I am my mother's daughter: part "last night I learned about..."

Sometimes my day starts at 1:00 am, just because I wake up and decide to make bread. And the next thing I know it's 7:00 a.m. and I can do yoga with my roommate and run people to school (in my mom van) and run errands (in my mom van) and then settle in for work (not in my mom van).

This happens periodically–the odd hours of wakefulness–and like my mother before me I spend these hours delighting in the time I have alone in the quiet to get things done: cook, clean, paint, watch a movie, read, grocery shop, watch the sun rise, make sure every sleepy child has breakfast before they leave the house.

Sometimes in my growing-up years when I lived under my parents roof, my mother would tell me about all of the things she learned in the night from documentaries she'd watched. "Trubuchets! They're like catapults but instead of swinging like this (here you imagine my mother diagramming with her arms), they swing like this." She now has a model trebuchet with which to shoot mini marshmallows and other tiny things.


Yes, I treasure these times.

Today I got a poem in the mail from lovely old-lady-in-training-M.M. She's my Poem Friend who's traveling the nation staying with nuns and general orthopedic-shoe-wearers, spreading the information of poetry. Sometimes she finds a select piece to share with me. This one took out my breath. Ask person to person-like and I'll tell you more about it–but eh, you know, sometimes you don't share poems. Or in some mediums you don't share poems. They're meant to be scattered in piles on wood floors and sorted through while everyone sits searching through them, reading them silently or out loud, sharing thoughts or looks or life stories. Oh Heaven, I'm planning you out already. I hope you can pardon that, Heaven.

There are so many letters I'd like to write to you. Oh gee.

and we're off like a herd of turtles!

I reread this a few days ago. I go through my own blog annals to remind myself where I've been and how I've changed/grown. 

It's about a woman I never really knew but I've always admired and about her fancy dresses and costume jewelry. And news programs. It struck me that I've gloried in hat boxes but never in the charm and class and home-loveliness of my own mother. I've been trying to write my feelings on this but it seems I'm full of trite dribble. Let it be known far and wide that there are worlds I'll always wonder about (Milly and her typewriter secretary-ing and fancy shoe boxes) and there is a world I aspire to (my mother's).

mommers

Remember, Mother, when I spent many evenings with you at the kitchen table browsing over newspapers (or maybe silly romance novels?) as we both sipped our warm milk with creamer (because I was so sick of chamomile tea).

 -excerpt from this post.