“Does a bear poop in the woods?” I reply.
And she flashes me a heart-stopping grin.
WHEN WENDY AND TESS COME TO PICK UP SAM
I’m struck by how
grown up they look—
so much taller than they were
even just a couple of months ago.
And their faces have begun
to lose their baby fat…
I glance at Samantha and—omigod!—
hers has, too!
Then, the three young women
trot off into the night,
leaving me to marvel
at time’s sleight of hand…
I can still remember
when Sam was too little
to even understand the difference
between girls and boys.
When I tried to clarify this for her, by asking,
“What do girls have that boys don’t have?”
she thought about it briefly
and replied, “Skirts!”
Then I blinked—
and somehow she’d learned
exactly what made boys different:
cooties.
I glanced away—
and when I looked back again
my daughter was in the throes
of her first real crush on a guy
(he was an older man,
a seventh-grader,
who played
the saxophone).
I turned around—and she was floating
out the front door on her first date.
Though she wouldn’t admit
that that’s what it was.
And a split second later—
she was snuggling on the couch
next to her first boyfriend
“watching TV,”
his arm slung
over her shoulder
like it was the most normal thing
in the world,
the fresh-bloomed
plum-red hickey on her neck
not quite hidden
by the collar of her shirt…
WHEN MICHAEL RETURNS FROM DRIVING ALICE HOME
I tell him
what Dr. Stone told me.
Then I tell him
that Samantha’s gone out for a few hours.
He leads me straight upstairs
and undresses me,
as eagerly as if
for the very first time.
And when he enters me,
and I feel him, slick and hot,
touching that place that’s been shielded
by that stern rubber dome for seventeen years,
it’s as if he’s opening a door
so deep inside of me
that I’d forgotten
it even existed…
Later, when we’re catching our breath,
I find myself drifting back to another night
when we made love without the diaphragm—
the night we conceived Samantha…
After all those years of trying so hard
not to get pregnant, it had seemed
positively reckless to be leaving
my “little umbrella” in its plastic case,
wildly dangerous
to be slipping between those
skin-warmed sheets with my naked husband
while no sentry stood guard at my cervix gates…
That night, we swirled together
like the roots of an ancient tree,
and when Michael plunged into me,
I could feel our daughter pouring through him
into being.
WHEN SAM GETS HOME FROM STUDYING AT LAURA’S
She’s so tuckered out that she falls asleep
while we’re watching Gossip Girl.
I cover her with a quilt
and kiss her on the forehead.
Then I switch off the TV and watch her sleep.
How can Samantha be a senior already?
Seems like she was starting kindergarten only…
thirteen years ago.
Swiping at a tear, I reach for an old photo album,
and flipping through it,
I come across the picture I took of Sam
on the morning of her first day of kindergarten.
long enough to let me snap one shot,
while the sun haloed her hair
beneath the lacey arms of our pepper tree—
the one Michael and I planted
on the day we found out I was pregnant,
so that we’d have a place
to put the tree house.
Wearing a new dress
that was almost as blue as her eyes,
and a matching new blue bow,
perched atop her ponytail like a trained butterfly,
she clutched Monkey in one hand,
her yellow school bus lunchbox in the other,
and peered at me as though
there were no camera between us.
I’m not at all sure what this whole
going-to-school thing is about,
her eyes seemed to say.
But, whatever it is, I’m ready for it.
It wasn’t until after I clicked the shutter
that she broke into a sunny smile
and twirled around in the new white sneakers
that gleamed like small stars on her feet—
those brave little feet
that were about to carry her
down our brick path
and out
into the world…
HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME
It happens for the first time
on the very day I turn fifty—
a scrim of sweat
cloaks my body,
beading on my upper lip,
misting on my forehead,
gathering in a steaming pool
between my shoulder blades
as if a tiny cup of liquid lightning
in each one of my cells
has just bubbled up, burst ablaze,
and cremated me,
flashes
to ashes,
bust
to dust.
WHAT I AM
I am
the sudden flame
on the cheeks of the liar,
the marshmallow
that catches fire
over the crimson coals.
I am the boiling oil
that roils like witch’s brew
in the cast-iron kettle.
I am the roar from the oven door
that melts the glasses
right off your face.
I am the Szechuan flambé.
The one who swore
she’d never say,
“Is it
hot in here,
or is it just me?”
HMMMLET…
To take estrogen or not to take estrogen:
That is the questogen.
Whether ’tis nobler to abstain and suffer
The sweat and puddles of outrageous flashes
Or to take arms against a sea of mood swings,
And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep;
No more; at first the studies say ’twill end
The heart attacks and thousand bouts of bloat
That flesh is heir to, ’tis a true confusion—
For then they say ’twill cause us all to die
Perchance from breast cancer; ay, there’s the rub;
For who can dream or even sleep while worrying about
What doctors might be saying come next week?
THANKSGIVING
My mother has flown in from Cleveland
to celebrate the holiday with us.
She’s waved her magic spatula
and transformed my kitchen into her kitchen.
I snap a photo of her sitting at the counter,
tucked between Michael and Samantha,
the three of them peeling apples for a crisp,
laughing together over some little joke.
She looks sort of tired and pale,
but as joyful as if she’s just won the lottery.
I close my eyes and inhale the scent
of my mother’s cornbread-bacon stuffing,
her roast turkey
rubbed with garlic and paprika,
her cinnamon-pecan
sweet potato pie…
and a thankfulness
rises in my chest
like the batch of cloud-light popovers
rising in my oven,
doffing
their buttery top hats.
COUSIN ALICE ARRIVES FOR THANKSGIVING DINNER
She comes bearing hugs and air kisses for all,
plus a vampire book for Samantha,
a bottle of champagne for the rest of us,
and a bouquet of asters for the table.
