There’s something about clean sheets, and my mother knew this. As I ventured off to camps, dorms, apartments, my very first home—she always made her way to that bare mattress, tucking the edges in tenderly, getting the pillow just so. For years, she'd been my safe, soft place to land. So, when I spread my wings, she was hellbent on prepping that nest before we said our goodbyes.
Of course, I didn't see it then—thought love was all romance and grand gestures. How could I know that the silent fluffing of a pillow, a warm duvet folded over like an invitation was a reassurance, a mother bird's way of whispering
I agree--this is not a sad poem, but it intersected with me missing my dad on this dark, cold, and rainy morning. My father was also from Detroit, and his father showed him love in ways he could only notice with the passage of time.
So, my grief is unleashed, again. It happens. It's probably time to cry again anyway.
My father died from complications due to Covid in August 2020. What I knew was love when he was alive, but even more so now that he's gone, were his frequent but brief calls and text messages asking me how I was, telling me he loved me, telling me he was praying for my family and me, recommending a book or a sermon even though he knew I probably wouldn't read or listen because we were near the opposite ends of those spectrums.
But it was love. He thought of me often. He prayed for me. He loved me well. And I miss him tremendously.
After he died I remember wondering, who will pray for me now? I'm not Catholic, but I've come to believe in the prayers of the saints. I want (need?) to believe he's still praying for me.
Thank you for sharing this poem, your reflection, your question. Happy new year to you, Pádraig, and to everyone here.💚
Growing up in the U.S. as the child of Indian immigrants, I often struggled with the differences between things I saw and heard about in the dominant white middle class American society I was surrounded by, and how things were in my home. On TV, and in stories from friends, it seemed that parents spoke openly to their children about all manner of things, including boyfriends and girlfriends, sex, drugs, you name it. In my family, even now at the age of 48, I can still barely watch a passionate kiss on screen in the company of my parents without cringing. So no, we didn’t speak openly about boyfriends and girlfriends and sex. We (my siblings and I), on the other hand, received articles, slipped under our respective bedroom doors. Magazine articles, journal pieces, newspaper clippings. My Dad, an avid reader, managed to clip articles about a range of topics, and often managed to clip ones related to something I was struggling with, despite never having had a single “open communication” conversation with him about it (what I felt would have been evidence of love and a “healthy family dynamic”). At the time I resented it. “Why oh why can’t we just talk about things openly, like these American parents do with their parents? Articles, more articles?! Ugh!” Now, I see the profound love in this. Even if he could not ask me, or speak, on any of it, he took the time to read and find and select and clip and slip under my door... a truly beautiful act of love. 🙏🏾 Thank you so much Padraig for this beautiful inquiry, orienting me to see the love underneath all of it. Just today, visiting my parents, my mom left a stack of lozenges she knows I use, by my bags. I began my automatic “Mom, mom! I don’t have space in my apartment- I can’t store boxes of lozenges!” but then backpedaled and thanked her, and more importantly, took a breath to allow myself to see - she’s not giving my boxes of lozenges. She’s giving me her love.
Hello and blessings of the new year to Padraig and all gathered here. May I just add here that this is a very nice place to meet each of you beneath the “Tree of Forgiveness” as our beloved Saint John Prine wrote. Battered, a bit broken and still hopeful; know that you are not alone and that this place is the prayer we share for each other and those we love. I wish you all peace and prosperity in the coming year.
I share what I learned from Brené Brown: in spite of what I felt I didn’t get, my parents were doing the best they could. I was doing a seminar (in my mid-60s), railing about my mother: “why didn’t she make an effort to improve herself and be kinder?” — when I was brought up short by my own inadequacies. She had less to work with than I did! I -had- worked hard - for years - to be a better person, and -still- I was failing towards the people I loved. In learning to forgive myself, I also learned to forgive her. She was doing the best she could, with what she had. As was I, at that point in my life. Giving up my anger allowed my creativity to spring forth: it had been held hostage by my anger, and now it was free. A great surprise to me, and unexpected gift. Some grace.
