Diary of Not a Wimpy Widow

Month: May 2020

  • White Peonies

    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

    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

    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.