A nothing from nowhere cast his words to a world wide wind, hindered by periphery. |
Apparently I was a little Dickens according to one of the church ladies. A boy, wire the wrong way? My mom wasn't having it. Learned what reading the riot act was all about, eventually. The woman who 'was for everyone' set the moral edge I followed, too literally. A life of adjustments would follow. A bit like her, I wear a smile like a frown. Passion like hers, an obsession to create, she wielded a shuttle to tat a 15 square foot display of the Last Supper that now sits atop grandmother- in-law's old China cabinet, greeting through a bay window, if a rising sun should appear, peak through the guarding crabs stationed outside my house. It helps me remember why I write and how surprised she was to see the slew of teenage manifestos compiling, provoking her to ask 'Where do all these words come from?' The apple doesn't fall far, perhaps in a different form, because she didn't understand why I needed to write -- to make sense of a world that confused me. I was 'different' and handled as such. Maybe, pity and sympathy replaced love, but not from her. But, she wouldn't treat me like I was broken, and I didn't know the difference, except I was embarrassed and afraid to reveal I was confused. But words, showy, rich, technical words that I should not have dabbled in, helped me learn. So, when I have time to think and remember the woman who received wildflowers and water in her good glasses or gave my art and words passing glances I'm happy to share memories of her and woman devoted and undeterred. In a nursing home, her fingers frozen, her tongue long since Parkinson's no longer engaged, spat out food from a spoon I employed one day. I worried she forget me, who I was. My wife played the hall piano, as I tried to engage, but leaned too hard on the exit door and an alarm engaged. Flustered, nurses arrived, I survived and then heard a low, familiar growl from a rising head in her wheelchair, "Brrr-iiiiii-aaaaa-nnnn," sounded a silly scolding, her humor in tact. My mom was alive inside a slump torso and could still see me, feel me and know I'm still her little man. And it wouldn't be long before the day she passed. Her eulogy I was tasked to write, I read. I feel tears, emotions and an uncommon strength loaned, flow through me that day. My brothers wept, hugged me for a woman memorialized right. It would take more than two weeks of nights, before the dreams of her began to fade. She talked to me, walked with me, resurrected like some Jesus from a tomb, sharp wit and words, full of life like a whistling bird on the old porch of my old home and the sun so bright made me realize I need not fright I have her with me, day and night the woman who taught me right. She let me know passion like ours will serve somehow one day, even if to console through another to kin that her life was not a waste, purposed to give love and comfort to any who came her way. I hope, I will relocate that glow that last time I felt her dream presence, and pay it forward it some meaningful way. 5.13.23 |