Pillow Talk

Today, Mother's Day, I took my own dear mother over the Golden Gate Bridge, through San Francisco and to the National Cemetery in Colma, CA, to my Grandmother's grave. My Busha. It was a great day full of conversation and memories "and laughs" (as she would say). We retraced our lives up and down the streets of San Bruno. I took photos of my childhood home, the neighborhood where I grew up and the places I played. It was a wonderful day with my mom.

Cedar Avenue: the hill where I grew up. High above the world, a little girl full of wonder looking out of her window.  The airplanes, when travel on them was still a mystery to me.  The San Francisco Bay, along the Peninsula.  And the cloud formations!  A main source of enjoyment for this artsy little double Scorpio child.

Our home, that stands like someone you haven't seen for years that grew up so differently than you expected. No more the soft yellow with the white shutters or the wooden garage door with greasy hinges or the hedges and flowers. There it stood wearing just a bit too much make-up. But still, the home where I grew up.

 
My school, first through eighth grade. The place where I learned about friendship, and education, and authority, and respect, and spirituality and religion; and where I learned to love words in all forms. I learned to love the English language right here.

And San Bruno Park, where I played in the creek and on the slides and swings; and later waved poster boards with hand drawn bubbly lettered peace signs while protesting the Vietnam War, learned about boys, and made the choice not to do drugs when "everyone was doing it". The place that always smelled like pink popcorn and hot dogs. The bleachers where I shared my first kiss (and sat there thinking he smelled like mandarin oranges), the swimming pool where I hung out on summer days after I stuffed my t-shirt, shorts and flip flops into a mesh bag in the girl's locker room and pinned the locker key to my bathing suit. Transistor radios and cool guy's cars lined up along the street. The Doors, The Beach Boys, Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix.  Braided hair and incense sticks.  Hippie wanna-bes that our middle- class, parochial parents would never allow.

My mom and I did all this today and then I held her frail little arm as she walked unsteady across uneven turf to her mother and father's grave.

 

 

And then we went home to her house, where my boy, her grandson was waiting with her favorite cheesecake. And then I kissed her good-bye and came home to my home and found a love note on my pillow from Camille. And then this moment hit me,  as if I was in a movie, and I had died and was watching my whole life before me and then was whooshed back through the tunnel into the present moment, just as I had left it. The whoosh resounding in my ears. A milisecond of confusion as I tried to readjust my psyche from the day. And this is what I found:  

 

The Lanyard - Billy Collins

The other day I was ricocheting slowly

off the blue walls of this room,

moving as if underwater from typewriter to piano,

 from bookshelf to an envelope lying on the floor,

when I found myself in the L section of the dictionary

where my eyes fell upon the word lanyard.

No cookie nibbled by a French novelist could send one into the past more suddenly—

 a past where I sat at a workbench at a camp

 by a deep Adirondack lake

 learning how to braid long thin plastic strips

 into a lanyard, a gift for my mother.

I had never seen anyone use a lanyard

 or wear one, if that’s what you did with them,

 but that did not keep me from crossing

 strand over strand again and again

 until I had made a boxy

 red and white lanyard for my mother.

 She gave me life and milk from her breasts,

 and I gave her a lanyard.

She nursed me in many a sick room,

 lifted spoons of medicine to my lips,

 laid cold face-cloths on my forehead,

 and then led me out into the airy light

 and taught me to walk and swim,

 and I, in turn, presented her with a lanyard.

 Here are thousands of meals, she said,

 and here is clothing and a good education.

 And here is your lanyard, I replied,

 which I made with a little help from a counselor.

 Here is a breathing body and a beating heart,

 strong legs, bones and teeth,

 and two clear eyes to read the world, she whispered,

 and here, I said, is the lanyard I made at camp.

 And here, I wish to say to her now,

 is a smaller gift—not the worn truth

 that you can never repay your mother,

 but the rueful admission that when she took

 the two-tone lanyard from my hand,

 I was as sure as a boy could be

 that this useless, worthless thing I wove

 out of boredom would be enough to make us even.

 

It was a full Mother's Day. So very full. xoxo

Comments

[Vickie]

Beautiful photos and such a lovely tribute to motherhood. xo