Happy New Year to you, Pádraig, and to your family of readers. To us. Many thanks.
From a young age I resented my very noisy anxious mother. She sucked all the oxygen out of the
room. But what I was too young to understand was her ever quiet and unwavering wait for me to finally show up as her dearest companion..
She constantly failed in her attempts to understand me.
Her relentless grip felt like a vise until in adulthood I realized I held the power to set us free.
Only when I saw her attention as love did I begin to understand HER, enjoy the gorgeous power of her humor,, her honesty, her intelligence and ability to change with grace right up until her death 3 years ago. Tensions between us didn't disappear but came to play a minor role in our relationship. I'm so grateful she lived long enough for me to grow up.
What I now recognize as love: Cracked hands. Warm casseroles. Fresh food. 'Dont forget to check your oil.' 'Call me when you get there.' Stumbled over here from The Pause, and am working through the Poetry Unbound book. It's got some sweet comfort and magic to it.
Jan 8, 2023·edited Jan 9, 2023Liked by Pádraig Ó Tuama
Warm wishes, Pádraig. Thank you for this reflection. // In the late 1960s I was inadvertently taught in church—after my father took his life—that what he did was wrong, that he’d be judged harshly in the afterworld. I don't believe that anymore. Still, this filled me with terror, and not a little shame back then. As his final choice drew near, perhaps he tried to be a seer, envisioning our lives in the future—both with him and without him—inaccurately assuming our lives without him would be the better path.
I wonder, rhetorically: could it be, as he contemplated suicide, that he wasn't only seeking relief from the despair of excruciating pains. Might he also have perceived—mistakenly—that it would be an act of love, an offering, still believing that his wife and children "would be better off without [him]"—something he said frequently, according to my mother. // I imagine he could not grasp the repercussions that would follow.
My wife and I were married for 31 years until her death in November of 2021. Every day of our marriage she ironed. When her kids were still living with us she ironed for them and for me. When they moved out the ironing continued right up until the last month of her life. I can still see her at her ironing board every night. My wife was not much of a talker. Her "I love you" did not come as often as I would of liked. But now I realize that every well pressed pair of pants, every perfectly pressed shirt, said, "I love you" to me, to her children."
I am comfortable now in my old age. Not in a physical sense, but as a mystical seer of things past and present flowing into an unforeseeable future. I see love now where in the past I saw none; I see lessons now rather than mistakes and errors—both mine and the world's. I see a universal God-ess presence now, both gentle and forgiving, where in the past I saw malevolent maleness both powerful and punishing. I see myself now as individual and unique but united in a loving generational march forward. I rest in the comfort and discomfort of reality and finally recognize it as wisdom.
Oddly, I now recognize my mother's rage as love, or rather the mask that love is forced to wear when fear is the root of every perception. My mother suffered from severe anxiety and depression all her life. But I, the youngest child, triggered her rage like none of the others. Many reasons, but now from this side of my life, I understand that most of it was fear. She wanted to keep me safe even if that meant me never experiencing or learning anything. I wanted to climb trees, ride motorcycles, hang out with "dangerous" people, live in NYC, and write poetry. She wanted me to be silent, good, and tied down. It was an unwinnable situation for both of us. I often wonder what it would have been like to have been raised by someone who thought the world was a good place. Oh yes, as the sun starts to rise behind the mountains on Kachemak Bay, blushing the sky and burnishing the water, the world is a good place.
I read this poems a few years ago, when my children were very young. It subconsciously informed my whole parenting style. It prompted me to a myriad of small gestures. And still today, i mentally fast forward to decades from now imagining my grown children looking back at these silent ways of quotidian love. This works backwards too, like in the poem, as i look at my own parents with renewed gratitude.
Time has a way of softening the hardness in us, doesn't it?
