POETRY CORNER
Mom with goslings (Photo – Marilyn Ashbaugh).
– 5/09/18
Hosted by Kathabela Wilson
We all need to laugh. As my mom, Mary, used to say “we’ve had such great times together.” And lots of them were funny. In fact, one of the best gifts she gave me was that she laughed and laughed at the poems I have written and read to her about herself and our childhood. She managed to keep her sense of humor and encouraging ways towards me and everyone else until her 95th year. So, I am hoping that these unusual, interesting little poems and stories by our poets today will ring a bell and make you smile, laugh and remember.
~ Kathabela
Maureen Sexton’s mother as a child.
Maureen Sexton
late Spring drive in the country
mum often interjected
with funny, out-of-place comments“look out for the peaches and apricots”
she suddenly called out
so we all ducked … then laughed
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Donall Dempsey
she smiles
just like the girl she was
before she was my mother
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Julie Bloss Kelsey
Mother’s Day …
the dog brings me
another chew toy
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Pat Geyer
late summer mom went fishing
at Lake Wallenpaupeck
caught a minnow put it in a jar…left it on the porch for air
but oh, oh no no no
that night there was an early freeze
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Drawings and notes by Erika Wilk’s mother.
Erika Wilk
bacteria and mold
gothic art
and literatureall notes my mother took
while watching TV
come alive for me
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Nan Rae
A Little Parisienne Adventure with Mom.
Having no basis in reality, my mom thought I could do absolutely anything. On a trip to Paris to see my work being exhibited at the Grand Palais. We arrived tired at the Hotel Mansart on Rue Des Capucines, where I often stayed, and my mom informed me she wouldn’t stay there. (It was not up to her standards). “No problem mom. I’ll be right back.” Totally clueless, I stumbled around the corner to the concierge at the Ritz Hotel and slammed my hands on his desk saying, “I’m a desperate woman and you’ve got to help me!” As he picked up the phone, I had visions of being carted away by the gendarmerie.“Madame, your hotel is waiting for you. Here is the address.” Somehow my usual hotel had already solved this problem? By overhearing mom’s distress? We arrived at The Ambassador Hotel on Boulevard Haussmann and after settling into our suite, a knock at the door revealed a white gloved gentleman with champagne, followed by a second with a tray of miniature fruit from Fauchon! There was no way my mom would ever understand how utterly impossible, how miraculous this was. On the other hand, maybe her faith in me…
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Sigrid Saradunn
My mother’s sister dealing with life’s vicissitudes, the problems of life at 101 years of age.
first Great Grand
due months away
when told
Grandma growls ,”Oh hell,
I have to live for that now.”
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Stevie Strang’s mother seeing the new baby that she talks about in one of her poems.
Stevie Strang
Notes on Mom
Mom met her new great grandson today. She was alert,
knew who Jeff was, remembered his wife’s name, commented
on how tall their first son had grown, and then hugged this new
little boy until her arms could no longer hold him.dementia
on a clear day
my hands can still hold you
my heart can still loveMom didn’t want to do her physical therapy today
until she found out that her new PT was a guy.
When he pushed her pant leg up to her knee and
helped her exercise her leg she rolled her eyes
and undeniably said, “I used to have dancing legs
you know.”progressive dementia
some memories
never go awayEvery time I take Mom’s picture she says,
“Oh, that’s horrible! Who’s that old lady?”
“Mom, it’s you.” I tell her.
“Well, how old am I anyway?”
“You’re 88 and you look great!” I assure her.
“Eighty-eight? How did I get that old?
I didn’t have an answer for that.Mom brushes her hand across her forehead,
pulls back a strand of hair and smiles, “Well,
I’m going to tell everyone I’m 27 because I just
do not feel 88.”deep in the heart
of all that is
promise of spring
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Mom and gosling (Photo – Marilyn Ashbaugh).
