So I will listen

I have spent the past few days with my mother, helping her with a few small repairs and things. We’ve laughed a great deal and she has told me stories I have heard over and over, and a few stories I’ve never heard before, or maybe, I’ve just never listened. As we spend time together, I often wonder how much I missed, how much I dismissed and how little care I took with her story. Today, I would like to offer a poem as my reflection on the unique and challenging relationship of parent to child.

She told me that she had warned her
Mother not to take her father back
But her mother wouldn’t listen as no mother listens
To her daughters as no daughter takes advice
From her mother’s lips.

We are designed within one another pouring
Out of each other like water from headwaters to
Streams and rivers and flow we do
But tributaries ignore the source and believe
In our own truth, our own design.

Her story is red clay and oil derricks, Cherokee aunties
Church and refereed football games, watching
Parents divide and reunite, breaking up
To come back together, in harm’s way.

My story is solid building bricks of
Love and laughter and large connected family
Of faith and constancy and opening up home
To strangers and family and danger through
right actions that ushered in terror.

We are our parent fulfilled and broken
Dreams of restoration and completion
No blueprints but prayers and wishes floated
Like paper boats, on teeming rivers.

We are rolling over each other
Our stories, our hopes our dreams,
Our children, and the seventh generation yet unborn.

We are all we have to know so listen
I will listen to you if you hear
Me for the first time, for the last time
Time is getting away, so listen.