87
" ….two slate-colored gravestones settled at a slant into the lower corner of the field beside the lane. She could not read the names engraved on them, but she knew what they were. Joseph Watson, 1820-1891, and James Watson, son of Joseph and Hannah Watson, 1844-1863. The grave of Hannah Watson lay beside her husband’s and because she had died last, she had no marker, unless the pine tree growing there might count as one. To-morrow two men would drive up and leave a basket of flowers and a flag for Joseph because he had fought in the Civil War, and for James because he had died on his way home from it, but they would not have anything for Hannah because she had only identified her son James one hot summer day on the platform of North Derwich Station, and raised all the food her husband ate for twenty years as he sat in a chair in her kitchen, and done washings for Mrs. Hale to buy monuments for them at the end. But the flowers would die in the boxes; even if Jen found time to go down and set out the pansy plants in the ground, stray cows were sure to eat them off before the summer was over; and the Forrest children would take the flags to play with. Nothing would interfere with the tree. "
88
" Memory is capricious. I can look back and see decadence, old bigots, the constant racial slurs, the bores, the wild cards, the bighearted, the family album of alcoholics, the saints, the old aunt propped in a chair saying only " da-da," the slow-motion suicides, but at four, six, ten, they loomed, powerful, not as types but as themselves. Among them, logic takes wing." (pg. 31) "
89
" Or… maybe I’m not going crazy. “Maybe I’m some sort of android-cyborg-clone-thing, and I’m just breaking down.I’m not sure which way is worse.Dad laughs. “You’re not in your right mind, dear,” he says. “No, no, no, you’re not.”And then——Silence.Dad fades away. The reverie chair disappears.There’s just blackness. I remember then that I am in the reverie of something dead. Whatever that thing was, it was dead.And, just as I’m starting to wonder if, perhaps, I have died, too, I see a light, far away in the corner of the dreamscape. The light isn’t soft; it’s not glowing. It crackles like silent lightning, burning with electricity, sparks flying out and fizzling in the dark.I don’t know why—it makes no sense, the way dreams often don’t—but I want to touch the light.So I do. "
92
" If you have no arms
To hold your crying child but your own arms
And no legs but your own to run the stairs one more time
To fetch what was forgotten
I bow to you
If you have no vehicle
To tote your wee one but the wheels that you drive
And no one else to worry, “Is my baby okay?”
When you have to say goodbye on the doorsteps of daycare
or on that cursed first day of school
I bow to you
If you have no skill but your own skill
To replenish an ever-emptying bank account
And no answers but your own to
Satisfy the endless whys, hows, and whens your child asks and asks again
I bow to you
If you have no tongue to tell the truth
To keep your beloved on the path without a precipice
And no wisdom to impart
Except the wisdom that you’ve acquired
I bow to you
If the second chair is empty
Across the desk from a scornful, judging authority waiting
For your child’s father to appear
And you straighten your spine where you sit
And manage to smile and say, “No one else is coming—I’m it.”
Oh, I bow to you
If your head aches when the spotlight finally shines
on your child because your hands are the only hands there to applaud
I bow to you
If your heart aches because you’ve given until everything in you is gone
And your kid declares, “It’s not enough.”
And you feel the crack of your own soul as you whisper,
“I know, baby. But it’s all mama’s got.”
Oh, how I bow to you
If they are your life while you are their nurse, tutor, maid
Bread winner and bread baker,
Coach, cheerleader and teammate…
If you bleed when your child falls down
I bow, I bow, I bow
If you’re both punisher and hugger
And your own tears are drowned out by the running of the bathroom faucet
because children can’t know that mamas hurt too
Oh, mother of mothers, I bow to you.
—Toni Sorenson "
― Toni Sorenson