On Giving You Grandchildren

I know I sort of missed the Mother's Day boat, but my mom has complained in the past that I always right about my dad instead of her. So I wrote her a poem. Look, Mom, I wrote you a poem!

On Giving You Grandchildren

You say you want to be a grandma.
Not in the guilt-inducing your reproduction of our race
 Is ultimately about me way,
Just a factual I want to be a grandma way.

And I think, Heck, Mom.
I want to be a grandma. All that unconditional
Love and wisdom. Wrinkles notwithstanding,
Maybe we should be grandmas before we're moms.

But I want you to be a grandma too.
Not just because it would make you happy,
Not just because it would make me happy--
In a hypothetical future in which I understand
How you could possibly stand in front of a holy man and commit to someone
That (here in the Mormon world) you may have known less than a year--
Not jut because of that.
But because I want to understand how you love me as much as you do.

One of the reasons I like growing up
Aside from the eating peanut butter for dinner if I want to
(I don't actually do that, Mom I promise)
Is that moving a sea and several states away
Has forced me to be responsible from making grocery lists and judging when,
Exactly, it is absolutely necessary to laundry
And this has given me a different way to talk to you.
And I love talking to you--
I have always loved talking to you--
But I love talking to you as an adult
As well as your daughter.

I will love talking to you as a mother
When I finally understand how you love me as wisely as you do.
I will love loving you even more when you are a grandma
And I understand how you love me.

Mailboxes, For Your Information

Once I directed friends to my house by telling them that I was the second duct-taped mailbox down the street on the left.

This is no longer true. My neighbors replaced their embarrassment with a more sturdy stone model. My mailbox, however, remains, though the tape itself has been replaced several times. The tape is going through a blue period right now. This is impermanent—Dad says that he’s going to buy orange for Halloween and red or green for Christmas.

According to my mom our mailbox has been on its last leg since we moved here, about seventeen years ago. I can’t remember it then, only its present incarnation--a rusty pole upholding a teetering grey box with a rounded top, covered in tape. My first memory of it is when my little sister’s friend scribbled, Come down and play, on the side of it with a rock.

You can still see the remnants of the writing slanting across its increasingly faded exterior.

Mom bought a new shiny red mailbox, but its still sitting in our garage. As residue from her less feminist days, my mom insists that putting up mailboxes (like stringing Christmas lights) is a man's job and Dad has steadfastly refused to put it up. 

We're unable to determine if that is due to his general disinclination to fix/repair/install anything, or the defiant pride he has in our mailbox's similarly defiant ugliness and absolute refusal to fall to time or weather.

My Dad Laughs at Me

I'm really enjoying my beginning writing class.

It may sound snobbish (it probably is snobbish) but I don't feel like I've learn anything new about writing yet. I mostly just appreciate the opportunity it gives me to write, often for writing's sake. It isn't something that happens as much in other classes. In my other classes we don't pull out our writing journals and write furiously for a few seconds and hope that it's coherent.

I've missed that. The feverish brain-to-pen writing and the hope that there is a complete sentence or two in there.

On Valentines day we were supposed to write about how we knew someone loved us. Love in an unromantic way, my professor clarified. This is what I came up with:

When I'm having a truly terrible day, one of those I-hate-the-world-why-did-I-bother-getting-out-of-bed days, I call my mom, and then I call my dad. My mom comforts me, sympathizes, understands, and tells me she loves me. My dad laughs at me. That's how I know he loves me. Because he reminds me not to take myself to seriously, that the world isn't all bad, and getting out of bed was probably a good idea, even if it doesn't seem like it just then. He tells me that hard things are good for me, that I can figure it out on my own. All these things, which rankle my woebegone soul at the time, later remind me that my dad thinks I can do hard things. He thinks I'm smart enough to figure it out on my own. And he loves me.

(i know you love me too, mom. next time i'll write about you ok?)

You're Welcome

I’ve been thinking recently about the peculiar kind of psychological damage that comes from being the daughter of college professors. (i am peculiarly attached the phrase “psychological damage.”)

I started thinking about it when my Tolstoy professor (i love my tolstoy professor) was telling us about how his daughter’s history text book makes him want to tear out his hair and rent his clothes.

He said that the textbook makes things too neat. Everything in history (in textbooks) was pre-planned, and happened exactly the way he was supposed. He said, “The textbook is like, ‘George Washington got up in the morning, then he was at the Delaware, and now we have a constitution!’ And I’m like, ‘No! It didn’t happen that way! Well, it did, but it didn’t really.’” And his daughter, his lovely middle-school-er, looks up and says, “Dad. I don’t care.”

Ah, those words.

I have said those words before.

So I mentioned it to my dad today. He said, “What blessings!”

“I didn’t say I resent the psychological damage,” I told him.

And I don’t. Not really. Most of the time it makes my life more interesting.

Like this one time last semester. I was walking across campus and came upon this saran-wrapped statue of an America Indian. I stood in front of it for five minutes thinking, “What does it mean?”

Is it a condemnation of modernity? The U.S.’s treatment of Indians? Capitalism, ensuing materialism, and its binding affect on individuals?

I walked away without coming to a conclusion and was still thinking about it in my class when my teacher said, “Hey, did you guys see that they wrapped up the statues for spirit week?” Apparently there was some concern that a rival school would come spray paint them.  Part of me felt stupid for spending time thinking about the significance of modern art that was not, after all, modern. But most of me enjoyed it. I mean, if my parents weren't professors I probably would have missed out on thinking about the symbolism of a saran-wrapped Indian. 

Heaven forbid.

 As a side note: how much are we expecting saran-wrap to help? If I drove all the way down to a rival campus to spray pain their statue, I don’t think saran-wrap would be very deterring.

Not that I would ever do that. I snuck two loaves of Jewish bread into a no-eating zone of the library two days ago, and felt really guilty about it. Is it sad that this is the extent of my rebellion as a college student? I didn’t even eat the bread while I was there.

I seem to have dropped the thread of continuity in this post. Not that that’s unusual. It is why I’ll never take up knitting, though.

You drop threads in knitting, right? Or is that crocheting? Or… something else?

And is crocheting the things you do with needles or balls and wire loops in the ground?

Wow, the thought process in this just keeps deteriorating, doesn't it? I’m going to stop now. This is what happens when I get less than eight hours of sleep. If I ever pull an all-nighter I promise not to write a post the day after.

You're welcome

Parent Poems

Omelet

Mom cracks th egg

The yolk lands with a soft--Bump

Mom wishes

Our backyard was big enough for chickens

Wishes

She did not have to cook this Friday night

She adds cheese

Grated and ribboned

Collecting on the sides of the ancient black pan

Leaking into the eggs

Basil, mushrooms, flavor

At the kitchen table

Dad smiles at Mom

Wishes we were not having eggs and cheese

Again

Says prayer,

Says

If we were starving

Our bellies hanging behind our belts

We would be

Happy

So happy to have this

Mom rolls her eyes

They were teenagers, once

Six weeks of work

Six weeks of Saturdays
that were not my own.
A long red line
down the second-to-last day of the week
on my calendar.

A final armful of leaves
scratching long red lines down my arm
as I dump them into a scratched up red truck.

Sitting in the pickup with my dad
mandatory country music squeaking out of the radio.
The dump smells sweet with decay.
We sweep out the pickup’s bed once more
and leaves fall like a Hawaiian autumn.

Back in my yard standing
with a stocky glass of lemonade in my sticky hand.
We survey our work—
the looming lack of hedge
sunlight pouring through the gaping hole of not-there-ness.

“You know,” says dad
“I don’t think I like it.”