The Circle of Life, Or How I Became My Mother’s Moth-er by Jackie Oldham (ALL ABOUT MY MOTHER Series)

The Circle of Life, Or How I Became My Mother’s Moth-er
by Jackie Oldham

The Joy of Parents
is preparing their children
for Life.

The Pain of Children
is preparing their parents
for Death.

These words I wrote
three months ago,
after helping my mother navigate
an uncharacteristic
moment of fear

When, on a steamy August night,
I accidentally let three moths
into her house,
while she was talking to her sister
on the phone.

So unnerved was she
that she abruptly ended the call,
and enlisted me—
the child who used to run away
from butterflies—
to get rid of these moths!

Mom turned off the lights
In the kitchen and dining room,
while I turned down the living room light.

Then, she turned on the front porch light
to lure the moths to the screen door.

One moth took the bait,
landing on the screen.
I carefully opened the screen door
while closing the main door
behind me.

The moth flew away.

Back inside,
I stared
as Mom,
reaching for something
on the darkened dining room table,
suddenly flinched away from the second moth,
which had landed
in her outstretched hand.

The moth flew into the living room,
landing on the wall
near the dim lamp.

I rolled up a newspaper page,
smashed the moth,
then wiped the detritus
from the wall
with a handy paper towel.

The third moth was
a ghost, unseen
and never found.

I took my leave
from caregiving
for the night,
returning to my own home,

still worried about that third,
unseen moth.

Seven months later,
my Mother flew away.

IMAGE: Moth, watercolor by Ekaterina Kim.

NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: This poem was originally written and published on my blog in 2017, as part of a longer poem titled “The Circle of Life,” a missive about the stages of life as positions on a clock. But I was never fully satisfied with that poem. I wanted the incident with my mother to stand on its own. When I read about the Silver Birch Press ALL ABOUT MY MOTHER Poetry Series, I saw an opportunity to reframe and express the deeper meaning of the incident by introducing the metaphor of “mother” and “moth-er.”

AUTHOR’S PHOTO CAPTION: Mother’s & Daughter’s Graduation Photos. Above: Dorothy Barber Oldham, Graduate of Frederick Douglass High School, Baltimore, Maryland (February 1950, age 17 years, 4 months); Right: Jackie Oldham, Graduate of Western High School, Baltimore, Maryland (May 1970, age 16 years, 7 months). Douglass High School (founded in 1883 as the Colored High and Training School), second oldest U.S. high school specifically for African-Americans, has produced many prominent African-American leaders. Western High School (founded in 1844) is the oldest public all-female high school in the U.S. Both schools are still in existence.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Jackie Oldham (she/her) is an essayist, poet, blogger, format editor, musician, and photographer from Baltimore, Maryland. Her poems have appeared in the journals WOC This Way for Poetry, Minyan Magazine, Spillwords Press, Rigorous Magazine, Oddball Magazine, and Global Poemic, and in A Lovely Place, A Fighting Place, A Charmer: The Baltimore Anthology (Gary M. Almeter and Raphael Alvarez, editors, Belt Publishing, 2022). Her personal blog can be found at baltimoreblackwoman.com, with companion Facebook and Instagram accounts. With Rafael Alvarez, she cofounded the blog braciolejournal.com (History of Poetry in Baltimore/1945 to the Present). As a format editor, she worked with Baltimore author Rosearl Julian West to format West’s memoir, Reflections: My Journey on Arunah, for publication on Amazon.com.

Burden: the word I knew so well so young by Diane Funston (ALL ABOUT MY MOTHER Series)

Burden: the word I knew so well so young
by Diane Funston

Mom is made of glass
hollow and fragile
ready to break.
I was a daughter
of another mother—
her own
I grew up in a waterfalls city
both cistern and fountain
towards and away

Raised by grandmother
Mom was relieved of the burden
a word I knew so well
it surprised my first-grade teacher

We had cats when I was little
Mom baby-talked to
They were bid hello and goodbye
when she entered and left rooms
I was given the silent treatment
cats spoken to with exaggerated volume
hurt my ears and my heart

I never bonded as her daughter
She was a puerile
rebellious sister at best
Grandma was vanilla sugar love
died too soon in my adolescence
I became Mom’s parent
always in those roles

I forgave her years ago
accepted her revisionist apologies
believed after I raised three sons well
I could ease the winter of her elder years

She lives with us now
rescued from a senior high rise
New York State winters
threats of the plague

So little conversation
silent breakfast/ lunch/ dinner
a car passenger without sound
staring straight ahead
Then tv time in evening
we watch Netflix series together
volume loud considering closed captioning
I welcome these now familiar
fictional characters
and consider them as family

PAINTING: Rain, Heavy at Times by Jane Wilson (2004).

NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: This poem is bittersweet. It paints my mother as she always has been, an adult who never grew up or wanted the responsibility of motherhood. It also pays homage to my grandmother, my mother’s mother, who raised me and who I bonded to as mother.

PHOTO: The author (left) and her mother.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Diane Funston (she/hers) writes poetry of nature and human nature. For two years, she has been the Yuba-Sutter Arts and Culture Poet-in-Residence. In this role, she created Poetry Square, a monthly online venue that featured poets from around the world reading their work and discussing creative process. Her work has appeared in Synkronicity, California Quarterly, Whirlwind, San Diego Poetry Annual, Summation, Tule Review, Lake Affect Magazine, F(r)iction, and other literary journals. Her first chapbook, Over the Falls, was published by Foothills Publishing in July 2022.

In Which Slaughter-house-Five Anticipates My Mother by Sara Clancy (ALL ABOUT MY MOTHER Series)

In Which “Slaughterhouse-Five” Anticipates My Mother
by Sara Clancy

She was not in Dresden during the fire
and though she did not witness the ruin
until years later, she remembers the dog
named Chief her brother brought back
in 1942, as if it is on her back porch
right now, scratching
to come in.

She is a traveler in memory, waving
from the dock of the uncertain now
and arriving, seconds later to welcoming
crowds of her history, taking her bags
and her Brownie camera, helping her
into the waiting livery her past.

I am her tour guide at 64, her rebel daughter
at 16. I am 6 in a sunsuit pointing out landmarks
or waiting with her in Reading Terminal for the train
that will take us from the old fish-scale twin
on Noble Road to the lobster boats
out her bay window,

the one she has sat beside for 30 years,
in the modest, but lovely home where
she lives now. A ready protagonist
unstuck from her own chronology
in the novel of her life.

PAINTING: Gathering Almond Blossoms by John William Waterhouse (1916).

AUTHOR’S PHOTO CAPTION: My favorite picture of my brother, my mother, and me at an Independence Day picnic in New Hope, Pennsylvania, 1956.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Sara Clancy is a Philadelphia transplant to the Southwest. Her chapbook Ghost Logic won the 2017 Turtle Island Quarterly Editors Choice Award. Among other places, her poems have appeared in Off the Coast, The Linnet’s Wings, Crab Creek Review, The Madison Review, Misfit Magazine, Avatar Review, and Verse Wisconsin. She lives in the desert with her husband, their dog, two ordinary cats, and a psychotic cross-eyed one.

The Bath by Mary Camarillo (ALL ABOUT MY MOTHER Series)

The Bath
by Mary Camarillo

My mother weighs her age,
ninety-five pounds. She lets me
wash between her breasts,
her voice soft and southern.
She never nursed me—another
place to lay the blame—a mother’s
fault how children turn out.

She lifts arthritic fingers,
drips water down my blouse,
silk-screened with Frida’s face.
She doesn’t understand
the attraction. I don’t ask
who she means. She believes
my husband is Spanish,
because of his aristocratic nose.

He painted our garden walls
cobalt blue, number 6965.
Just like Frida, I can’t have children
and never pluck my eyebrows.
I wonder if I could lie in bed
with a fractured spine and illustrate
the exact depth and width of pain.

Don’t be so rough, my mother says
her skin bruises. I rinse her hair
and wish she’d had another daughter.
Her hand trembles as she traces
circles in my palm, digging in deeper,
opening my skin, reclaiming her blood.

PAINTING: Self-Portrait with Necklace of Thorns by Frida Kahlo (1940).

NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: This poem was written when I was a struggling caregiver for my mother, who died almost five years ago. I wish I’d asked her more questions.

PHOTO: The author as a child with her mother (Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, 1950s).

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Mary Camarillo is the author of the award-winning novels Those People Behind Us and The Lockhart Women. Her poems and short fiction have appeared in publications such as Inlandia, 166 Palms, Sonora Review, and The Ear. She lives in Huntington Beach, California, with her husband, who plays ukulele, and their terrorist cat Riley, who makes frequent appearances on Instagram.  For more information, please visit MaryCamarillo.com and sign up for her newsletter. You can also find her on Facebook and Instagram.