In Memory of Mom

She's unraveling like a spool of thread,
a bolt of silk,
spilling her life stories in my ear.
They flow in detailed intricate patterns,
weaving their way through time.

I see her at fifteen
on the train from Montreal,
the soldiers crammed in,
trying for a night to forget the war,
passing a bottle of whiskey for warmth.
"C'mon honey, have a drink!"
The old Czechoslovakian man, patting
her knee, warning in his thick accent,
"Ignore them, da'ling." And she,
feigning worldly sophistication, places
no more trust in the old Czech, than in
the drunken young solders on the train.
Snow banks on the track slow them
to the crawl of an inchworm on ice.
Ten hours until she feels safe at home
in her New York City womb again.

The stories roll faster, gain momentum,
each memory connected to another.
her voice is strong and youthful,
fueled by the fires of memory,
stoked by the steroids for pain.
I sense her need to spill the stories
she's gathered for eighty years.
I feel her joy at releasing and her
underlying urgency as time seems
to chase us and there's so much left
on the spool she needs to spill.
Like the train, it rolls into the night.

Waiting for her bus after work in
Manhattan, my father pulls his
car to the curb, yelling out in his
most exaggerated New York tongue,
"Hey, little girl, climb in! Ya mudda
sent me! It's gonna rain... she didn't want ya
should get wet!" My mother, eighteen, still
irked about their argument, ignores
his calls in hopes the strangers waiting
for the bus with her might think he's
the pervert he's pretending to be
and chase him away, but no...
Rather than stand there in mortification,
she strides off hard & fast in her 1940's
high heels, only to see my father, unable
to quit his young wife or old shtik,
creeping along in his car beside the curb,
still calling to her to climb in, still reaching
for the laughs, "At least take yer umbrella!
Meshuggeneh shiksa!" She relents and
finds his apology for who-knows-what
lying on the front seat of the car. A thick blue
hard-bound copy of a book whose words
they loved, The Complete Works of Shakespeare,
and her heart gives way to all she loves in him.
Only a few years later, when the tears become
insoluble and the papers are signed, she leaves
him and all else she loves in the City, taking
only his child, their daughter, and the
works of William Shakespeare.

Now she's five and walking beside her mother,
along the crowded sidewalk, their arms
filled with bags of heavy groceries,
when Granny's billowy undies, not held by
elastic then, lose a button and drop to
the ground. Poor Granny, standing with
her underwear around her feet, and bags
of groceries in her arms, sees her faithful
youngest daughter racing off down the
sidewalk in horror and humiliation!

We're laughing together now, feeling for
a woman we both adored, sharing in
the child's embarrassment, and seeing
the humor that only comes in hindsight.

I'm with a speed rapper lost in time,
and I don't dare stop the flow.
She needs to get these tales across.
She's lived so many lifetimes
and missed so many chances.
She just needs someone to know her
as more than a mother, to know
she was an extraordinary person,
wrapped in the illusion
of ordinary days.

She spins on, unraveling, unwinding,
releasing, letting her words fly free,
unburdening, sharing random moments
in her life, emptying her cupboards,
tossing her crumbs to the birds,
sweeping the dust out the door
before she can move on.

I listen, I listen, I laugh with her,
I cry inside, I wish I knew her then.
I catch her words and try to stuff them
into cluttered files, filled with my own
scattered tales, knowing I can not
ever do them justice, cannot make
them live as the one who lived them.
But it has befallen me to try.

When she no longer has a voice,
how will I sing my mother's song?

(To see lovely photo of Mom in her 70's, click #3 above photo. Click on each pic to view full-size.)