cool hands soft
It was a nice Mothers Day for me. My girls gave me plants and our first honorary son and his bride sent some gorgeous flowers and called - twice. A certain young man from Brooklyn forgot to call but we’re not much on these things in our family so that’s fine - and maybe this evens us out finally for that time I stole a photo of him from one if his friends’ Facebook pages and used it in the holiday card.
The truth is, it was a long day for me and my back muscles were screaming bloody murder by 6pm, probably because I began the day by driving 3 ½ hours, then food-shopped, then picked up a boy so he could harvest some blossoms from our yard to give to his honorary mom. (And what an eye for beauty he has as the vaseful showed, the azalea and lilac, the rhododendron and bridal veil all so artfully arranged by him!) Then I roasted a couple of pork loins before the rest of them arrived with the side dishes and David produced a 1990 wine just on the edge of turning from awesome to dirt-like.
Of course I thought of my own mom as I do every day, since, except for a sharp yearning for the sound of her voice, she is not gone from me at all, even these 22 years after her death. But for some reason I thought more of David's mom who lies at last beside her young husband, cut down in the prime of his life. Ruth Payne was soft-spoken and self-effacing, tolerant, free-thinking, and humble. This is what she looked like her senior year at Tufts when she was futilely trying to tell one Ralph Marotta a marriage between them would never work.. And this below is the poem that since her death has made me think of her every time I read it. Emily Dickinson wrote it about her own mother who she too missed very much, even as we all miss the ones who gave us life, remembering as we do our baby days and their cool hand soft upon our brow:
She bore it till the simple veinsTraced azure on her hand --Til pleading, round her quiet eyesThe purple Crayons stand.
Till Daffodils had come and goneI cannot tell the sum,And then she ceased to bear it --And with the Saints sat down.
No more her patient figureAt twilight soft to meet --No more her timid bonnetUpon the village street --
But Crowns instead, and Courtiers --And in the midst so fair,Whose but her shy -- immortal faceOf whom we're whispering here?
but seriously: who could be mad at this guy?
