When I first
realized I was an adult,
I was so
pleased.
Walking down
a city street in a strange land,
carrying a
sack of groceries
purchased
with money I’d earned myself.
A few years
later, another sign.
The
twelve-year old looks up trustingly from her desk
and asks me
to feel her forehead
to see if she
has a fever.
Becoming an
adult
is what you
spend childhood preparing for
especially
those of us who spend our adolescence rolling our eyes at our classmates’
antics.
But now it
seems that time
insists on carrying
me along
in her
insistent march.
My mother
gone
too soon for
her, with projects started in her studio
seeds ordered
for the garden
talk of a
camping trip next summer
and too soon
for me.
I still need
her guidance.
“How do I do
this?”
I want to ask
as I lay on
the table while the technician
rolls a wand
over my belly.
She peers at
the screen, not looking for a telltale tail
but just to
determine if this unending ellipses of a period
is merely my
body giving up on fertility in yet another way
or the sign
of something more malignant.
This
ultrasound won’t become my profile picture
won’t be
posted on my fridge
at best, it
signals hormone therapy and hot flashes.
“How do I do
this?”
I want to ask
Mom,
veteran of
heart disease, stroke, breast cancer.
But when I
get home, feeling forlorn,
there’s no
Mom to call.
So I find
comfort in some chocolate
and the nook
of my husband’s neck.
Younger than
me, but feeling his age as well.
Twelve years
without his father,
and the young
bucks during harvest season reaching over to help with the heavy loads.
How do we do
this? It keeps getting harder.
And our
foundations have disappeared.
So we do what
they did.
We lean on
each other. We keep going.
