The Only Real Thing



I attended Dundee Elementary School with my brother and sister
in the 1950s. Now my great-niece Desi and my great-nephew
Bowen are students there. Built early in the 20th century, 
Dundee was beautifully renovated and restored in the 
1980s. Architects, RDG Planning & Design, Omaha

SAFE PLACES

When I was six years old, I was afraid of

the Cold War, the Communists, nuclear bombs,

and whatever atrocities I could invent out of

semihistorical, quasi-true stories my brother

would whisper in sinister accents, with grisly

asides and horrific embellishments. Probably

he was as frightened as I was. Maybe we had an

unspoken agreement: I was the terrified child,

crying to break any heart not of granite
till Daddy gave in to annoyance or pity, I 
never knew which. In the warm, fragrant

nest of my parents' bed, I slept the sleep

of the innocent. My brother apparently 
got all the comfort he needed
vicariously. Somehow, in some way,
that must have been 
sufficient

for him.

No matter how sad, how extreme the calamity,

however scary the story might be, I was

safe with my mom and dad,

safe at the neighbors’,

safe in the chapel, and

flower-gardening-made-easy.com

safe at my school, where

forsythias, lilacs, and quince bloomed in spring.

The air-raid drills didn’t frighten me, only I

felt pretty silly when having to crouch
like a frog on the floor, with instructions
to lock hands on the back of the neck.
Even in first grade we knew that the stuff they called

nuclear fallout was more of a threat than our

six-year-old hands could deflect. Whatever—

I never imagined such desperate tragedy; one
that could walk in our classroom one day; one so
despicable, dangerous, angry and sick; one
inconceivable... and blow us away.

I thought I knew fear but I didn’t know this: The most

frightening things tunneled into my mind with the
monsters and witches and gremlins that rattled the blinds,
creaked the floors, and ate six-year-old girls for a snack
late at night, when the wrath of hell, multiplied ten million
times, wouldn't wake Mom and Dad. 

But then I, for a moment’s peace, never had need to
destroy everything that is childhood, breathing, heart-
beating invaders--the enemy--something that lives
in the mind--something I might be if my heart had
been savaged and left to bleed, wither, and die. To
imagine a vast, damaged, infertile land of aloneness,
despair, and insanity—I've never dared try. But
now, God, I want to see without being diseased
mind and body... how? How can it be that he
scorned his own flesh and he sought the abyss, and
he punished the agent by which he was made, and if
he had known how to he would have killed you?

Teach me to pray for this man and his family. Did they

know him, his grief and his anguish? His pain? Did they see 
the dark as his illness revealed it to him? When did his world 
start to dim, then go sunless and cold, empty and still?

Then show me two dozen children with guardian angels
as Heaven's door opens, as each is embraced. Please,
may the mothers and fathers, the sisters and brothers and 
aunties and all of them witness it too.

In your grace keep us safe, keep us loving and
certain of love and believing in what is the only real thing 
and the only truth, even today, when we can't comprehend
what we see:

Love is him

Love is them
Love is me
Love is you
Love is everything

Mothers and Daughters

Missouri River in flood, June 4, 2011, NASA Earth Observatory photo on OurAmazingPlanet.com

A MOTHER’S WATERSHED

Motherhood’s the wide, green river curving through the heart,

beginning to beginning, watering the tilted plain and surging

through my veins, emerging now and then, mysteriously salinized.

It burns the skin; the eyes turn into lakes, emitting rivulets that
carry off the residue of transitory misery or happiness,
neglected joy, and bittersweet remembrance.

At too great a distance from her watershed I am bereft, without a

home or compass. Safe beside her, I am known and cherished,

strong and capable, refreshed, refreshing, blessed, eternal. Just

tonight she has reminded me that it is time to fill the bottles from

her wells. That must be why I am so thirsty. I’d forgotten: There's
no virtue in the kind of sacrifice that weakens me. I, too, am

mother of a hundred streams. Depleted, how can I be generous?

Everything I plant in gardens on her slopes and in her valleys

flourishes, oblivious to drought and flood, in sun or shade. Her

spirit thrives in maple trees and terraces of pungent herbs, in

groves of lilac, vines of wild rose. Hers is a subtle presence,

growing lush just as the summer wanes, in towers of

chrysanthemums, in harvesting of apples, pears, and plums.

Because of her protection, by her foresight, in her love and grace—

thus am I snug all winter long. She has put up enough for

sustenance and liberality, for fellowship and charity. Don’t worry, I

can hear her murmur. God is good, there are provisions in the

cellar, and abundant game runs in the wood.

There is neither benefit nor leisure for indulging in the shame of

having taken her for granted, nor should I blame myself for

offering a song or fragrance not the same as hers, for of necessity

our courses separated long before (I thought) they ought to have.

Unable to go back, impelled by currents I had no control of, I have

faced implacably great cliffs of stone. Had I not known she waited

on the other side, I might have stayed and gathered to myself the

streams that chance and gravity had given me. I could have settled

like a placid lake in such a Canaan, if it were indeed the Promised

Land and it had been my destiny to populate that fertile valley. But

the bottom would not hold; I must go on or be absorbed, and I

was born to sing and on the strength of just one chorus, honed to

honesty, could slice through bedrock, if need be, to force my way

beyond the granite gates and flow again beside my source.

And I had generations to propel to greatness of their own in time,

not mine to choose, thank God for that; thank Heaven that I finally

knew how many rocks I need not move. The hurdles would make

way for me or not, regardless of how hard I pushed, without

respect to karma or the stories I’d created, saying, Stumbling

blocks, remove yourselves and go impede somebody else. As it

turned out, they were as porous as the sand. I simply drifted

through, emerging purer than before. I left behind (for compost)

death and other sediment. What better could I do but flow in ease

and lightness toward the source, to motherhood herself? Why

should I race to reach a destination foreordained in any case,
when there is peace along the way?

Fort Peck Dam on the upper Missouri River in eastern Montana
(Source: groucho-karl-marx.blogspot.com)

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