In
Gratitude for Mira
In gratitude, I thank my mother
for the pain she alone
felt, in a linoleum-floored hospital bed
as she labored to deliver me into this world,
without many words of English, as a
Polish-speaking
nurse came to interpret the foreign feelings
and words.
In gratitude, I thank my Mama
for going through this labor again
to bring me home the gift of my lovely sister
Eva,
my partner in flower-watering and care-giving;
the gift of my brother Henio, who I sent her
forth
to deliver in my innocence and to whom I can
wholely attribute
my hero-complex—as I saved him from his driving
a rolling Oldsmobile
down the driveway to the ditch,
as I saved his shoe from going down a flooded
creek and
thus from the wrath of our mother, and as I
saved him
from the alone encounter with the kindergarten
teacher in a new school—
and the gift of my sister Jakubina,
whose beauty and gentle spirit,
reflects, as Maria, one of our many cousins who
loved Mama, says,
of Aunt Myra herself.
In gratitude, I thank my Mama
for sharing meal after meal with me
from her breast; from the high chair where we
learned
of President Kennedy’s death
and cried together;
from the many vegetables she grew
so that we could grow
healthy and strong;
from the chickens, pigs and steers
she fed and raised;
from the milk she squeezed out of the teats in
the cold barn.
In gratitude, I thank her
for each chicken’s head
she felled with her axe on the tree stump,
telling me later that it was a horrible
business,
but she did it for us—for our strength, for our
education,
just as her mother, Babcia, sold eggs in Poland
for her boarding school
education to be a teacher, taking the train to
another town.
I thank her
for each chicken feather
she plucked—each and every one—thousands
of them, I give thanks.
And for waking up early and for sending me off
to college so that I could come to her
profession as well.
In gratitude, I thank Mum, the Baba of my
children,
for her pain when my own labor came,
for taking care of her Rysiu for five weekends
in a row,
so that I could do my graduate studies.
I thank her for caring for him and Franiu while
I traveled
to conferences and adventures
and for the cards we have from them still
because of the craft time she shared with them.
I thank her for the many sweaters, gloves, and
hats
she made
for them and me,
and for the books she loved and
we loved together.
In gratitude, I thank Mum
for her love of flowers and the outdoors—
because as my dear husband, who she was
grateful for, says to me:
“You have the expanse of the farm in your
soul.”
She was also deeply grateful, as I am, for the
uniquely-suited and deeply-loyal
husbands of my sisters, Patrick and Daniel, and
their love and care for their flowers.
She let me grow and care for a patch of flowers
on the farm,
and at the nursing homes, so that my own garden
became a daily comfort
as she was sick, as she died. And as I pulled dead marigolds off their
stems,
my head down in the orange and gold of grief, I
saw the Babcias and Stryankas running
towards her in joy with their arms open wide,
“Mira! Mira!”---and of course crying.
In gratitude, I thank Mum
for staying on this earth until I got to know
her on a deep level,
past the childhood ungratefulness, passed the
teenage angst and selfishness,
past the busy parenthood and career building.
I got to experience her unconditional love late,
beyond the childish love where I thought she
was just
demanding and annoying.
And after her truly annoying initial dealings
with doctors,
to a place of accepting their attempts at help.
She waited, she held on,
through despair and pain,
through the humility of others taking care of
her
in a linoleum-floored hospital bed.
She let me lose my temper, demanding better
care.
She let me have her sit in her wheelchair in
the lobby in her private pain,
so that it would shame the sluggish staff to
quickly move.
She let me love every chin hair, fingernail,
permed curl,
She let me love her stroke-curved toe, her
hairy shins, the blackened thin-skin patches,
the crooked arm, the sharp blue eyes and
tongue, the beautiful skin,
her suffering soul.
She patiently let me put her to bed, not
knowing that I would be the last person
to do so.
Although she often said, “ouch!” she didn’t then.
And as Eve and I wept about her life of
suffering, during what we didn’t know were her
final moments, and came to realize that her
suffering gave her such strength for
others—for the many nurse’s aides, friends with
children, for us—she then took her last
breath to remind us that suffering is not
without heart, without love for others.
As children, she took care of our bodies and
souls,
As adults, we took care of her body, and she
took care of our spirits.
Wikipedia, our communal knowledge source, says
“Mira” is a giant red star,
that it is a “brightest periodic variable in
the sky that is not visible to the naked eye
for part of its cycle” and that there is a disc
that is “being accreted from material
in the
solar wind from Mira and could eventually form new planets.”
In gratitude, I cherish that I am a part of her
constellation,
I am grateful that we will be able to continue
to form new readings
from our gratitude from the deep and rich
source,
of light and being and life.
