poem about Grandma

Here's something I wrote this week, in an assignment imitating some author we like. This was meant to be in the style of Ted Kooser, but I'm not sure how that part turned out.

(untitled)

Handing her the teeth for her smile every morning,

Giving her the windows for her eyes

And tucking the earpieces behind her ears like curtains.

Arranging in the grey wheelchair

Limbs that are every day unnoticably lighter

As muscles atrophy and fat taken out of reserve

To feed what that no longer desires food.

Saying the words again

That she no longer recognizes-

Good morning. Want some tea? Here’s a blanket,

Gramma. No longer her name,

Just two syllables she hears us shape with our lips.

Telling her the words for her crossword

To fill in the blanks she leaves,

The blanks for nouns she fills with adjectives,

The blanks she fills with words she just created,

Long blanks when she doesn’t speak for hours.

Watching her lights dimming

In this unstoppable mist,

Until in this life only the blue foglights

Of music can make her smile.

poem for baby

Preemie Nightwatch
After sleeping too hard and waking with a start
I lean low over the shadowy cradle,
blinking dry eyes to focused sight,
folding blankets back to be reassured,
to catch the shallow feathering breath,
curve a finger into a small palm
to feel the warmth of living flesh,
to know the small heart in a cage of curved ribs
still tirelessly strokes with mild wings
and lungs, bright balloons, fill and release unbidden.

When my insides ease their sudden lurching,
frantic pictures erasing, tenseness lifting like a fog,
I float away to deep sleep seas where the baby drifts,
the pilots of our minds dozing in the cabins of our dreams
while the motors and paddles and signals and lines
that keep these flimsy boats afloat
churn and turn and tug us silently
through the smooth dark water of night.

Already missing this stuff...

Picnic at the lake... exploring things with the kids... being an aunt. Summer is over and far too quickly.

Uncertainty: a random partial poem

Some things you are sure of
Like keys under the flower pot
Garbage can under the kitchen sink
Light switch four inches around the corner when you open the door
It’s such an uncertain moment
When you find that exception
And you stand there in the dark
With your hand on the doorknob, wondering what else in life
You might take for granted

summer!

I am home.

I kick off my flip-flops and use my feet to cover rows of small seeds in the garden.
Naomi steals my camera and takes pictures of 47 random things.
I am awake at least an hour after I go to bed. There are 9 of us girls in one room: enough said.
We take turns sitting on the couch and chairs when we watch movies.
I drive Mom's nova or the van, and realize, I have driven only my car for months on end.
Mosquitoes.
Abbi plays my piano every day... several times. I am jealous and start playing again.
My dog follows me around everywhere, and when she stops for a rest her eyes track me around the room.
Emili, Elsi and Abbi are writing stories on the computer and ask for critiques.
Five-year-olds grab my hands and twiddle with my fingernails.
Five-year-olds sit on my lap and ask for a back rub/scratch/pounding.
Five-year-olds wheedle for stories at nap time.
We find a frog in the creek and play with it for 15 minutes on our gardening break.
Mom develops pictures and we spend hours going through them all.
After a day in the, we compare sunburns as we slather on the aloe vera.
Fresh milk in the fridge.
I'm not the only peanut-butter nut.
Dial-up internet. *dubious blessing*
Jeeves and Wooster and the Dick van Dyke show.
We are dessert people even if we don't want to admit it.
Silas tells us about what's happening in his novel every day or so.
Standing in line for the bathroom, or for showers.
Dad prays about everything, and family devotions can go on for over an hour. Easily.
We sing the doxology or the gloria patri before dinner every night.

Easter glories in a long post

Easter weekend is over. It was beauticious.

