Letting Go

The sun is finally out, it’s warm at 44 degrees, and I feel rotten.

The boys are coming over to watch the Super Bowl. Six towering teens slender as grass and restless, ready to spring into some new life. It may be the last time they are all here together.

Of course, it’s Max in particular I grieve. He got accepted at a college nearby—impossible for us to afford. Nevertheless. It speaks of other potential admissions, much farther away.

Do all mothers dread this moment? My son has been the greatest joy of my life.

Subnivium: A Poem

My teen-aged son is taking a creative writing course.  He brings home an excerpt from Richard Hugo’s Triggering Towns, about the nature of poetry, how the lines first drape themselves on a something concrete and then deepen or expand beyond the initial subject.

My son thinks this assignment will be easy. Now he’s on a deadline: it’s nine o’clock and the assignment has to be turned in by midnight. I want to help but now I too feel crunched for time.

I can’t help you, I tell him. It’s up to you.

Nevertheless, I read the excerpt, enjoy its crisp remarks on the writing of poetry.

The next morning, I’m flipping through the Minnesota Conservation Volunteer, a popular Minnesota DNR publication. A sidebar title catches my eye: Subnivium.

I read the sidebar, and feel prompted to write.  Here’s what comes out.  I think it has something to do with climate change, among other things.


Subnivium: "Under Snow"

—A seasonal refuge between snowpack and ground)



This is a temporary refuge

for small soft mammals, relaxed in their busy tunnels,


unaware of the keen red fox plunging black feet first

into the white powder--emerging with a snack

wriggling between its long teeth--


Meanwhile, our clattering cars spew gray blankets

of exhaust, too hot for the season;

ice crystals unhitch their clasped hands

and tunnels collapse.


The vole crouches, naked and ridiculous,

eyes locked on a vast shadow cruising across the sky.

My Mother, My Son

These days my son lives in his bedroom. I think of his room as something like mission control—banks of beeping and blinking technology: monitor, laptop, headphones, remote, chargers, game cube controllers. Musty-smelling. The paint on the walls is chipped and dirty white and dotted with pieces of yellowing scotch tape. The top of the bookcase is a hodgepodge of water-glasses and granola bar wrappers A giant drawing dominates one wall: what looks like a wild Satanic dog standing on two legs. His teeth are bared, and he’s holding a giant pencil, pointed like a weapon.

Most of the time I knock once or twice and walk right in. He anticipates this by living under his bedspread—doing whatever he does on his smartphone. I know it’s wrong of me to barge in. I just want to reach him, have access, know what’s going on in his life.

Today, I knock on the door. He yanks it open. Yes, what do you want? Sarcastic.

I feel sheepish. Just let me know if you want my help on those job applications.

I know, he says.

I’m not ready to give up. Why are you so cranky?

Because you’re irritating me, he says, pulling the door closed.

I stare at the door for a minute, then walk away.

I think of my mother. As a teen, I lived in my bedroom, refused to eat the meals she cooked, refused to speak to her, scorned her pathetic attempts to insert herself into my life. I wanted to be free of her--at the same time I needed her desperately.

Mother, Oak Tree

A few days ago, I wailed like a child. Why had my mother cut down the century-old red oak tree that had perched on a bank at the edge of our front yard?

The tree shed acorns that crunched under our feet—a nuisance for lawn-mowing, I guess, but a pleasure for us kids. We hurled them across the street, or at cars, or at our neighbors' windows on Halloween. The two trunks of the tree had fused around a strip of metal someone must have stuck between them long ago: when we played on the slippery bank we used the strip to haul ourselves up from the road. I watched the tree's leaves turn the colors of the seasons—green to yellow to orange to red to rust--and peered at their veins and burls, like the warty skin of grandmothers.

The tree meant something to me—it was always there.

When I heard from my sister that my mother had cut it down, I was dumbfounded: Why? Didn’t she know how I felt? Why hadn't she asked?  There was no way to bring it back.

The truth, of course, is that I’ve been gone from my childhood home for over 40 years. The house is no longer my home. My mother has every right to do what she wants with her yard.

But it hurts.  I want to know: will she count the rings on the stump? Will she save a slice of the tree for me?