Even as my bones become more brittle, my muscles less supple, and my thoughts more fleeting, I've found the hardened places within start to let go.
With time, I've come to know that my mother gave me the gift of art, in the form of her deep appreciation of poetry, music, painting, pottery, cooking, and good fiction. Our house was filled with music, always, and we ate from finely crafted stoneware - some made by her own hands. And our shelves were filled with books - from a young age, I stared at their spines, wondered at their titles and made up stories about what was inside. Although surrounded by art, I never realized that the invitation to artistry was always around me.
My mother also gave me the gift of an artist's name. My middle name is Frost, after Robert, the Poet. I was teased for it as a child, and later wondered at the strangeness of naming a girl-child after such a man, but she loved his poems and she must have known that in time this would mean something special to me. She did not live long enough to see that one day I would start to inhabit the space of poetry, taking steps in response to this call of expression that can no longer be denied.
For these gifts I am grateful. I can no longer thank her in person, but I'm thankful to the artist in me that has awakened thanks to my mother's artful nurturance.
Happy New Year Padraig and thank you for this lovely reflection and meditation on love to greet my morning. At this stage of life, watching my grown children wrestle with the struggles, joys and griefs of life from their own place in the world, the poem you gifted reminds me of a poem from the other side of this reflection. "Thanks, Robert Frost" by David Ray. To quote a couple lines:
"Do you have hope for the future?
Someone asked Robert Frost, toward the end.
Yes, and even for the past, he replied,
that it will turn out to have been all right
for what it was, something we can accept"
......
and later in the poem - the line that speaks to me just now:
There’s something about clean sheets, and my mother knew this. As I ventured off to camps, dorms, apartments, my very first home—she always made her way to that bare mattress, tucking the edges in tenderly, getting the pillow just so. For years, she'd been my safe, soft place to land. So, when I spread my wings, she was hellbent on prepping that nest before we said our goodbyes.
Of course, I didn't see it then—thought love was all romance and grand gestures. How could I know that the silent fluffing of a pillow, a warm duvet folded over like an invitation was a reassurance, a mother bird's way of whispering
I'm always here.
I agree--this is not a sad poem, but it intersected with me missing my dad on this dark, cold, and rainy morning. My father was also from Detroit, and his father showed him love in ways he could only notice with the passage of time.
So, my grief is unleashed, again. It happens. It's probably time to cry again anyway.
My father died from complications due to Covid in August 2020. What I knew was love when he was alive, but even more so now that he's gone, were his frequent but brief calls and text messages asking me how I was, telling me he loved me, telling me he was praying for my family and me, recommending a book or a sermon even though he knew I probably wouldn't read or listen because we were near the opposite ends of those spectrums.
But it was love. He thought of me often. He prayed for me. He loved me well. And I miss him tremendously.
After he died I remember wondering, who will pray for me now? I'm not Catholic, but I've come to believe in the prayers of the saints. I want (need?) to believe he's still praying for me.
Thank you for sharing this poem, your reflection, your question. Happy new year to you, Pádraig, and to everyone here.💚
Growing up in the U.S. as the child of Indian immigrants, I often struggled with the differences between things I saw and heard about in the dominant white middle class American society I was surrounded by, and how things were in my home. On TV, and in stories from friends, it seemed that parents spoke openly to their children about all manner of things, including boyfriends and girlfriends, sex, drugs, you name it. In my family, even now at the age of 48, I can still barely watch a passionate kiss on screen in the company of my parents without cringing. So no, we didn’t speak openly about boyfriends and girlfriends and sex. We (my siblings and I), on the other hand, received articles, slipped under our respective bedroom doors. Magazine articles, journal pieces, newspaper clippings. My Dad, an avid reader, managed to clip articles about a range of topics, and often managed to clip ones related to something I was struggling with, despite never having had a single “open communication” conversation with him about it (what I felt would have been evidence of love and a “healthy family dynamic”). At the time I resented it. “Why oh why can’t we just talk about things openly, like these American parents do with their parents? Articles, more articles?! Ugh!” Now, I see the profound love in this. Even if he could not ask me, or speak, on any of it, he took the time to read and find and select and clip and slip under my door... a truly beautiful act of love. 🙏🏾 Thank you so much Padraig for this beautiful inquiry, orienting me to see the love underneath all of it. Just today, visiting my parents, my mom left a stack of lozenges she knows I use, by my bags. I began my automatic “Mom, mom! I don’t have space in my apartment- I can’t store boxes of lozenges!” but then backpedaled and thanked her, and more importantly, took a breath to allow myself to see - she’s not giving my boxes of lozenges. She’s giving me her love.