Obviously, since we had no classes Friday and none until 10:00 on Monday, we made the most of our weekend. We got home Friday mid-morning. The sun was shining, contrary to the weather forecast, and Mom, Naomi and the twins were in the yard with rakes and other tools, tidying up what was destroyed by snow and rain and lots of heavy vehicles and equipment driving on the lawn, and building materials that were stacked there. It felt like spring even though there is far less greenery at home than in Moscow. I put away my suitcase and had the just-home glass of icy cold water (well water! Woot!), said Hi to the girls, and joined them in the yard, uncovering our rock path from the house to the cellar with the tools and a broom and the hose.

Abel and Seth started climbing the rocks by the house, so I had Naomi run after my camera and we went for a walk with them. I had a tour of their castles and forts, watched Naomi climb a tree, looked at gopher trails on the logging road above the house. We climbed up a mossy rock that was still slippery from the day-before rains, and wound our way to the Trailer House Rock, they stopped at the TT Tree, and then not far from the big rock (where the Phlox flowers will be growing soon) we found a snake. Once convinced all snakes aren't poisonous, they became very interested, and we enjoyed him for about 15 minutes. That was Friday morning.

The rest of Friday and Saturday were filled with visiting, cooking, ironing, planning hairdos, taking pictures, watching movies, more walks, a bit of Aesop's fables, reading the girls' stories over their shoulders as they wrote... Luke arrived late Friday night, and Saturday he bought a new car which we had to admire.

It's pretty much tradition to go to Grandma and Grandpa Smiley's for Easter, and to their church with them. We were amused by their new pastor who introduced his sermon by saying it wouldn't be long, and who led the singing by hitting a button on a remote that turned CCM on on the sterio (since their pianist, Heather, is now in Moscow). The words were projected onto the wall for us, and we were able to find the tune after listening a bit. :) We were about 1/2 of the congregation, and they loved it. They are all very sweet and delighted by visitors.

The saddest part of the service was communion. Music played softly on the sterio, and the pastor knelt praying to the side of the podium. The bread (tiny wafer squares) and wine (grape juice) was on a small table at the front of the church below a great cross on the wall. And the congregants filed up the aisle to get their piece and their sip and go back to their seats. It all felt a bit awkward and unlike communion and altogether pitiful to see them go by, partake alone, and slip past the line of people waiting to their seats again. Somehow I think they missed something about the whole deal. Mom and Dad asked some of us girls if we wanted to partake or just skip it since we were visiting, and we decided to join in, following the example of Grandpa and our uncles Brian and Chris who each went up and got the sacrament for themselves and their wives. We went in a clump, bringing back for the little ones, and our rows ate and drank more or less one with another.

And then Grandma's house. What with Maria, Luke and I, the 12 at home and Mom and Dad, Vicki with Ben, Natalie (2 1/2) and Hailey (10 mos), Matt with Maylene and Daniel (2), then Mom's little sister Kelley with Chris and baby Chloe (5 mos), her brother Brian with Sue and the twins Madalynn and Meredith (20 months), it was a fantastic houseful! So many chairs and paper punch cups and dessert plates, cameras and diaper bags and sippy cups and bottles, flouffy dresses and neckties some of which were discarded for easier clothes, baby dolls and strollers, the kiddie piano, two play telephones, a stairway, a magazine rack for a horse, chocolate eggs on the table, and Brian's dog Lady for the kids to play with. It was raining outside and so good inside we skipped our hike (except for some of the guys who went out to the junk pile for a car part and got soaked). Conversation and eating and a cartoon, spit-up and baby naps and spankings, punctuated by moments of cleanup and photography binges.

I noticed while sharing Grandpa's huge leather chair with Seth, while Kelley looked for a Little Rascals show, that this moment was one instance of home: Grandma and Mom loving on the babies, mothers taking things away from toddlers and sending them off to toys again, small faces peeking through the rails of the stairway, Grandpa and Dad and the big guys' voices curling around the corners from the living room, ice cream and 8 different kinds of pies on the table, and the boys stomping in with wet boots still laughing over something someone's uncle or brother said. The small persons are new, and the young mothers were not long ago girls talking about school and horses and dreams, but this is us. I love family holidays.