Monthly Archives: May 2020

White Peonies

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May 25, 2020

The petals pool around the blue vase
Set between the candle sticks that we lit every night
For dinner
All those years

And my fingers brush the softness
Reminded of Swan Lake and the
Light I saw reflected in your eyes
That first night at the ballet

So much a part of my childhood
So much not a part of yours

And reminded too of standing with you
In Sissinghurst Gardens in early spring
its White Room empty and quiet
No white roses climbing, no flowers blooming
And saying, “It is too bad we won’t see this”

And you saying “We will come back”

And we did.

The Great Blue Heron

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May 10, 2020

She walked across my hill 

As stately

As the Queen had done across her Palace gardens—

Pausing among the rising grasses

Her head lit by the western sun

And I wondered if she were a messenger

from my husband or even 

on this Mother’s Day night 

from my mother…

But entirely grateful

For this emissary from 

Our blue-green world 

For this moment of wonder

Mothers’ Day

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May 8, 2020

This morning ShutterFly—the photo site where I have many of my photographs stored—delivered to my computer screen a reminder of photographs taken ten years ago, on Mother’s Day weekend May 2010. It is like stepping back in time, and it brings a smile to my face.

There is a photo of my daughter Melinda and me in this living room, looking into the camera, with slight smiles. I smile back at them. I am wearing a favorite necklace that Bill bought for me on our trip to Peru; it is a blue spiral set into a silver background, the symbol of infinity. I think Bill probably took this photo. He is still alive that May, but frail and pale from the cancer that will take him in July. 

But the next photo I am sure I took. It is of Melinda and her daughter Emma Rose—my granddaughter. They are sitting on the black leather couch, and Emma is draped on her mother’s shoulder. She is smiling at the camera warmly and so is Melinda. Emma is eight years old, untouched by time and not too much by grief, though she already has lost a grandparent, her grandmother Nancy. But the warm comfortable love between the two is evident. 

I am very happy that my daughter has a daughter. I love my son, my first-born, but there is something special about the love between a mother and a daughter. I know that is not true for everyone. I have heard the sad stories. But I am fortunate, and so is my daughter. Even now at 18 Emma has a close relationship with her mother. 

I think of that sunlit Mother’s Day weekend ten years ago, captured forever in these photographs, and I smile again. I will not be with my children and grandchildren this Mother’s Day weekend, sequestered as I am by this pandemic, but I can take comfort in these memories and know that I am loved, as is my daughter. The spiral continues. Happy Mother’s Day, my darling daughter.