Hello and blessings of the new year to Padraig and all gathered here. May I just add here that this is a very nice place to meet each of you beneath the “Tree of Forgiveness” as our beloved Saint John Prine wrote. Battered, a bit broken and still hopeful; know that you are not alone and that this place is the prayer we share for each other and those we love. I wish you all peace and prosperity in the coming year.
I share what I learned from Brené Brown: in spite of what I felt I didn’t get, my parents were doing the best they could. I was doing a seminar (in my mid-60s), railing about my mother: “why didn’t she make an effort to improve herself and be kinder?” — when I was brought up short by my own inadequacies. She had less to work with than I did! I -had- worked hard - for years - to be a better person, and -still- I was failing towards the people I loved. In learning to forgive myself, I also learned to forgive her. She was doing the best she could, with what she had. As was I, at that point in my life. Giving up my anger allowed my creativity to spring forth: it had been held hostage by my anger, and now it was free. A great surprise to me, and unexpected gift. Some grace.
Happy New Year to you, Pádraig, and to your family of readers. To us. Many thanks.
From a young age I resented my very noisy anxious mother. She sucked all the oxygen out of the
room. But what I was too young to understand was her ever quiet and unwavering wait for me to finally show up as her dearest companion..
She constantly failed in her attempts to understand me.
Her relentless grip felt like a vise until in adulthood I realized I held the power to set us free.
Only when I saw her attention as love did I begin to understand HER, enjoy the gorgeous power of her humor,, her honesty, her intelligence and ability to change with grace right up until her death 3 years ago. Tensions between us didn't disappear but came to play a minor role in our relationship. I'm so grateful she lived long enough for me to grow up.
What I now recognize as love: Cracked hands. Warm casseroles. Fresh food. 'Dont forget to check your oil.' 'Call me when you get there.' Stumbled over here from The Pause, and am working through the Poetry Unbound book. It's got some sweet comfort and magic to it.
Warm wishes, Pádraig. Thank you for this reflection. // In the late 1960s I was inadvertently taught in church—after my father took his life—that what he did was wrong, that he’d be judged harshly in the afterworld. I don't believe that anymore. Still, this filled me with terror, and not a little shame back then. As his final choice drew near, perhaps he tried to be a seer, envisioning our lives in the future—both with him and without him—inaccurately assuming our lives without him would be the better path.
I wonder, rhetorically: could it be, as he contemplated suicide, that he wasn't only seeking relief from the despair of excruciating pains. Might he also have perceived—mistakenly—that it would be an act of love, an offering, still believing that his wife and children "would be better off without [him]"—something he said frequently, according to my mother. // I imagine he could not grasp the repercussions that would follow.
My wife and I were married for 31 years until her death in November of 2021. Every day of our marriage she ironed. When her kids were still living with us she ironed for them and for me. When they moved out the ironing continued right up until the last month of her life. I can still see her at her ironing board every night. My wife was not much of a talker. Her "I love you" did not come as often as I would of liked. But now I realize that every well pressed pair of pants, every perfectly pressed shirt, said, "I love you" to me, to her children."
