Becoming Our Words

The past weeks have been filled with alot of family, and not enough writing. Or writing in some form, but not others. I know I’m busy when…most of my words tumble out in poetic forms I never truly finish. They’re left alone. They are truly imperfect in the grammatically meaning and sense—the subject matters refers to something on-going in the past.

As such, this time of year, I always devote some portion of my writing to a birthday poem for my son. A practice begun thirty years ago, around the time of his birth. I hadn’t set out to create a ritual from it. By the time he graduated from high school, I created a large enough body of work to compile the writings into a handmade, self-published book. The title was Becoming Our Hopes.

I returned to the titular essay of that compendium last week surprised to find the following: My mother existed in present tense as in “Mom has made her famous raviolis, filled with either meat or cheese. She has never veered from this.” So much of life at that time, a mother with dementia, was imperfect, on-going in the past. That essay appeared as number 28 among 48 passages. Not an early inspiration, not a closing statement. An ongoing conversation with myself about the past, motherhood, and my son.

Also, I find the early sparks for Something Italian, long before I decided to write of my Italian American experiences. The essay was based on a prompt of What have I left behind for my child? What did my parents leave for me? The essay might have been the treatise for the entire book with a mention of my mother’s cakes, dad branching out in the garden to grow cherry tomatoes, green apples we picked and those we stole as kids. I also find hints at the future with inklings, a scratching of the pen across my subconsciousness to begin my current, “that which shall not be spoken of yet” project, with the line from a former writing colleague, “I understand what you mean about finding yourself in a place.” Once you find it, no one can take it away.

In closing that piece, I wrote, “I have given my son a sense of place.” Hence, ten years later, he left for Oregon.

I was a first-time mom on the Oregon Coast. His father traveled often Monday through Friday. We experienced the coast, together, alone, each in our cocoons. We become a unit of mother and son after his dad’s death. Later, we became a package deal when marrying Mark and his three children (we called our marriage Mergers and Acquisitions, reflecting our initials M & A). And we blended four families, which included both sets of in-laws. He became a teenager, a college student, a married man, and now a father.

Through it all, I kept writing a poem, a reflection a year. Looking back, some or most of that collection was for me. To learn from. And they were of me, looking at him, missing him, wondering about him. Me wanting him to know his mother in a way I never knew mine. Perhaps that’s what spurred me on.

The subject matters ranged from my first Mother’s Day, to Davis becoming a geologist (The poem was titled Davis Rocks and he did not pursue geology), Scooby-Doo, 9-11, my struggles in giving up being his mom to become a mother to four children. Our walks on the Oregon coast, the young neighbor struck by a fastball, and how my son officially committed to University of Oregon on Twitter, informing me later at breakfast. The book ends with a poem about driving his Honda Fit home from a breakdown so he could reach school before the first bell.

There is nothing here
that says his name,
says who he is,
or how vacant and stale
his metal car will become
when he has disappeared,
save a glance out the rear window
where a decal with wings
has been dutifully placed,
as if the occupant
has already taken flight.

The Oregon Ducks with wings logo is etched permanently in my mind.

Stored on an old computer, I kept any sort of poetry I’d written in a folder called Stay-at-Home poems. The title was a tongue-in-cheek rhyme about my place at the helm in my then-single-parent home. Perhaps that book, Becoming Our Hopes, should have utilized the phrase stay-at-home, with words designed to keep him close. Instead, the occupant has indeed truly taken flight. And for thirty years, I have learned what every mother learns. We are simply along for the exhilarating, bumpy ride.

The importance of that anthology lives on, as does the commitment, twelve years later to marshal forth and document his life and mine, separated by 2,000 miles. He’s now an adult. And a parent. I’ll have to take care in not giving my poems a didactic sense. We cannot make ourselves the teacher when the student has already shown up.

How is your past work coming back to you? I’d love to know. Add your comments below.

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The next few weeks, I’ll be on the road and on the screen. Here are few places where you’ll find me:

August 30 - Italian American Museum - An afternoon of Something Italian appearance. 3 p.m. www.IAMCLE.org.

September 1 - West Virginia Italian American Festival, Author’s Forum - 5:30 p.m. Clarksburg Public Library. VIRTUAL. Link here for more information.

Tuesday, Oct 13th - I’ll be chatting with author, food writer, and chef Amy Tobin on the intersectionality of my memoirs, and how food played in a role in each. Podcast link available at a later date.

Oct 15th & Oct 29th 6:30 - 8:30 - Literary Cleveland - Writing Our Heritage. Sign up for LitCleveland or follow link to sign up for class. Virtual.

October 21 - Lloyd Library and Museum in partnership with Fotofocus, Presentation - Chestnuts: The New Comeback Kids. More details to follow.

November 10 - United Italian Society - Writing Our Heritage - 6:30 p.m.

November 14 - Mark your calendars. Books by the Banks presented by the Public Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton County is back! Visit the website for more details.

November 18 - Gugel Alley Writers Readout - 6:30 p.m. Roebling Books and Coffee, Newport, KY. More information coming.

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Upcoming for 2027

Caring for the Caregiver experiences will return February 23, 2027, and August 10, 2027. Look for registration coming soon. Visit givingvoice.org to be added to their mailing list.

Creative Writing Project at the Contemporary Art Museum will start up with sessions in October, February, and April. Look for February dates from me. And sign up for all the sessions when you can! Follow the CAC CWP here.