Things I'm Learning from My Children

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The Dark
My son asks me to stand
at the top of the stairs
while he retrieves his
pillow/water bottle/socks
from the basement,
and I fight the urge
to make him go it alone,
worn out and filled up
with my own petty anxieties,
but then I remember—
that is, I feel in my bones—
the creeping sense
of nebulous fear
I wore tight around my neck
as I took the goats water and hay
after nightfall, wishing someone
would just stand on the porch
as I made my rounds,
and I also remember that sometimes
the worst enemy is solitude,
the sense that we are alone
with our darkness or the dark,
so I always say yes, waiting at the top
until he returns from his errand.
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Body Neutrality
My children—even now,
long removed from babyhood—
still sometimes bury their faces in my belly
as I lay on the couch or my bed,
their long limbs trailing down mine,
patting my middle affectionately
with hands no longer plump with baby fat,
and I fight the urge to tense up,
to be smaller than I am,
to recoil at the way my flesh moves,
and I remember
a photo of a mother loon,
eyes alert and intelligent
as she keeps watch
while her babies sleep,
prone and helpless
on her downy back,
knowing they are safe
nestled in the folds of the body
from which they were knit.
-----------------------------------
Lessons in Hope
My daughter,
eight years old,
plants a clementine seed
she stole from her lunch.
She sprinkles the earth
in her terracotta pot,
baptizes it daily,
and waits.
“Will it grow, Mom?”
“I don’t know, honey.
We’ll see,” I lilt,
but my heart whispers
No,
       it won’t.
The world
                  isn’t that easy.
I’ve rarely been
so happy
to be wrong.