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This is for my mother

A Mother’s Day tribute to the best woman I know

This is for my mother, (you),the woman who tucked me safeaway in her belly for nine months, withstood those awkward months of strangers touching her tummy,

who stopped drinking coffee (or wine or soda)for those nine months because it would stunt my growth (although I am still kind of short),

who spoke to me in whispers, of the blue skies and barbecues of my future, her voice a soft wind through the amniotic-fluid fog.

 

This poem is for my mother, who sang “you are my sunshine” and other lullabies

And placed her worn palms upon the skin of her belly, knowing I could feel it, her fingers and wordsforming invisible fingers inside her womb to intertwine gently with my barely-formed fingers-

Her large heart sent dreams to grow inside my tiny beating heart.

Her breathing created a rhythm by which I would dance the rest of my days.

This poem is for my mother who withstood labor pains and weight gain,stretch marks and walks to parks,

for my mother, who knowingly brought me into a world that she knew she would have to spend years and years protecting me from,

catching me as I stumbled, encouraging me as I fumbled.

Since I was no longer safely tucked away in the kangaroo pouch of her womb, she carefully swaddled me in kisses and soft pink blankets.

She would wake up when the moon was still bright and high in the sky, to sing me lullabies,

singing “hush little baby, don’t say a word”-Mama’s gonna buy you… a pacifier, no Mama’s gonna help to curb your desire to cry when the world doesn’t give you what you want… immediately, Yes, Mama’s gonna teach you that no matter how much you want the moon to shine, sometimes, the clouds will cover it, And you will have to wait, Yes, you will have to wait, my child…but when it comes,

when the moon howls and lights up the night sky, it will be worth all of the waiting.Don’t waste your tears on the wrong kind of light in the sky-”

This poem if for my mother because she taught me how to make my own light to ward off the darkness of this world.

This poem is for my mother who laced her calloused fingers into mine

and led me through rows of white daisies and yellow daffodils (after she picked the weeds),

for my mother, who saved the biggest strawberries from the patch in the palm of her hands, just for me,

who swore she “wasn’t hungry” year after year, supper after supper,so that I, (we, her children), could have the next hamburger on the plate or the last piece of chocolate cake.

 

This poem is for my mother, who drank cup after cup of coffee because she was woken up night after night

to hold me after bad dreams and to listen to my crazy schemes about sandcastles I wanted to build and rainbows I planned to find the end to…

this poem is for my mother because she listened…

to those dreams and many, many others,and never told me the end of the rainbow…

is an illusion.

Thanks to my mother, I still believe I can find it. 

 This poem is for my mother, because she understood that sometimes when I fell down,

she needed to let me get back up myselfbecause she knew that some day I would fall and she would not be there to pick me up-

so she taught my chubby toddler legs to grow strong, strategically pried my tiny fingers off hers so that I could waddle my way through the tall grasses of this field of life,skin my knees and learn to bleed,

but never, no never, give upno matter how much

I hurt. 

This poem is for my mother, for the Barbie clothes she sewed from wedding dresses,

for the careful brush of her fingers to remove the tresses of hair from my eyes,

for the hundreds of snotty noses she let me wipe on her dresses,

for the trips to the library and the hugs in the hallways,for the chocolate chip cookies and the helicopter spins in the park,

for the snuggles on the couchand the bedtime stories for the hundredth telling.

 

This poem is for my mom, for professing to love every crayon-constructed family picture I made in kindergarten,

every popsicle stick and messy-glue Macaroni noodle art project I created on yellow or blue construction paper,

and for convincing me each time that my scribbles were as beautiful as any Van Gogh or Monet painting,taking the time to pause from her work to note how perfectly I swirled the turquoise crayon into the sky I drew or the brilliance of my cotton ball clouds,

for kneeling down beside me to whisper, “I love it”And “I love you”-no matter how busy she was, for giving those pictures prominence in the art gallery of our home, and not caring if my dirty fingerprints smudged the front of that refrigerator.

This poem is for my mother, for holding her fingers over my tiny fingers

the first time I gripped that thick elementary school pencil, for guiding me along the dotted lines the first time I wrote my name,

for feeding me compliments about how good I was even before I was good at anything because Mothers see the good in us, long before the rest of the world, see the good in us even when we cannot see it inside ourselves.

They love us anyway and in spite of everything that we are.

This poem is for my mother because every time I asked why, she answered,

even if it was with a “because I said so,” because when I lost my first tooth,she put it in a plastic bag and saved it,

because she combed my hair day and after day and night after night even though I whined and cried, and she never “cut it off like a boy,” even though she threatened to

(okay there was that one time), but I learned my lesson.   

This poem is for my mom who kissed the tears off my cheeks

and hugged away every monster in the closet or boogie man, whether I was five and he was under my bed, or I was twenty and he broke my heart,

for the mom who took off the training wheels on my banana- seat bike and let me keep going down the block, yelling, “you can do it, you can do it”

even though inside of her heart, she was whispering, “come back , come back.”

She did the same thing when I left home that first time.

This is for my mother because she always lets me come back, every time I falter, every time I cry,

because she exalts me for every tiny triumph and beams at me with pride, and because, of all the “best friends” I have ever professed to have,

(and in middle school and high school that was a LOT), she has always been and will always be,the very best friend I could ever ask for, and more than I could ever deserve.  

This poem is for my mom because now that I am older,

now that I wipe away little tears and soothe little fears,

now that I point out constellations and take backyard-only vacations,

now I know, yes, now I know, all that she gave up, just for me.

I love you, Mom

This poem is dedicated to all the mothers in the world from all the daughters in the world whoRealize just how lucky we really are…(But most of all, this poem is dedicated to my mother, Vanice Mae Sprangers).

Written by Christine Hartjes