Mother's Day

As Mother's Day winds down, I thought of a poem I wrote (another in the "Darwin" series) that was based on a photograph of my great-grandmother and great-aunts taken in Russia sometime before the turn of the last century.

A few years ago, my sisters, our daughters, and nieces had gathered for my mother's birthday and I had written this as a birthday gift for my mother. Although I didn't know it then, it was also the last time I saw my dad before he passed away.

With love and appreciation for all of the women in my life, mothers and others.

Long-lost characters

In the heirloom photo, three women pose,

sepia and close-mouthed, enduring

bad teeth or a grim Kiev winter.

The matriarch, whose name no one remembers,

wears a white knotted head scarf

and clenches her right hand in her lap.

Rose, slim-waisted and straight-backed,

challenges the camera.

Her sister, Miriam, in high-collared black,

looks aside.

They all have our eyes.

What would they make of us,

their great-greats and their greats,

with our bared bellies and loose-limbed androgyny,

our husbands and wives who came here

from not here and found us to love,

our bilingual babies,

our speed-read Seders and Easter baskets

and Christmas trees in the living room.

We are the ones who return to the house

our father built, amazing him each time

with all the women he has spawned.

In the backyard, we snap ourselves,

bountiful and large, our heads

blond and dark and grey,

leaning together, laughing at Zoey

swatting her mother’s dangly earring,

smiling our wide white American smiles

at our great-greats and their greats,

posing for the story they will make of us.

(c) Beth Feldman Brandt, 12/7/2007

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