She says she’s gotten some promising winks
on Match.com, but thinks maybe she’d do better
with a more girl-next-doorish sort of photo.
So I take her out back to pose by our pepper tree.
And when I study her face
through my lens,
a second wave of thankfulness
rises within me.
Because if Alice
hadn’t gotten that nose job
and then claimed she’d only
had her deviated septum fixed,
and if she hadn’t had gallons of collagen
crammed into her lips
and tried to pass off the sci-fi results
as an allergic reaction to some chili powder,
and if she hadn’t gotten her eyelids lifted
and her bags sliced off
and actually expected me to believe
she’d merely had her tear ducts unclogged,
and then had so much Botox force-fed
into her forehead that she couldn’t
even raise her eyebrows in surprise
when I finally told her I was worried about her,
I might have gone ahead and done
the exact same thing to my own poor
defenseless face—I might’ve stepped
into that very same pool of quicksand
and, just like Alice, been swallowed whole.
THOUGH I HAVE TO ADMIT
Sometimes, when my cousin and I are lunching,
and we duck into the ladies room together
to reapply our lipstick
and we’re standing there,
shoulder to aging shoulder,
in front of the mirror mirror on the wall
and I take a look at her
and then I take a look at me,
sometimes
doubts begin scampering across my mind
like hungry rats, and I can’t help wondering
if it’s better to be
an unnatural-looking moon-faced,
eyelid-less, wrinkle-free
fifty-three-year-old woman who looks forty
or a natural-looking sunken-cheeked,
droopy-lidded, wrinkle-ridden
fifty-year-old who looks ninety.
And sometimes,
at moments like these,
I find myself tempted
to climb down off of my
I’m-going-to-grow-old-naturally
high horse
and beg my cousin Alice
for her plastic surgeon’s
phone number.
THE TRUE MEANING OF WISTFUL
While trying to jog off the three pounds
I gained at Thanksgiving,
I turn to watch a sun-bleached
twenty-something goddess
zooming down the bike path
on her Rollerblades,
grooving
to a tune on her iPod,
her hair a golden flag
fluttering around her bronzed cheeks,
legs so long
they should be illegal,
haunches as toned and sleek
as a puma’s,
and a shock wave of painful truth
crashes down over my rapidly graying head:
I never had a butt like that,
even when I had a butt like that.
I CONSIDER MYSELF A PRETTY DARN GOOD SPELLER
How, then, do I explain the fact
that when I was writing that last poem
I couldn’t remember how to spell “illegal”?
I tried “illeagal.”
And “illegle.”
And “illeagle.”
Then cursed like a cuffed criminal
before finally just giving up
and spellchecking it.
Is this
how it’s going
to be?
All the knowledge I once had
slowly seeping out of my head
like an inner tube losing its air?
Hell.
The next thing you know,
I’ll be forgetting how to spell my own nayme.
CHRISTMAS IN CLEVELAND
The four of us have gathered
to watch the “world premiere”
of the video montage
that Michael made for my mother.
There’s baby Samantha,
lying on her back in her crib—
floating on her little sheepskin cloud,
crowing along with her mobile’s tinkling song,
gazing up at its spinning pastel birds,
her arms flapping away
as if she wants to join them.
There’s Samantha dressed as Tinker Bell,
trick-or-treating for the very first time.
She runs up all the front walks
chanting, “Twick or tweet! Twick or tweet!”
But as soon as each door opens,
she clams up and buries her face in my skirt.
There’s Samantha doing a puppet show.
Wolf puppet says, “Hi!”
Bunny puppet says, “Hi! Hi!”
Wolf puppet says, “Hi! Hi! Hi!”
Bunny puppet says, “The end.”
Sam says, “Now I’ll do another one!”
And there she is, having a tea party
with Monkey, Wendy, Tess, and Laura,
sipping chocolate milk from teensy china cups
and nibbling on tiny pink cupcakes.
I glance over at my daughter,
all grown up now,
who raises an eyebrow and says,
“Did you bake those cupcakes for us?”
“Yes.”
“And you made those place cards, too,
with our names all spelled out in glitter?”
“Uh huh.”
“Even that place card for Monkey?”
“Yeah…”
“Mom,” Sam says, shaking her head,
“you were out of control!”
But then
she flops down next to me on the couch
and gives me a bone-crushing hug.
I GLANCE OVER AT MY MOTHER
She’s smiling fondly at us,
but it worries me to see
how stiffly she’s holding her neck—
as if it hurts to turn her head.
She’s admitted to having had
some mysterious aches and pains lately.
Though she’s refused
to see her doctor about them.
“Come over here
and sit on Grandma’s lap,” she says.
But when Samantha eases herself down,
my mother winces.
“Am I too heavy, Grandma?” she asks.
“Of course not,” she says. “You’re just right.
It’s this dang chair that’s so creaky—
not me.”
And as I watch them,
my eyes mist over—
remembering them rocking
together
when Sam was three days old…
Naturally, when Mom arrived
from Cleveland that day, sweeping in
through the door of our California bungalow
like a bright breeze,
the baby was hysterical—
her face an anguished beet,
her tiny feet
kickboxing the air,
her mouth
spewing a steady stream
of high-pitched
lacerating screams.
But my mother just smiled,
as calm as a waveless sea,
and when she took Samantha
into her pillowy arms
an instant hush fell over the child,
as though my mother had found
the baby’s misery switch
and simply flicked it off.
Then,
she reached into her purse
and pulled out the first of many gifts:
a silky-soft stuffed monkey—
his eyes two winsome gleaming beads,
his grin utterly goofy