For the past 20 or so months, I have been writing poems about my parents and the experience of caring for them, which—I have been surprised to discover—I have found a gift and a privilege to bestow. This poem is one in that ongoing sequence, written not long after we moved them this past summer from their home in New York into an assisted living facility in Southern California.•
This poem appears in Issue 30 of Alta Journal.
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she calls in
a raging panic
or is it the other
way around
demands to know
why they’re not leaving
i thought we were flying
back to new york tomorrow
she insists
voice an old lady’s quaver
not like her mother
although that too
but her grandmother
immigrant who never
learned much english
i remember
more than half a century ago
visiting her at a facility
not unlike the one in which
my mother
now the same age
must hourly recreate herself
each encounter a disruption
a surprise
and is this what it comes to
this circularity
this forgetting
this slow winnowing
of the self
earlier in the afternoon
when i was visiting
she seemed to have
arrived at some
acceptance
or at least an
understanding
i do like being
close to family
she acknowledged
so many of us here
in southern california
this was always what she
found most frustrating
in manhattan
frustrating? no
enraging
a state of affairs
never to abide
the distance
its unnatural dynamic
she lamented
all extended visits with
no participation in one
another’s daily lives
that this is a lie
seems as irrelevant today
as it has ever been
although the reasons
differ
her no longer
compos mentis
language
breaking down
in her mouth
as if she were chewing
rather than speaking
mouth
mother
i never realized
until this moment
just how the
words align
but why not
my mother is nothing
if not a creature
of appetite
who wants what
she wants and
does not
much care
who she
must bite
this is why i once
kept such space between us
a circumstance long since
evaporated
like her memory
her ability to reason
to process information
to understand the situation
which is why she calls in
a raging panic
certain she is
being lied to
certain she has
been misled
it’s like a break
or a fugue state
as if her synapses
have further
uncoupled
but i do not
say as much
what would be the point
i have to tell you
she confides
this hotel is very peculiar
i soften my voice
coo into the phone
as if she were a
pet or an infant
remind her that noah
and i are bringing
lunch on friday
a circumstance requiring
that she be available
to greet us
that in whatever way
remains to her
she linger in place