Maureen Sexton lives in Perth, Western Australia with her little dog, Buddy. She hopes she’s as quirky as her mother was. Her mum was always coming out with sudden announcements that had nothing to do with what was being talked about at the time. She and her siblings called it ‘popping corn’. Julie Bloss Kelsey likes to write poetry from her home in suburban Maryland, when she’s not chauffeuring her three school-age children. Julie is also mom to a dog and three fish. Donall Dempsey is an Irish poet living in Guildford with an English wife! One half of Dempsey & Windle Publishing. He says of his mother “her name was ita and when she smiled I could see all the ages she was before she became my mother. It made me aware that as well as being my Mam she was once only her self and had all the dreams ahead of her. She was always plural even though she was a very singular woman. I loved her for all the selves she was but especially that 9 year old girl shining out of her eyes.” Poet Pat Geyer lives, writes and photographs creatures large and small, in East Brunswick, New Jersey. She says her “kinda large mom liked climbing over the rock beds of Lake Wallenpaupack. Almost falling in, she caught the tiny minnow and wanted to keep it for a friend.” Erika Wilk traveled from Saltzburg, Austria to the USA with her mother in 1958. Her mother learned English by reading the New York Times and LA Times, She said: ”She was always interested in learning and loved history. I didn’t know she made drawings, but she started painting after she retired, so she must’ve been doing it all along. I treasure these notes.” Nan Rae is a California based, internationally exhibited fine artist and teacher of Chinese Brush painting. You can find her classes in the Huntington Gardens and in her studio. Her amazing long-lived mother, Rosella, celebrated her 100th birthday in 2012, and lived to 102. Maine poet and artist Sigrid Saradunn laughs as she tells the story of her mother’s sister and the “vicissitudes of being 101 years of age.” Stevie Strang cared for her mother and her dementia “for 12 1/2 strenuous years”. She now writes volumes about what she learned in poetic and prose forms. Here beautiful photography includes her mother as a subject as well as the many wonders she finds in the beach town of Laguna Niguel and beyond. She says: “I miss my Mom so much and when I’m down, which has been too often especially on holidays, I remember the humorous side of Mom”.
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♣ We welcome and encourage your response especially in the form of short poems. You may reply by leaving a comment below.
This is very informative post… thanks for sharing this info!
This Article was mentioned on brid-gy.appspot.com
Stevie Strang , Maureen, Donall, Nan,Rae Kathabela Wilson
Julie Kelsey Pat Geyer Erika Wilk
thank you for sharing … great memories that always
remind others that
“mothers are/were people too”.
.
I really wish my Mother was one to share thoughts and ideas, what she was like as a child and adult since I only “know” and remember her as” Mother” .. she seldom shed that private role to see her as a person.
Kathabela .. I always love to read your poems and writings about your mother. She was so unlike my Mother whom I seldom saw laugh, and never at herself, children or grands. There was humor that others could see and it will be her legacy, the stories of her expectations and comments. Writing this brought to mind her love of music, singing and dancing … alone to the radio when she thought no one was watching.
Nan Rae your .post brought back to mind … I posted it in comments..my mother who loved city living, and thought my quaint bungalow home in DownEast Maine was below her standards ( it would not be allowed in my neighborhood… there’d be complaints 😉 ).(actually most of Maine was beneath her standards ! ). The memories are family lore in a loving way … often quoted her eccentric comments or expectations of the family (male cousin: “I only wore a suit and tie to please your Mother” told me. Thanks for the throwback Thursday memories.
Stevie Strang for 35 years I worked with the aging population that always included some people with dementia… our 2 floor private nursing home could only keep track of 4 at time before alarms were installed. Then I worked on a locked dementia unit for Veterans (not the VA, but run by Veteran’s). Your post brought back so many memories of people and their families … thank you for sharing.
My mother, Mary, eccentric ideas at times
that some times came into vogue.
Real food facial’s, skin care and medicines.
Crisco with Merthiolate for sun tanning
drew the comment “not to stay too long
in the sun”. She just ignored the comment.
Exercised with Jack LaLanne for decades
even on her own.
( Mother never knew Jack took simple yoga
and called it “exercise”).
Mother liked fine china from France
and Waterford crystal especially for her evening
“high ball” of VSQ Brandy and gingerale.
or as my father called it,
“Champagne taste, on a beer budget.”
.
===== tanka ~ cherita form
.
“Champagne taste ~ beer budget
.
shopped best stores ~ high class names
loved fancy restaurants where she could dance
.
open toe high heels any weather
strands of real pearls ~ true red nail polish
white silk blouses with leather skirt
.
.
Thank you, dear Kathabela & Poets-All, for such a warm and sweet Mothers’ tribute–in laughter, in jest, in need–blessings!!
Inspirational poetry!
renovation work…
back at Mum’s house I revert
to the teenage me
For 63 years
we were friends but
on that terminal year
we stopped laughing.
I because I lost her
and she because
of dementia.
The reason I chose to write a sad one is because it’s the opposite of laughing.
❤️
Congratulations all!
Maureen… thanks for sharing .. it brought back memories of my Mother’s quaint (to others) remarks that she was serious about, but we chuckled at and remember. We lived in a Minneapolis suburb and one day she told me she called “Betty” to find out how to make tomato soup from fresh tomatoes… I said “Sister Betty, Ed’s Betty”…she said “No, I called Betty Crocker and she told me.how.”
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Congratulations to all the Children of such wonderful Mothers!
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Congratulations Dónall!!
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Donall Dempsey shared a post to Dónall Dempsey Poems’s timeline.
Delighted to be found in such company!
Donall Dempsey love to see generations together of a family and see the facial expressions of the same family and how they are similar in body and facial language.
Now I need to go find a photo of my mother to see the little girl smile ..
.. her Mother smile was “faked” for the camera … I have a photo I love to call “Mother smiling” … she said she was when I told her to smile. Thanks for sharing.