Two years after my mother was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, my brother and I moved her from her house in River Vale, New Jersey, to a nearby dementia unit called Memory Lane. I wish I could say it was the hardest thing I’ve ever done, but since then she has continued to decline, and we’ve transferred her to a nursing home. A few months after my mother was settled into Memory Lane, my brother and I put my mother’s house up for sale. My brother asked me to come by and help him sort what we would save from what we…
Author: Mom Egg Review
The Mom Egg Vol. 8 2010 “Lessons” Selections Get the Issue LANGUAGE CLASS (written on Qualla Boundary; for C.M.) Kimberly L. Becker Little by little we are reclaiming the words Just as the land was once large, so, too, our voice Some words lost on the Trail have been found They lived hidden in baskets, in pockets, in the very tassels of corn (Selu, Selu) Now the words live again See? When I say nogwo it is now, both the now of then and the now of not yet The words work secret medicine and strong, forming us…
In Bali, where I live in a big bamboo and grass house, “Ibu” means mother… I am a mom, to 8 people ages 4 to 34! I am also a midwife, which gives me the astonishing day and night attendance to miracles. …(A) dear sister~writer living in Paris, urged me to look at The Mom Egg… and I have, and it’s an amazing project. The title and the graphic are perfect, for as a midwife who has squatted by the birth of a few thousand souls, I can tell you, it is not only the Baby who is Born… The…
“I wonder if my children will ever really know me?” My friend, mother of four, grandmother of many, asked me this when she was sixty-something. At this time she had become a certified counselor for elders encouraging them to uncover their own wisdom. This moment redacts in my memory at thoughtful moments of quiet. Another question seems even more pressing; “Did I every really know my own mother?” During my long years in therapy, this was not a question that I asked, nor did my therapist. During incessant self-absorption, I kept asking: “Does my mother really know me?” I wasn’t…
Today when I visit my mother at the dementia center, one of the residents convinces several of her companions there is a cat on a nearby roof. She can see it, she says, and I assure her that I can see it too, though I’m pretty sure she’s talking about a dark vent that stands out against surrounding gray shingles. Others say they see it, and then they begin to worry about the poor cat. I tell her that cats are resourceful and this one surely knows a way down. Later, one of the women shows us something on her…
Growing up in the shadow of my absentee Vietnam War veteran father, it always seemed like I inherited some, and too much, of his post-service sensibilities—he was diagnosed with Post-traumatic Stress Disorder before his second tour finished. I’ve always suspected much of my hyper-vigilant survivalism, and fear of people and divinity, is connected to how he was when he and my mother conceived me. Or maybe the Vietnam War is just an easily accessible historical context in which I can place him in order to connect with him in some tangible way? In any case, as an adolescent this desire…
Mama needed a ride home from work so I went for her. As I was pulling out of the lot behind the grocery store where she was a clerk in the deli, I said, “We gotta stop somewhere; Ray wants some cigarettes.” Mama turned and looked out the side window. Had she heard me? Maybe I didn’t say anything. I’d kept my voice low, tried to keep the words even like we were ordinary, but maybe I only imagined myself speaking. “How you know?” she asked. “He called me. Said if I was picking you up to get him some…
There are Mothers of Invention, Motherlodes, Holy Mothers, Mother #%*!-ers & Mother tongues. We give birth to a child, a book, a business venture or a song. We are born, reborn & born again. While the umbilical cord that connected us to our mothers may be recalled only by the depression in the middle of our bellies, the unseen cords to “Mother’s Energy” seem unbreakable, uncut-able, and pulse content-rich for an entire lifetime. Just ask anyone with even a modicum of experience in psychotherapy or perhaps a knowledge of literature. It would stand to reason then that one’s relationship (actual…
Mom Egg contributor RH Douglas passed away last week. Cheryl Boyce Taylor writes of her, “She was a brave Warrior/Poet/Trini/Mother-Woman-Wildness. Say a prayer for her peace and safe travel.” In Rodlyn’s memory, we are re-printing a poem of hers originally published on our Myspace blog in May,2008. Benediction by R.H. Douglas The Sun is warm here My heart opens To its rays. Salt water sprays my face. Grit washed away. I leave the excited city, A chiseled world, To find my soul in the ocean’s rhythms. Bless me Mother. Mother of the deep You who do not sleep. Do…
My fifth grader thinks she’s slick when we are getting ready for school, that if her lip gloss is subtly applied, or combined with a lighter shade, I won’t notice her slightly rosier lips as we are heading out the door. I could tell Selena to wipe it off. I am her mother after all, but I pick my battles, and there is my own relationship to lip products. At seven, I was obsessed with Maybelline’s Kissing Potion in Strawberry, which was as sweet and sticky as it was shiny. I couldn’t lick my lips fast enough once it was…