I most easily express my love languages through words of affirmation (sometimes in the form of verse) and quality time. So here goes a poem for my mom on her 69th year!! Sometimes the only way I can think about my Mom is as a mom…but today, on her birthday, I would like to think about all the other ways she comes to life for people and the planet. Becky is a Ford (that’s her maiden name). She grew up in a 300-person town in rural Ohio. She is the product of 4H and working class parents who worked at a Garage every day save Sunday. Her childhood memories are of running around town and her Grandmother’s farm. Her experiential education informs her history. Her hands tell the story of where she has been and where she will go.
Her Identity lives in her hands*
Her skirt hem draped comfortably just below her knees,
like a worn tablecloth on a well-built wooden table,
leg hair glistening in the sun, broad bare feet, one on the gas pedal
the other on the brake.
She always drove like she was driving stick.
Her hands encircled the wheel steadily and her movements
were brusk and assertive. Her commentary a steady stream of information that
keeps you company–never silence–always emotion and presence.
An expressive piano that is only tuned once every blue moon.
“My hands look like old-lady hands.” She tightened the lid of the honey
jar she was bottling– comb stashed inside like a shimmering treasure.
She remarked, without acknowledging the history those hands had been
through with the countless quilts, rugs, knitting needles,
bee hives, canning jars, sourdough,
native plantings, garden rows, and compost piles.
Everything now she knew before and still,
Her hands continue to shape the identity she holds.
*I used Naomi Shihab Nye’s Poem: "My Memories Live in my Mother’s Phone" as a mentor poem for mine because I think her style of poetry fits my mother well and to pay tribute to Nye's Palestinian roots and the conflict that folks are enduring there that is terrifying and incomprehensible.
¿está la raquelita? 