About My Mother

I could never say anything about my mother:
how she repeated, you’ll be sorry someday,
when I’m not around anymore, and how I didn’t believe
in either “I’m not” or “anymore,”
how I liked watching as she read bestsellers,
always flipping to the last chapter first,
how in the kitchen, convinced it’s not her
proper place, she made Sunday coffee,
or, even worse, filet of cod,
how she studied the mirror while expecting guests,
making the face that best kept her
from seeing herself as she was (I take
after her in this and other failings),
how she went on at length about things
that weren’t her strong suit and how I stupidly
teased her, for example, when she
compared herself to Beethoven going deaf,
and I said, cruelly, but you know he
had talent, and how she forgave it all
and how I remember that, and how I flew from Houston
to her funeral and they showed a comedy
in flight and I wept with laughter
and grief, and how I couldn’t say anything
and still can’t.

*

Senior Dance

Or how, before the senior dance, my mother went to the meeting
at which we discussed the evening’s “artistic program”
and how her ideas struck us
as feeble, old-fashioned,
as if she, not we, were taking the final exams
that she’d already passed before the war,
with honors, as I remember,
and also the war, all signs suggest
that she passed it pretty well, too, and how then,
during that meeting, she embarrassed me—
whereas I couldn’t admire her during the war
for different reasons, completely different,

and how that asymmetry, that strong asymmetry,
for many years, for decades,
didn’t permit me to see her
in truth’s sharp light,
sharp and complex,
complex and just,
just and unattainable,
unattainable and splendid.

*

Public Speaking Contest

Or when she told us, for the tenth time maybe,
about the public speaking contest that, as a young
law student, she’d won, nearly won, even though
she faced serious competition, and like everyone
there was stunned that a woman had won, nearly won,
and not a man, a future judge or lawyer;
she came out the best, nearly the best, although technically
speaking someone else took home first prize—
and that was her greatest success,
and when we listened to her story, later, much later,
ironically, a little bored, thinking: “you’re still
caught up in a competition, invisible this time,
like most such occupations,
and you want us to bestow the laurels
they refused you then,”
and how I wish I could hear
her tell the story again
about the contest she nearly won,
and in which, I think, after decades
of her memory’s unceasing labor,
she finally carried the day.