After Reading Pastan's Notes to My Mother

I

You've never sent me one
letter, though you never forget
to drop a thank-you card
in the mail (always handwritten
on the back of a picture-you-took-
turned-postcard). Though I know
the shape of your headstone
and where you'll lie (your casket
stacked atop Dad's in the Veteran's
Cemetery), I can't say I'll visit and leave
you messages there. I can't give you
messages here, though I rehearse
the lines daily. It's as if you already
don't exist, and I am talking to a stone.

II

I'd like to think I wrote
you letters from camp,
but I can't remember if I ever
went to camp except once, at
fourteen when I thought I
was ready to exert my wing-
spreading detachment.
So I'll tell you now what happened
that summer: I fell in love
with the tanned, blonde lifeguard
and felt the rush of a long
tongue in my mouth; I confessed
my sins and let my sobbing self
be soothed in the arms of the christian
kids; I smoked pot for the first time
in the amphitheatre after the crowd
had dispersed; and I realized for the first
time that maybe home and the idea
of missing it might just be some grand
scheme from a very clever creator.

III

Your hair was always perfectly
swept up into a French twist
or an elegant chignon.
Your uniforms were so stiffly
starched it seemed they were
ready to stand at attention, so bright
white it hurt my eyes to look at them.
You never let one of us kids forget
how bad women had it out "there,"
how cruel men were, how backbitingly
vicious other women were, the drudgery
of spending ones entire life
cleaning up after others. Perhaps today,
my muteness can be explained by my
insistence not to repeat the pattern.
I won't complain (much), I nearly
always cut my own hair and refuse
to twist it into anything that resembles
some French-do, and I never wear white.

*******************************************

Started this in FL after coming in from the beach one
day. I love Pastan's poem. It makes me think about
the mom I didn't have and to think about the one
I do have in ways that are uncomfortable to think
about but true.

Truth is supposed to set us free, but I'll be damed
when I tell the truth. I just keep getting caught in the snares
and traps that litter the forest floors and the bedroom
floors and the dark ceilings of my life.

Bad day yesterday. I am wasting time letting myself
feel so badly about the recent turn of events. I keep
saying I can't help it. I'm tired. I'm shot. I'm bummed.
I'm in a state of despair. And that is all true, but I have
to do something to get out of this funk.

It would help if the sun would shine.

Rainy again this morning.

When I was working, I would entertain
the idea of how lovely it would be to just
lounge around in bed all day on the rainy days.
To just read books and sip tea and listen to some
great music.

Here I am. Not working. Unable to lounge
around in bed.

Doesn't seem so appealing now.