NOTE: Gazing at a lovely picture of a friend’s daughter with her two kids–a newborn and a toddler–I found myself advising her, in full cliche: “Enjoy every minute of this time; it goes so fast!”
That made me wistful about my own daughters’ younger years. Even though I realized then the flight of time, it still slipped past me far too quickly.
So I dug out a poem I wrote decades ago, which was published in a local anthology. Here ’tis:
We cleaned out the closets yesterday,
Disposing of the children’s Infancy
and Toddlerhood
in just a few, brief hours.
We stacked the memories in cardboard boxes
and placed them in the basement,
Where they will remain until my charitable
heart,
Massaged by the Internal Revenue Service,
Calls the Salvation Army to
take them away.
There went the Winnie-the-Pooh shirt,
Gently folded by the thin ten-year-old
Whose face is hidden now behind a
thicket of heavy curls,
Like a small cottage attacked by overgrown shrubbery.
“How tiny it is,” she smiles.
How tiny she was, I remember, seeing her again
As she was then, the nicely shaped head
covered
With thousands of tight little ringlets
She let me cut at will.
I tried to wring those early years
of all I could,
Taking to heart the wistful warning from those
Who’d already passed this way that
“You’ll never know where the years went.”
But
Here’s the evidence of my failure, the
Footed pajamas worn first by one daughter,
Then by the other.
In the accordion of my memory, the years are
pleated
Close together, almost superimposed
one on the other. I see
The girls, leaning back against their pillows,
Fragile arms folded behind their heads with
Comical sophistication, as they listen
To a story they both treasured and selected
bedtime after bedtime.
“Goodnight stars, goodnight air, goodnight noises
everywhere.”
I recite the words from memory now. My six-year-old,
Deciding which books she is ready to surrender to a
Younger child, replaces GOODNIGHT MOON
On the shelf. I am grateful to her
For allowing us to retain our shared memory just
a little longer.
Next time, I know, GOODNIGHT MOON will go the way
Of the footed pajamas and the Winnie-the-Pooh shirt.
Another book, which she now reads to me, will mark
these years for us. My daughters will grow
Less attached to their childhood memories,
As I grow more so.
I am too young to be living in the past, I think,
But still, in what I know is a gesture more to myself
Than to the future, when the time comes to dispose
of GOODNIGHT MOON,
I shall pack it in the special box, the one set apart
from
The goods for the Salvation Army.
There it will join the hand-knit garments woven
With love by aunts and grandmothers intent on
Warming my daughters with their
crocheted caresses.
And I shall hope that the mildew of indifference
Spares it
For the next generation.
I hope this poem resonates somewhat, and I’d love to hear your thoughts and stories. WordPress people, if you like it, please remember to click on Like. Cheers!
Annie
