jane’s trumpeting,
and Duncan’s thundering drums.
But then Samantha
invited me to help her bake
some butterscotch brownies.
She said she wanted
to fill the freezer with them
before she leaves for college.
“That way,” she explained, “When I’m away
at school, you can defrost a batch every week
and mail them to Grandma for me.”
I was planning
on spending the whole day
writing dozens of brilliant poems.
But I spent the day
with my daughter, instead,
baking dozens of brilliant brownies.
AFTERMATH
The kitchen’s
a sugary,
floury,
butterscotchy mess.
But just as we begin to scour it,
Wendy, Tess, and Laura arrive
to whisk Sam away
for one last girls’ night out.
“Can you give me a few minutes?” she says.
“I’ve got to help my mom clean up.”
“We’ll help, too!” Tess says.
“We will?” Wendy says.
Laura gives Wendy
a swift kick in the shin.
“We will!” Wendy says,
and everyone cracks up.
Then, the four of them set to work
like whirling kitchen dervishes,
refusing to let me
lift a finger.
I clutch Secret to my chest,
as I listen to their familiar chatter
filling up my kitchen like sunlight
one last time…
And when the room is spotless,
the girls wolf down some brownies,
hug me good-bye, and zip out of the house,
leaving in their wake
a terrible silence.
I CLOSE THE DOOR BEHIND THEM
Then I turn and lean against it,
stroking Secret’s fuzzy head.
I glance out the window
at our pepper tree
and see a handful of ashen leaves
plummet to their deaths.
I look past our roses
and see Madison riding her tricycle.
My nose
begins to sting—
the way it always does
right before I start to cry.
But I force back
the flood,
afraid that if I let
a single tear fall
it will unleash
a storm
bigger
than Katrina.
REMEMBERING THE DAY SAMANTHA LEARNED TO RIDE
My suddenly six-year-old daughter
hopped onto her brand-new popsicle-pink bicycle
with an I-can-do-this-thing gleam in her eyes
and began peddling across the empty school yard.
I trotted along next to her
like an out-of-breath sidecar,
one hand gripping
the back of her seat,
the other hand
holding fast to the handlebar,
making sure she didn’t tip too far
in either direction.
“That’s it…
You’re doing great…Keep it up…
Don’t worry…I’ve got you…
I’ve got you…”
Her fingers
white-knuckling the handle grips,
her jaw set,
she wobbled, wavered, swerved, swayed
and then, without warning,
broke free of my grasp and shoved off,
picking up speed faster
than a jet roaring down a runway.
I stood there, stunned, watching my daughter
blaze away from me like a meteor,
her white helmet glinting in the sun,
her back tense and proud.
And a moment later, when she cast
a quick glance back over her shoulder at me,
I saw that her grin was even wider
than the gulf that was opening up
between us…
I TAKE A FEW DEEP BREATHS
Then I sit down at the kitchen table,
plop Secret into my lap,
and pick up the phone to call Alice.
Maybe listening
to all the gory details
of her latest Match.com misadventures
will keep me
from having to think
about my own problems…
When I’m halfway through dialing,
I realize that I’m calling my mother’s
cell phone by mistake.
But I finish punching in the number,
hoping that I’ll catch her
in a rare moment of lucidity.
I’m not even really sure
what I want to talk to her about.
I guess I just want to hear her voice.
Or ask her
how she handled it
when I left for college.
Or pour out all my troubles
to the one person who knows me
better than anyone.
That is—
when she knows me
at all.
WHEN MY MOTHER HEARS MY VOICE
She says, “Holly dear, I’m so glad you called!”
She does know me! And she sounds so sane.
But then she says, “The sky’s green here today…
Is it green there, too?”
My hope plummets like a bird pierced by an arrow.
“Uh…no, Mom…it’s just the usual blue…”
I can hear Dr. Hack in the background.
I’d know that loathsome chuckle of his anywhere.
“Mom,” I say, “let me talk to the doctor.”
“Hey, Dr. Handsome,”
she calls over to him.
“My daughter wants to talk to you.”
“Myra darling,” I hear him coo,
“flattery will get you everywhere…”
Then he tells her he’ll take my call in the hall.
