What a week. It has been hard to squeeze in school between a teething baby, a destructive dog, and other family crises I'd rather not get into here. Today, I went to my mother's house and hid in my brother's room to read poetry. I left my three kids in the living room with their Nana. I must say it was the most enjoyable three hours I've had all week. It was so quiet! Well, except for the sound of my own voice. For some reason, I find it necessary to read poems aloud. They don't sound right in my head. I was reading "in Just-" by e.e. cummings to myself when I heard snickering. I glanced over my shoulder, and I saw my two oldest children on their hands and knees looking in at me through the crack in the door. The stood up and ran back down the hall, and I heard my three-year-old son say, "Mommy is talking to herself!" My almost five-year-old daughter responded, "She has finally gone crazy!" Finally? Here I thought I had reached some sort of sanity. Children know best.
I can honestly say a poem has never touched me as much as "the mother" by Gwendolyn Brooks. I don't want to get into the political aspect of the poem, but as a mother, I don't think I would ever be able to have an abortion. I don't condemn those women who decide to have an abortion because I don't feel it is my place to judge anyone. I just think about the small moments with my children, like the one above, and I couldn't imagine never having them. I could post every single day about something one of my children does which touches my heart. Imagine having to make up those moments in your head about the child who never was...
Before we went to my mother's house this afternoon, my children and I played hide-and-seek. Usually, the just hide behind a door or a chair, but this time I actually could not find them anywhere! After ten minutes of looking, I started to panic a bit. I thought maybe they went outside. When I looked out the door, I didn't see any footprints in the snow. I finally called out for them to come out. I think they heard the panic in my voice. I heard a cabinet door swing open, and my son yelled, "Here we are, mommy!" They somehow both managed to squeeze in under the bathroom sink! How they did this is beyond me. It is the tiniest cabinet in existence!
Revelation
We make ourselves a place apart
Behind light words that tease and flout,
But oh, the agitated heart
Till someone really find us out.
'Tis pity if the case require
(Or so we say) that in the end
We speak the literal to inspire
The understanding of a friend.
But so with all, from babes that play
At hide-and-seek to God afar,
So all who hide too well away
Must speak and tell us where they are.
The mother stirred quite a few emotions in me as well. It made me wonderfully grateful to be a mother and have healthy, happy, and amusing kids! I can not imagine a day without them, a day where I didn’t wake up to their cheerful chatter, or get to play games, or do puzzles, or help build lego castles and fight dragons! I can not picture my life if I has chosen to do anything other than keep, raise, and love them; not that that would have ever even been an option that crossed my mind!
ReplyDeleteOh, Elizabeth, I feel the same way about "the mother." I feel the same way that other women may choose to abort their pregnancies and that it is their opinion, but when a woman starts having multiple abortions I lose my patience and respect for said woman. I, too, have a daughter, and I couldn't imagine the life I would have if I weren't a parent. (I mean I could, but I really don't WANT to.)
ReplyDeleteAlso, I read poems out loud, too! I am so relieved I am not the only one. I try to do it when my husband isn't home because I feel self-conscious when he can hear me. My daughter is only two, but she still looks at me as though she is missing something. She looks at the paper as I read and I see confusion on her face as if she is silently asking, "Where are the pictures? How can you read a book without pictures?" Children are funny.