I am comfortable now in my old age. Not in a physical sense, but as a mystical seer of things past and present flowing into an unforeseeable future. I see love now where in the past I saw none; I see lessons now rather than mistakes and errors—both mine and the world's. I see a universal God-ess presence now, both gentle and forgiving, where in the past I saw malevolent maleness both powerful and punishing. I see myself now as individual and unique but united in a loving generational march forward. I rest in the comfort and discomfort of reality and finally recognize it as wisdom.
Oddly, I now recognize my mother's rage as love, or rather the mask that love is forced to wear when fear is the root of every perception. My mother suffered from severe anxiety and depression all her life. But I, the youngest child, triggered her rage like none of the others. Many reasons, but now from this side of my life, I understand that most of it was fear. She wanted to keep me safe even if that meant me never experiencing or learning anything. I wanted to climb trees, ride motorcycles, hang out with "dangerous" people, live in NYC, and write poetry. She wanted me to be silent, good, and tied down. It was an unwinnable situation for both of us. I often wonder what it would have been like to have been raised by someone who thought the world was a good place. Oh yes, as the sun starts to rise behind the mountains on Kachemak Bay, blushing the sky and burnishing the water, the world is a good place.
Until I was 35 I presumed my mother preferred chicken wings!
I read this poems a few years ago, when my children were very young. It subconsciously informed my whole parenting style. It prompted me to a myriad of small gestures. And still today, i mentally fast forward to decades from now imagining my grown children looking back at these silent ways of quotidian love. This works backwards too, like in the poem, as i look at my own parents with renewed gratitude.
Time has a way of softening the hardness in us, doesn't it?
Even as my bones become more brittle, my muscles less supple, and my thoughts more fleeting, I've found the hardened places within start to let go.
With time, I've come to know that my mother gave me the gift of art, in the form of her deep appreciation of poetry, music, painting, pottery, cooking, and good fiction. Our house was filled with music, always, and we ate from finely crafted stoneware - some made by her own hands. And our shelves were filled with books - from a young age, I stared at their spines, wondered at their titles and made up stories about what was inside. Although surrounded by art, I never realized that the invitation to artistry was always around me.
My mother also gave me the gift of an artist's name. My middle name is Frost, after Robert, the Poet. I was teased for it as a child, and later wondered at the strangeness of naming a girl-child after such a man, but she loved his poems and she must have known that in time this would mean something special to me. She did not live long enough to see that one day I would start to inhabit the space of poetry, taking steps in response to this call of expression that can no longer be denied.
For these gifts I am grateful. I can no longer thank her in person, but I'm thankful to the artist in me that has awakened thanks to my mother's artful nurturance.
This week's poem "Those Winter Sunday's" reminded me of a poem I read several years ago that I share below.
Men at Forty
Donald Justice (b. 1925)
Men at forty
Learn to close softly
The doors to rooms they will not be
Coming back to.
At rest on a stair landing,
They feel it
Moving beneath them now like the deck of a ship,
Though the swell is gentle.
And deep in mirrors
They rediscover
The face of the boy as he practices trying
His father’s tie there in secret
And the face of that father,
Still warm with the mystery of lather.
They are more fathers than sons themselves now.
Something is filling them, something
That is like the twilight sound
Of the crickets, immense,
Filling the woods at the foot of the slope
Behind their mortgaged houses.
Happy New Year Padraig and thank you for this lovely reflection and meditation on love to greet my morning. At this stage of life, watching my grown children wrestle with the struggles, joys and griefs of life from their own place in the world, the poem you gifted reminds me of a poem from the other side of this reflection. "Thanks, Robert Frost" by David Ray. To quote a couple lines:
"Do you have hope for the future?
Someone asked Robert Frost, toward the end.
Yes, and even for the past, he replied,
that it will turn out to have been all right
for what it was, something we can accept"
......
and later in the poem - the line that speaks to me just now:
"And I too, and my children, so I hope,
Will recall as not too heavy the tug
Of those albatrosses I sadly placed
Upon their tender necks. ..."