And when he says hello, I cut right to the chase:
“When are you going to wean her off the steroids?”
“Actually,” he says, “we began last week.”
“But let me guess,” I say. “The bad news
is that she’s still psychotic?”
“Yes,” he says,
“but the good news
is that she’s so psychotic
she doesn’t even know it!”
And when he starts chuckling
at his own foul little joke,
I tell him I’ve got another call
coming in.
Then I hang up
and let fly a stream of curses so scary
that Secret leaps off my lap
and streaks out of the room.
I JUST WEIGHED MYSELF
And discovered,
to my horror,
that I’ve gained five pounds.
The day of my daughter’s departure
has been bearing down on me
like a bullet train
and I’ve been stuffing my face
to try to quell the emptiness
growing in my gut.
I take a look at my belly in the mirror—
it’s so vast I could almost pass
for pregnant.
The irony of this
does not
escape me.
I run my hands over my mountainous midriff
and find myself drifting back
to the day before Samantha was born…
I remember how I savored the flutter
of her Ginger-Rogersy feet
waltzing away inside of me
and thought about
where they might carry her
one day;
how I gazed down
at the opalescent orb
that barely contained her,
picturing her fully grown,
heading off to college
without so much as a backward glance,
and whispered,
“How can you leave me,
after all I’m going to do for you?”
AND I’LL CRY IF I WANT TO
Watching Samantha
pack up her things for college,
the mournful call of Jane’s trumpet
wafting in through the window,
I find myself
feeling as though
I was there when they came
to set up the tent and the dance floor,
there when they
brought in the heat lamps,
there when they
delivered the tables and chairs,
the linens and china,
the silverware and champagne flutes…
And now
I’m here,
watching them pick it all up again
and load it back onto the truck.
But, somehow—
I blinked
and missed
the party.
THE NIGHT BEFORE SAMANTHA LEAVES
Pinkie’s yapping wakes me at 2 a.m.
I don’t remember my dream,
but it’s left me feeling panicky.
I can’t fall back to sleep.
So I throw on some clothes
and hop onto my Schwinn.
Ten minutes later,
I find myself wandering though the park
where Sam and I played when she was small.
There’s an ugly hodgepodge of rope bridges
where the stately metal jungle gym
once stood.
And the seesaw Samantha loved to ride
has been replaced by some kind of weird
sproinging Plexiglas contraption.
There’s still a swing set,
but it’s in the wrong spot.
And the wooden seats are plastic now.
The tire swing’s gone.
The silver slide’s gone.
The monkey bars are gone.
Even my little girl’s favorite—the creaky old
mother-powered merry-go-round—
has vanished.
And so has
my little
girl.
ALICE DROVE US TO THE AIRPORT AT NOON
She gave Samantha
a fierce hug good-bye and promised us
she’d take brilliant care of Secret.
Now I’m on the plane,
tucked into the middle seat
between Michael, who’s sketching,
and Samantha,
who’s looking out the window
at the clouds.
I cover her hand with mine
and ask her
how she’s doing.
She answers my question
with an eloquent smile,
then goes back to staring out the window.
But a few seconds later
her head drops down
onto my shoulder.
My hand flutters up
like a startled bird
to cradle her cheek.
We sit here together.
Wordless. Close.
Closer than we’ve ever been.
Her shoulders begin to quiver.
Her warm tears slip down my fingers,
anointing my wrist.
And when my own tears come,
it’s as if they’re gushing
directly from a crack in my heart’s dam.
I stroke her cheek,
kiss the top of her head,
wrap both arms around her.
WE’RE THE FIRST TO ARRIVE AT HER DORM
We explore the sterile, echoing rooms
of Samantha’s suite,
scouring it for aspects to admire—
the view of the courtyard,
the size of the common room,
the picturesque slant of the walls.
Then, before we’re quite ready, the other
three girls come swarming up the stairs,
their suitcases and parents in tow.
All of us greet each other, shy as deer.
But soon our daughters’ breezy banter
banishes the hush.
Then, beneath the chatter, comes the tinkling
song of summer’s last ice-cream truck,