Women in my life

I wrote this poem over thirty years ago. Now I'm putting my published and prize wining short stories and poems in an anthology. As I entered it, I realized that only Llara and Susan are still alive. There is both a sadness that I can't telephone or email the others or message them, get on a plane and hug them, drink tea and share what we've been doing, yet in a strange way they are still part of me many decades later.

WOMEN IN MY LIFE

Llara

My daughter is thirty. I tell people

we’ve had twenty-eight wonderful years.

Five and thirteen are best forgotten.

She was always independent,

insisting

on holding her own bottle.

Insisting

on making her own decisions

which were almost always right

And certainly, as good as mine.

I am neat

needing things in neurotic order.

She marks her territory

scattering her possession

wherever she goes.

She is good at math and

can put furniture together.

I am good at words and

can put furniture together

but wrong

so she fixes it.

We lived in a small flat for nine months,

agreeing that our relationship

was more important than neat or messy,

making a lie of the saying two women

can’t get along under the same roof.

 

Susan

She knows if I’m well

by the way I walk through a room.

Maybe

Because we’ve walked in each other’s souls.

She saved my daughter’s life

and thus saved mine.

When we had a rough patch,

I thought that was reading my journal,

so I wrote in green ink,

“Susan, I know you’re reading this.”

In blue ink, the next day, I found

“No, I’m not, just keep writing.”

A problem with old friends

is they don’t let you fool yourself.

It works both ways.

Each year we go on retreat.

One year in Argelès-sur mer,

the next in Ocean Grove.

We walk on the beach,

eat fresh corn

lick ice cream cones,

listen to music,

rent movies, read to each other,

play Scrabble,

talk about men,

my writing, her teaching,

women’s studies, politics,

history and art.

Freed from chores

it is a renewal of all

that is good in our lives.

 

Mardy

A boy with beautiful blue

eyes dated Mardy and me at the same time.

At sixteen we decided

we liked each other better than him.

Tied by the telephone cord for hours

we told our dreams.

 When I was getting divorced,

Mardy held the glue pot

as I pieced myself together.

When we walked in the woods behind

her folks’ Maine cabin. We tasted wild

blackberries as she spoke

of nightmares.

And now that we are happy

she tells me we are not just

foul-weather friends.

 

Norma

My father fell in love with my stepmom

when they were both married to other people.

She swirled across the dance floor in a

white gown embroidered with violets

and into his arms.

They never had his children or her children.

“We have “our children,” she always said in

a tone that let everyone know

there was no alternative.

When she visits,

we play cards.

she wipes me out,

no dainty widow lady, she.

We go to restaurants,

share memories of my Dad

And build new ones of our own.

 

Lillian

They met I secretarial school,

Lillian and my mother,

agreed on nothing for sixty years,

stayed friends and fought

over every issue.

At eighty Lillian

picketed the British consulate,

marched for pro-choice,

and told of a man in an

Irish pub. He raved about her hair,

suggesting they sleep together.

“Did you?” I asked.

She shook her head.

”I was wearing a wig.

I didn’t want him to know.”

“And if you weren’t?”

She just smiled.

 

Dar

No one, least of all me, knows why I

called my grandmother Dar, but soon

the world followed, even her friends

from childhood. She never minded being

renamed in her fifties.

When she baked a cake, she used

all the batter but gave me the spoon to lick

read me The Bobbsey Twins, and made

mud pies that looked good enough to eat.

A high school drop out

she prodded me through algebra,

tested my Latin verbs,

knew more history than

The substitute teacher.

 

Despite her thick glasses

she told me I was beautiful.

She was a New England Yankee.

Right was right.

Wrong was wrong.

When she had eye surgery,

she didn’t tell the doctor

the anesthesia hasn’t worked,

thinking it should hurt.

And when she lost two children

She bore that hurt too…

And when I lost her,

I wore my pain

as she would have wanted me to.

 

Dar saw five wars,

Lillian only four.

Norma was a wave on WWII

while Mardy, Susan and I

can touch names on a

long black wall in D.C.

Names of boys we played with

who will play no more.

Llara?

She knows war as a media even

as men with mikes talk on CNN.

These women’s lives span

the inventions of electricity to email.

Dar abandoned her horse and buggy,

was called THE woman with Ford,

while the rest of us jump on

Planes to change continents at whim.

No Stantons,

Steinems,

Sangers,

Or Curies

In this group.

They march by history

Not create it.

No one will write books,

Sing songs,

Make movies,

nor sculpt statues for public place

Honoring their lives.

They honor themselves.