The Tides of Mothering

For my mother, Valentine's Day, 2007

First memory--

Aroostook morning potato field
frost-bound rows, sun over forest horizon
and you, a young mother, not quite 30,
kneeling to shake soil from harvest roots
filling ash basket, dumping Katahdins
into tongue-and-groove cedar barrels
strung out row after row across this field
in this county vista in Houlton, Maine--
September, 1958.

At your side, a six-year-old daughter
not wanting this cold morning field,
toes and fingers cramping,
tired of mother's expectations
and beginning to cry.
With her, you return to your apartment,
shake the field dirt from her high-top sneakers
and prop her feet near the warming heat
of the oven of your ceramic stove.

Next memory--

Cobalt-blue beds filling each corner
of a bedroom meant for two.
Four headboards with nursery-rhyme decals
pressed onto pine by a mother’s soft hand.
Tucked beneath the cow jumping over the moon,
that same daughter, one year later,
peeks through half-closed eyes one night
to watch you tiptoe in and leave a nickel
beneath her sister's pillow.
Secret thrill of knowledge,
loss of innocence.

Memories frame you in action,
never in repose, your life void of ease,
filling with a mother's burden and silent joy--
25 years old and four young daughters,
28 years old and, at last, a son,
32 years old and your sixth and final child.

Tucked into the pages of a leather-bound scrapbook,
a Kodak snapshot--circa 1949--trumpets your bloom time.
You, beautiful in cotton shorts, crisp blouse,
long lean legs, trim waist, hair crimped
in soft auburn waves that frame your hopeful face.
You squint into the sun, shade your first-born's face,
while your young husband, looking every inch
like James Dean, stands at your side,
taut cotton t-shirt, strong legs in denim,
one arm cupped around your shoulder,
the other astride a hip jauntily thrust forward.

Fifty-eight years stretch before the two of you--
brimming with the challenge of making do,
of holding home together, of giving up brilliant youth,
and, for you, of taking on a mother's mantle.
So much promise--so much left behind.

What were you thinking that summer morning
as your gaze met the camera's eye?
Could you imagine the journey yet to come?
Could you see, then, your 55-year-old daughter
with three children of her own--
exactly half the number of the crop you bore?
Could you picture yourself arriving full circle,
having weathered the tides of mothering so well?